LITERACY EXPERIENCE:  TOWARDS AN ONTOLOGICAL VIEW  OF LITERACIES THROUGH YOUTH  PARTICIPATORY PHOTOETHNOGRAPHY AND ART-MAKING  By  Amanda Rae Smith               A DISSERTATION  Submitted to Michigan State University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of  Curriculum, Instruction, and Teacher EducationÑDoctor of Philosophy  2016     ABSTRACT  LITERACY EXPERIENCE:  TOWARDS AN ONTOLOGICAL VIEW  OF LITERACIES THROUGH YOUTH  PARTICIPATORY PHOTOETHNOGRAPHY AND ART MAKING  By  Amanda Rae Smith  The trajectory of literacy research has been one of expansion.  In each theoretical iteration, established paradigms for what qualifies as ÒliterateÓ have been rejected in favor of more generous and inclusive conceptions.  In recent work scholars have moved toward considering literacies themselves as participants in social life.  In this dissertation I argue that this move necessitates a commensurate change in the unit of analysis of research on literacies and the methodological and theoretical apparatus used to approach such research.  The current units of analysis used in literacy research are too limiting for this new orientation, obscuring some of the participants in sets of literate relations.  Drawing on work in human and cultural geography, I mobilize Non-Representational Theory in developing the concept of literacy experience as a new unit of analysis in literacy research.  A literacy experience is an emergence of sense when people read and write the world through relationships with (im)material texts in everyday life.  Thinking in terms of literacy experiences affords novel ways to account for the pre-conscious, emergent, and affective components of literacy, areas which have been difficult to account for using popular approaches to the study of literacies.  Additionally, this theoretical paradigm offers a way of countenancing the myriad relations between things, objects, and bodies that participate in the doing/being of literacies.     Literacy experiences are demonstrated through the work of co-researcher youth, a group of suburban high school photography students, who studied their own engagement with text in their everyday lives through photoethnographic self-studies and art-making.  Findings suggest that youth participate in complex sets of literate relations that are fractured across timescales; involve a wide variety of things, bodies, and objects; and result in the emergence of sense and affective intensities.  These findings help to move the field of literacy studies towards an ontological view of literacies where literate sense-making is simply an element of being in the world.                             Copyright by AMANDA RAE SMITH 2016    v                     This dissertation is dedicated to my family.  To my loving and supportive husband, Nathanael, who has been my safe harbor even during the roughest of storms, many of which weÕve endured while IÕve been undertaking this work.  I would never have made it, generally, or finished this dissertation, specifically, without you.  And, to our children: Beckett Mikel Madiba, whose presence and absence is so much a part of this project; and, to Luna and Lyra, who we never had the opportunity to meetÉI miss you all, every day.  I hope IÕve done our squad proud.       vi ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS    To Sylvia, Kate, Mia, and DonovanÑnever in my wildest imaginings could I have pictured having the opportunity to work with young people as lovely, creative, wise, hilarious, innovative, and alive as all of you.  You made this work sing for me.  Thank you for sharing your lives with me, for creating astounding artwork that makes people freak every time they see it, for drinking teeny-tiny frappucinos with me at Starbucks, and for painting everything gold.  You are all stars and IÕm so, so proud of each of you.  Lu McCurry, thank you for trusting me with your class and joining me in this work.  Your generosity knows no bounds and I canÕt even begin to say how much I learned from you about art, teaching, and how to really see.  I would like to thank my dream team of a committee, Mary Juzwik, Lynn Fendler, Julie Lindquist, and Django Paris, for your guidance and support through this project and for encouraging me to just go all the way after it and get weird.  Your belief in me and my work helped to propel me through the times when I sat, writing, wondering if whether or not any of this would turn out to be worthwhile.  I have learned so much by the examples you have all set in your work and in your teaching.  And, to Susan Florio-Ruane, who is basking in the glow of retirement, you may not be formally on this committee, but your wisdom echoes through so much of what I do.  Also, to Deborah Brandt who so kindly agreed to join this merry band at the 11th hour as an informal, outside reader, this work will be so much better as a result of your feedback.  Jayne Lammers, though you get no real credit for all the many ways you helped me through this, know that I will never forget your support and how much my finishing is owed to your kindness.  Thanks, also, to Kyle Greenwalt for his guidance through my earlier years at MSU and to Avner Segall who has always been supportive of me and my work in a dozen different ways.  To   vii my dear friends and junior dissertation committee, Jon Wargo and Kati Macaluso, thanks for coming alongside me, entertaining my crazy ideas, and responding to insane texts in the middle of the night asking about which form goes where.  Also, a big thank you to the Graduate School at Michigan State University for providing funding for the completion of this dissertation.  My never-ending love to my parents Kate & Tom who told me that I could do anything and to my brothers Ryan, Michael, and Luke.  Thanks, especially, Mom, for all of the motivational emoji texts during the final weeks of my writing.  My thanks to Joshua & Andrea for their constant support and killer QE2 postcard to watch over me.  Thanks to the Arlingtons, Dohertys, Fletchers, Jarretts, and Smiths for their love and encouragement.    I want to thank Chris Fitzstevens for being my sherpa.  Without you, IÕm not quite sure if I wouldÕve made it.  And to my group, my second familyÑDenise, Jackie, Jess, Joe, Kim, Lynn, and SusanÑthanks for helping me talk and, when it was time, to finally write.  Lastly, I want to thank my husband Nathanael for the sandwiches, the tissues, the dance breaks, the tech support, the green tea lattes, the editing, the encouragement, the love, and for carrying me over the finish line.     viii TABLE OF CONTENTS  LIST OF FIGURES .......................................................................................................................... ix  CHAPTER 1 Ñ ORIENTATIONS .................................................................................................. 1  Introduction ................................................................................................................................ 1  Orienting (to) Literacy ............................................................................................................... 