Date of Graduation

7-2026

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Arts in Art Education (MA)

Degree Level

Graduate

Department

Art

Advisor/Mentor

Schulte, Christopher

Committee Member

Bobie, Adwoa

Second Committee Member

Sytsma, Janine

Third Committee Member

Brown, Kathy

Keywords

Africanfuturism and Sankofa; Art-based critical autoethnography; Emotional resilience; IDENSCARTY; Slow-sewing; Therapeutic Sewing Practices (TSP)

Abstract

The act of sewing, an intergenerational craft often subordinated to aesthetics and capitalism, is being recognized for its benefit to emotional well-being, identity (re)formation, cultural continuity, and communal interconnectedness. In this context, this thesis emerges from my lived experiences and artistic inquiry into how sewing, slow-sewing in particular, can serve as a therapeutic practice, with special consideration for contemporary art pedagogy. Central to the thesis is the concept of IDENSCARTY, which combines themes of identity, scars, and transcultural influence to project the responsive abilities of Therapeutic Sewing Practices (TSP), a term that highlights the workability of slow-sewing practices. Informed by art-based critical autoethnography, an approach to inquiry that highlights my personal narratives and healing processes through garment constructions, and grounded in Africanfuturism, a framework used to rethink sewing as an embodied cultural technology, as well as Sankofa, a Ghanaian philosophy, the thesis seeks to re-author the ‘self’ as the living site of a community and envision new pedagogical futures.

Download

Included in

Art Education Commons

Share

COinS