International Journal for Talent Development and Creativity

Submission Guidelines

Taisir Subhi Yamin — 2024-11-21

Towards a New Era of Excellence in Education

Taisir Subhi Yamin — 2024-11-21

Pathways to Transformative Learning: Disrupting Hierarchies of Gender, Class, and Race through Creative Expression and Artistic Imaginings

Karen Magro — 2024-11-21

Taisir Subhi Yamin — 2024-11-21

International Journal of Talent Development and Creativity

Taisir Subhi Yamin — 2024-11-21

Front Matter

Taisir Subhi Yamin — 2024-11-21

Imagining the Feminist Imaginary Through Object-Based Research

Kathy Sanford — 2024-11-21

Using objects-based research, feminist adult educators and museum curators shared and described artifacts of
personal and professional meaning. These objects enabled participants in this feminist study to articulate ways in
which we enact power and change, and ways in which we can imagine and create a more feminist world.
Through this study we challenge systems of patriarchal colonial oppression, addressing inequities across gender
as it connects with class, race and culture and showing how objects reveal alternative ways of seeing and shaping
the world. In this paper we take up feminist object-based research as a way to step outside ‘patriarchal logic’ to
reimagine the world through four themes: corporeal, including the body and objects worn on the body;
communicative, which speak and narrative; protect, representing feminist action and power, and disappearing,
referring to that which has been lost or made absent. These show recurring patterns and connections that
collectively enable us to imagine a more equitable and just feminist world.

Survivor Tales: Feminist Graphics Bridging Consciousness Raising into Reality

Kimberly Croswell — 2024-11-21

This article examines two feminist comic representations of violence against women founded in the lived
experiences of artists Sabrina Jones, and Rebecca Migdal, editors with the annual graphic anthology World War
3 Illustrated. In these visual narratives, the reader is introduced to the impact violence, visible and invisible, has
on these women’s lives as they recollect events, and move on from their painful experiences. Far from offering a
commiseration of pain, a function which Susan Sonntag attributes to disaster and war photography in Regarding
the pain of others, these graphics (or comics) project empathy, while also empowering readers by providing a
sense of ‘what’s next?’ Also embedded in this analysis is an examination of the cultural roots of misogyny,
through which violence against women and gendered ‘others’ is operationalised. Through their multimodal
visual and narrative retelling of the harmful impact violence and the threat of violence had on their lives, Jones’
and Migdal’s graphics offer resolution and an opportunity for consciousness raising about the issues facing
survivors of male violence. Their resistance gives voice to the experience of threats and abuse, and shares
wisdom throughout it all.

Exploring Women’s Transformative Learning and Community Building through Practicing Martial Arts to Disrupt Gendered and Hetero-Patriarchal Norms

Emily Dobrich — 2024-11-21

This article explores the potential for martial arts to support transformation and community building for women.
Findings indicate women can derive many individual benefits from learning martial arts. Yet, the benefits must
extend beyond the individual level to create social change. Based on an evaluation of literature on women’s
experiences learning martial arts, I use my perspective as an adult education researcher and a feminist lens to
propose creative approaches to supporting women in learning martial arts. Supporting women in learning martial
arts requires promoting creativity and invention in practice. Feminist new materialism, transformative learning
theory, and communities of practice are the theories that guide the direction of this article. The major
contribution of this article is to offer creative approaches for imagining a feminist praxis through martial arts that
could foster learning environments that encourage self-determination and build social support and resistance to
hetero-patriarchal power and gender inequity, which has relevance to broader educational settings and
communities.

Sharing the Lived Experiences of Women in Academia by Remembering, Reclaiming and Retelling Stories of the Feminist Imaginaries

Bev Hayward — 2024-11-21

Feminist Imaginaries are psychological and social spaces where creative possibilities are overflowing. They
facilitate new ways of being, new ways of knowing and new ways of knowledge creation. This paper embraces a
decolonial and feminist approach to storytelling, remembering, reclaiming and retelling; telling the stories of a
band of wandering women, journeying to the psychosocial spaces of the Imaginary. Drawing upon a feminist
theoretical tapestry, creative writing methods and autoethnographic approaches, the story is an example of the
possibilities for Feminist Imaginaries in academic research. Many female students I have encountered naively
believe they have social justice and equality but the inequalities are hidden in low paid, part-time work and
unpaid care. To explore patriarchy’s deceptive nature, reference is made to the canons of Western art and
literature as spaces from which to depart. It is from this space and time of departure that our journeys to the
Imaginaries begin. Our lived experiences as artists as educators makes our activism all the more urgent to care
for racialised, working class and disabled students. Those experiences are illustrated in poetry and visually in an
artwork created to accompany this paper entitled, Remember, shout her name, tell her-story. Furthermore,
creative writing is a form of the Imaginary and is used to tell this tale. I suggest, by borrowing from Laurel
Richardson, creative writing is a method of inquiry to learn about ourselves and our research. By writing into the
topic, rather than reading around and then writing, the imagination can wander and wonder freely. I include a
small demonstration of how this process might be performed. In this way the story is open-ended, to be
continued, as so too the fight for social and gender justice must continue. Accordingly, I invite you, the reader, to
remember your stories, reclaim, imagine them, document and share them.