2  Literacy Epochs: The landscape ................................................................................................ 3   Literacy as autonomous. ..................................................................................................... 3   Literacy as a situated social practice. ................................................................................. 4    Sylvia Scribner and Michael Cole. .............................................................................. 5    Brian Street. ................................................................................................................. 5    Shirley Brice Heath. .................................................................................................... 7   Literacy as a participant in social worlds. .......................................................................... 9    Bruno Latour. .............................................................................................................. 9    Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari. .............................................................................. 10  Literacy Experience ................................................................................................................... 13   Defining literacy experience. .............................................................................................. 14  CHAPTER 2 Ñ COMING TO LANGUAGE ABOUT LITERACY EXPERIENCE: OR, ON     THEORYÉ. .................................................................................................................................. 16  Interlude 1 Ñ As once the wing‘d energy of delight ................................................................ 16  Introduction ................................................................................................................................ 16  Thinking/Feeling with Marina ................................................................................................... 17  Things-Bodies-Objects .............................................................................................................. 19  Relations .................................................................................................................................... 22  Emergence ................................................................................................................................. 25  Conclusion ................................................................................................................................. 29  CHAPTER 3 Ñ GAINING ACCESS TO LITERACY EXPERIENCE: OR, ON METHODS ...... 30  Interlude 2 Ñ Excerpt from Fieldnotes ..................................................................................... 30  A Brief Commentary on Methodology ...................................................................................... 32   On photography .................................................................................................................. 32   On art-making ..................................................................................................................... 33  Context  ..................................................................................................................................... 35  Research Design ........................................................................................................................ 38   Ongoing quasi-ethnographic classroom study. ................................................................... 40   Phase 1: Students created the ÒTexts and LivesÓ photoethnographic self-studies ............. 41   Phase 2: Focal student interviews. ...................................................................................... 44   Phase 3: PhotoLab meetings to map and discuss the corpus of photographs. .................... 46   Phase 4: ArtLab. ................................................................................................................. 49   Phase 5: My analysis. ......................................................................................................... 51    ix CHAPTER 4 Ñ THE EMERGENCE OF LITERACY EXPERIENCE(S): VIGNETTES OF DISCOVERY .................................................................................................................................... 53  Introduction ................................................................................................................................ 53  FilmÉÉ .................................................................................................................................... 55   Rolling ................................................................................................................................ 56   Processing ........................................................................................................................... 60   Printing ............................................................................................................................... 63   Conclusion .......................................................................................................................... 68  Coding Photographs ................................................................................................................... 68   Conclusion. ......................................................................................................................... 78  Talking about Text ..................................................................................................................... 79  Conclusion ................................................................................................................................. 86  CHAPTER 5 Ñ THE EXPLORATION OF LITERACY EXPERIENCE(S): PARTICIPANT ART-MAKING AS ANALYSIS AND INTERPRETATION ......................................................... 88  Introduction ................................................................................................................................ 88  SylviaÉ. .................................................................................................................................... 90   Three kids in the subway. ................................................................................................... 91   WegmanÕs city. ................................................................................................................... 95  Donovan ..................................................................................................................................... 99   The Jesus one. ..................................................................................................................... 101   Lolita. .................................................................................................................................. 105  KateÉÉ .................................................................................................................................... 