In Mathew Arthur’s course GSWS 321 “Making Feminisms: Technoscience, Disability, DIY,” students explore concepts and methods from feminist science and technology studies, cyberfeminisms, and disability studies through hands-on critical making practices that include origami, crochet, beading, cooking, board game design, and more. Across disciplines and activist movements, feminist concepts inform and are formed around bodies, things, books, devices, artworks, buildings, and places. Together, we experiment with how feminist theories are made and what they can make.
Making Feminisms: Feminist Figuration
By Mia Ferguson, Rosemary Morrison, Tayler Orum, and Olivia Johnson
GSWS 321 “Making Feminisms” is a creative break from traditional courses. We look at the world through the theoretical and analytical lens of feminist science and technology studies. The class fosters hands-on ways of learning with connections to bigger conceptual ideas by using images and figures (see below) to generate understanding and reimagine futures. In the classroom community, we regularly engaged with our classmates, shared ideas, and generated a better understanding of complex topics. We often got to work through new making practices collaboratively—allowing us to better engage course concepts as we applied them to creative mediums.
Figuration is a way to think through complex topics and issues. Using an image or figure in our practices allows us to build new understandings and imagine different possible futures. As a feminist practice it allows us to understand the unlying ideas within a topic to challenge them. For example, during an in-class exercise where we were tasked to make a figure, our group created a Tinder profile for the figure of “Ryan” as a way of thinking through the concept of “wokefishing.” Our figure was built through aspects of stereotype and familiar images or expressions of men on dating apps who constitute wokefishers. Ryan proclaims his love for women, “especially his mom”—but not because he respects women. Rather, he believes that he’ll attract more women by appearing to be woke.
Dance student Olivia Johnson offers another example of figuration as an improvisational tool: a way of reimagining the state of one’s body and understanding anatomy. By using a winding ball of yarn as a figure and impulse for movement, Olivia writes,
I open myself up to many new possibilities separate from my body’s ingrained histories of movement and being. My body is ever-moving trails of yarn, and will never be static or perfectly wound in accordance to the standards of movement aesthetics, beauty, or function. I can fold the yarn in the middle of my forearm or the middle of my ear, and this will inform exciting pathways and futures that were otherwise hidden.
Another example of figuration can be seen in Education student Mia Ferguson’s storybook, Figuration Fairies. At first glance it’s a short story about a young girl named Erin who enjoys gardening and meets a group of fairies. But after considering how the parts within the story interact with each other, it’s much more complex. The fairies tell Erin, “the ideas we surround ourselves with are shaped by the stories we tell and the figures we create." Storybooks are often restricted to particular levels of education. But they give the opportunity to cultivate inclusive learning opportunities.
Student Biographies
Mia Ferguson is a fourth-year student in Social Justice in Education and Geography.
Rosemary Morrison is a fourth-year Theatre and Performance Major and GSWS Minor.
Tayler Orum is a third-year joint Criminology and GSWS major.
Olivia Johnson is a fourth-year Dance major.