Resourcing and Reconnecting: Thinking Through Trauma-Informed Pedagogy and the Visual Arts

CAA Conversations

This podcast is a two-part conversation between Anita Chari (Political Science, University of Oregon) and Kate Mondloch (Art History, University of Oregon). Episode 1 is an introduction to embodied and trauma-informed approaches for pedagogy, including practical resources for students, teachers, and administrators. Episode 2 will explore embodied and trauma-informed approaches as they relate to art historical and liberal arts pedagogy. Anita Chari, Associate Professor of Political Science, University of Oregon,  is a political theorist and somatic educator, and the co-founder of Embodying Your Curriculum, an organization that brings trauma-informed, embodied pedagogies to educators and health care practitioners. She has won multiple teaching awards for her innovative work to bring embodied, trauma-informed, social justice paradigms into higher education. At the University of Oregon she has taught for seven years as a faculty member in the Inside-Out prison education project, where she developed a pedagogical approach that facilitates social-emotional and embodied learning in the context of the unique learning environment of a correctional institution. Her interdisciplinary scholarly research explores the political significance of embodiment and mindfulness practices for our times. She is the author of A Political Economy of the Senses (Columbia University Press, 2015), and her research on embodied practices and political theory has appeared in venues including New Political Science, Philosophy and Social Criticism, Contemporary Political Theory, and Somatic Voices in Performance Research and Beyond (Routledge, 2020). Kate Mondloch is a professor of contemporary art history and theory in the Department of the History of Art and Architecture at the University of Oregon, where she holds a joint appointment as faculty-in-residence in the Clark Honors College. She writes and teaches about contemporary art spectatorship and embodiment, especially as both relate to new technologies. She is the author of Screens: Viewing Media Installation Art (Minnesota, 2010) and A Capsule Aesthetic: Feminist Materialisms in New Media Art (Minnesota, 2018). Her current book project, tentatively entitled Art of Attention, explores attention and body-mind awareness in art since 1950.