110   Abandoned factory. ............................................................................................................ 113   Bedroom. ............................................................................................................................ 118  MiaÉÉ. .................................................................................................................................... 125   Rosie ................................................................................................................................... 126   Anton. ................................................................................................................................. 132  Conclusion ................................................................................................................................. 137   Discussion ........................................................................................................................... 137    Non-cognitive domains of literacies. ........................................................................... 137    Relations. ..................................................................................................................... 140    Places and objects. ....................................................................................................... 141    Time. ........................................................................................................................... 142   Implications. ....................................................................................................................... 142  CHAPTER 6 Ñ AN ENDING MEDITATION ............................................................................... 144  Interlude 3 Ñ Art Makes It All Ok ........................................................................................... 144  Recap and Refocus .................................................................................................................... 145  How Literacy Experience Matters ............................................................................................. 146   Embodied or emerging sense. ............................................................................................. 146   Things/Bodies/Objects. ...................................................................................................... 148  Why Literacy Experience Matters ............................................................................................. 151  Challenges and Limitations of Literacy Experience .................................................................. 152  Conclusion ................................................................................................................................. 154    x CHAPTER 7 Ñ POSTSCRIPT: AN ENGAGEMENT WITH LITERACY EXPERIENCES THROUGH RESEARCHER ART-MAKING ................................................................................. 155  EPILOGUE Ñ A GRIEF OBSERVED ........................................................................................... 160  APPENDICES .................................................................................................................................. 163  APPENDIX A: TEXTS & LIVES ASSIGNMENT SHEET .................................................... 164  APPENDIX B: POST-PROJECT INTERVIEW PROTOCO FOR FOCAL STUDENTS ....... 167  APPENDIX C: PHOTOLAB POST-CODING DISCUSSION PROTOCOL .......................... 168  REFERENCES ................................................................................................................................. 170 !!  xi LIST OF FIGURES   Figure 1: Marina Abramovi!, The Artist is Present, 2010, Museum of Modern Art, New York.  Photo by Andrew Russeth.  Licensed under Creative Commons.  ............................................... 19  Figure 2: Photo B/C/D course, Lakeside High School, Fall 2014. ............................................... 38  Figure 3: Summary of MethodsÑphases in green are those that generated a bulk of the data discussed in this work. .................................................................................................................. 40  Figure 4: Focal participantsÕ self-portraits at the start of the study, from left to rightÑSylvia, 16, junior; Donovan, 17, senior; Mia, 17, senior; and Kate, 16 junior. .............................................. 46  Figure 5: Interpreting Visual Data diagram, adapted (Rose, 2012, p. 21). ................................... 47  Figure 6:  Mia d”coupaging one of her focal photographs onto a piece of wood. ........................ 50  Figure 7: leftÑMs. McCurryÕs illustrated equipment list for rolling film; middleÑtanks & reels used in rolling; rightÑclose up of reels. ....................................................................................... 56  Figure 8: Donovan rolling film with Elli on the left and Bronwyn on the right.  Charlie is in the bottom-left foreground.  They are all using the black bag method. .............................................. 58  Figure 9: Processing film.  TopÑmeasuring chemicals and water; middleÑAria agitating her canister of film; bottomÑthe whole crowd watching clocks during an agitation rest. ................ 60  Figure 10:  The darkroom.  TopÑenlarger stations where the negative is printed on paper; bottomÑchemical ÔtroughÕ where the print is developed and fixed onto the paper. ................... 65  Figure 11: The coding scheme the students designed for the portrait photographs. ..................... 70  Figure 12: The coding scheme the students designed for the still life photographs. .................... 77  Figure 13: SylviaÕs subway tunnel art piece with the slides on top of the photo (left) and above the photo (right). ........................................................................................................................... 91  Figure 14: SylviaÕs Wegmans art piece with the slides on top of the photo (left) and above the photo (right). ................................................................................................................................. 95  Figure 15: A photograph of the Kodak Tower by Viktor Nagornyy.  Licensed under Creative Commons. ..................................................................................................................................... 98  Figure 16: DonovanÕs Jesus art piece with the slides on top of the photo (left) and above the photo (right). ............................................................................................................................... 101    xii Figure 17: DonovanÕs Lolita art piece with the slides on top of the photo (left) and above the photo (right). ............................................................................................................................... 105  Figure 18: A screen shot of DonovanÕs post on Instagram of the 6x6 piece he thought subconsciously inspired him. ...................................................................................................... 