The Feminine Outsider: Resistance through the Feminist Imaginary

Maxine Chester — 2024-11-21

The feminist imaginary is a space of resistance against patriarchal structures of oppression and
the silencing of women’s voices and histories. It inspires transformation through new possibilities and
untold narratives. Ultimately, the feminist imaginary mobilizes collective co-creations of knowledge,
meaning and activism to speak to contemporary womanism.

The Weaving is Us: Decolonizing the Tools for the Feminist Imagination

Claudia Diaz-Diaz — 2024-11-21

This article documents weaving as a decolonizing epistemic tool for feminist futures that emerges from the work
of our collective – the Feminist Imaginary Research Network. As a collective of feminist adult educators who
work in both the academy and women’s museums, weaving challenges the centrality of rationality over other
ways of knowing and being. Following the teachings of Indigenous women thinkers and artists, including the
work of some of our members, we frame weaving as an epistemic tool and aesthetic language for future-making.
Weaving acts upon us as a mirror of our history, as an antidote against the supremacy of rationality, and as a tool
for collective projects of transformation. As a decolonizing tool, weaving gathers us around Indigenous women’s
traditional knowledge, but also confronts us with the question of our obligations when the teachings of weaving
have been offered to us – what is our responsibility to the work, to each other, and to this emergent knowledge?

Conducting Arts-Based Research with Rural Women in Columbia, South America: A Tool for Community Empowerment and Gender Justice

Lady Johanna Peñaloza-Farfán — 2024-11-21

Women's social movements in Colombia are known for being visible in the streets, on social networks, in the
courts, and neighborhoods (Zulver, 2022). In Colombia, women have mobilized to seek gender justice. Many of
them have to face violence not only daily, but also in a structural way such as the legal impossibility of owning
land. Sometimes, mobilizing means exposing themselves to the dynamics of power and violence to which they
are subjected (Rojas, 2000). Many women, however, seek to form associations to protect themselves from these
dynamics. Associating and organizing as a collective allows women to start transcending the patriarchal
structures that keep them in a situation where they are held as immobilized victims, and in turn, become the new
protagonists of a struggle that allows them to be the builders of a different destiny for themselves and future
generations (Llevadot, 2022). This new scenario demands that women recognize the importance of building a
collective identity that can lead them to establish common objectives that are broader compared to the individual
goals that lead them to satisfy their immediate and daily needs. Building this identity implies establishing actions
that commit them, through participation, to change how they interact with their closest people and the social and
political environment in their territories (Zulver, 2022). Some of these actions are expressed in the production of
handicrafts, food, embroidery, theatrical performances, and other community activities that strengthen the
community's organization.

Examining Feminist Pedagogy from the Perspective of Transformative Learning: Do Race and Gender Matter in Feminist Classrooms?

Mitsunori Misawa — 2024-11-21

Although feminist pedagogy has been widely used as a teaching approach in classrooms in higher education to
enhance diversity, issues of race and gender are often areas of contestations for non-White faculty. The purpose
of this study was to explore how non-White professors, a Black woman tenured full professor and a gay Asian
male pre-tenured professor, co-created a feminist classroom and how they negotiated power in that classroom
environment. The research questions that guided this study were: 1) what does a feminist classroom look like in
higher education; 2) how does the intersection of race and gender influence feminist pedagogy; and 3) what
strategies do adult educators and practitioners use to deal with disoriented dilemmas? This research progressed
into a longitudinal study, focusing on how the faculty members’ praxes grew from critical classroom incidents
that the professors believed directly related the negative reactions from students to their positionalities as a Black
woman and an Asian man. Three themes emerged from the data: a) Confrontation, b) Resistance, and c)
Hostility. Each of these themes are defined and presented through direct quotes from our teaching logs and
students’ reflections. Discussion and implications for practice are also provided regarding how race and gender
matter in feminist classrooms. The concluding section describes how the two faculty members implemented
reflective practices in higher education to create feminist classrooms.

International Journal for Talent Development and Creativity

Submission Guidelines

Towards a New Era of Excellence in Education

Pathways to Transformative Learning: Disrupting Hierarchies of Gender, Class, and Race through Creative Expression and Artistic Imaginings

Table of Contents

International Journal of Talent Development and Creativity

Front Matter

Imagining the Feminist Imaginary Through Object-Based Research

Survivor Tales: Feminist Graphics Bridging Consciousness Raising into Reality

Exploring Women’s Transformative Learning and Community Building through Practicing Martial Arts to Disrupt Gendered and Hetero-Patriarchal Norms

Sharing the Lived Experiences of Women in Academia by Remembering, Reclaiming and Retelling Stories of the Feminist Imaginaries

The Feminine Outsider: Resistance through the Feminist Imaginary

The Weaving is Us: Decolonizing the Tools for the Feminist Imagination

Conducting Arts-Based Research with Rural Women in Columbia, South America: A Tool for Community Empowerment and Gender Justice

Examining Feminist Pedagogy from the Perspective of Transformative Learning: Do Race and Gender Matter in Feminist Classrooms?