109  Figure 19: KateÕs factory art piece with the slides on top of the photo and the cover page on the side (top) and the plain photo (bottom). ...................................................................................... 112  Figure 20: KateÕs bedroom art piece with the slides on top of the photo (left) and above the photo (right). ......................................................................................................................................... 118  Figure 21: MiaÕs Rosie art piece with the slides on top of the photo (left) and above the photo (right). ......................................................................................................................................... 126  Figure 22: Vincent van GoghÕs Evening Landscape with Rising Moon, 1889. ......................... 130  Figure 23: MiaÕs Anton art piece with the slides on top of the photo (left) and above the photo (right). ......................................................................................................................................... 132  Figure 24: A selection of possible literacy experiences had by each artist. ............................... 139  Figure 25:  Sylvia modeling the shirt she designed for LHSÕs ArtsFest 2016. .......................... 144  Figure 26: Reference image for painting. ................................................................................... 155  Figure 27: The studentsÕ selfies after being pixelated in PhotoShop. ......................................... 156  Figure 28: Sylvia, Donovan, Mia, & Kate Selfie Pixel Portrait by Amanda Smith. .................. 159  Figure 29: Kate. .......................................................................................................................... 162      1 CHAPTER 1 Ñ ORIENTATIONS Introduction The ethnographic turn in research on literacy asked the field to consider the contexts within which literacy practices occur rather than to think of reading and writing as autonomous which was (and, in many ways, remains) the dominant framing (Goody & Watt, 1963).  This turn produced essential and iconic work (e.g. Scribner & Cole, 1981; Heath, 1983; Street, 1984) whose impact on the fieldÕs understanding of the social nature of literacy cannot be overstated.  It is now a near universal assumption within the academy that literacies occur within ecologies of contexts.  As Brandt and Clinton note, Ò[c]alling literacy a situated social practice has become something of an orthodoxy in literacy research todayÓ, (2002, p. 337).  And, yet, tracing these contexts presents a bit of a ÒmuddleÓ (Bateson, 1972, p. 3) as the evolution of communication continually shifts the conceptual ground.  The definitions of ÒsituatedÓ, ÒsocialÓ, and ÒpracticeÓ have become increasingly malleable, complicating the notion of literacy as a product of contexts.  One idea that seems to have gained some purchase in recent years is that literacies are participants in contexts rather than products of contexts (Brandt & Clinton, 2002, p. 338).  This has been useful in opening up the possibility to follow the ways in which literacies participate in and interact with contexts, which helps to account for the movement and flow of literacies as they participate in social life.  This move has opened up an expanded space for researchers to consider all of the other things that might participate with literacies in everyday life.  This work enters into that expanded space by examining the ways that affect, people, objects, and the influence of popular culture or, as one student researcher named it, the zeitgeist, work together in the being and doing of literacies in the everyday life of a group of suburban teenagers.  What emerges is not only a ÒcollageÓ (Fendler, 2013, p. 5) of the literate lives of four young people,   2 but also a meditation on how we approach the study of such lives.  I argue that the current move towards considering literacies to be participants in social life necessitates a commensurate change in the unit of analysis of research on literacies and the methodological and theoretical apparatus used to approach such research. Orienting (to) Literacy To put it plainly, the way we orient ourselves to something has dramatic consequences for our relationship to/with said thing.  Sarah Ahmed (2010) suggests: Orientations thus ÒmatterÓ in both senses of the word Òmatter.Ó First, orientations matter in the simple sense that orientations are significant and important. To be oriented in a certain way is how certain things come to be significant, come to be objects for me. É Orientations also matter in the second sense of being about physical or corporeal substance. Orientations shape the corporeal substance of bodies and whatever occupies space. Orientations affect how subjects and objects materialize or come to take shape in the way that they do. (p. 235) How a researcher is oriented to literacy matters a great deal.  This orientation dictates what subjects and objects are able to be seen and understood in the context of research and is therefore at the very heart of any study.  In the following section, I will review the prevailing ways that the field has oriented itself to literacy from autonomous views of literacy to literacies as situated social practices and the latest move towards thinking of literacies as participants in contexts.  I will consider the ways in which each orientation to/of literacy disciplines the research gaze and, to varying degrees, dictates what is able to be seen or accessed through research.  I then argue that orienting to literacies as participants in social contexts requires a reorientation towards available units of analyses in the research of literacies to what I call literacy experiences.    3 I end by describing literacy experiences and gesture towards why they matter for those that have them and those that might study them. Literacy Epochs: The landscape Literacy as autonomous.  As a deeply problematic consequence of colonialism/imperialism, the prevailing definition of literacy has been the ability to read and write printed words.  This definition of literacy is discouragingly and stubbornly sedimented in popular discourse and is likely to be the one given if a person-on-the-street was asked to describe literacy.  On this framing, literacy is a cognitive technology made up of specific skills interpreting and creating written text.  Social-evolutionists used these skills as a determining factor in what peoples, cultures, and countries were considered to be ÒcivilizedÓ as a tool to maintain and perpetuate hierarchical systems intent on elevating the few and dominating the many.  This view of literacy, in the hands of the social-evolutionary project, made a perfect rationaleÑtaking ÒtrueÓ learning to the ÒuncivilizedÓÑfor colonialism/imperialism that helped to obfuscate the actual goal of acquiring more power and money for the White upperclasses.  And, since these imperialistic views of literacy began, they have continued to be a tool of subjugation across the globe where the ability to interpret and produce the printed word has stood as a tidy gatekeeper between those in power and those kept from power.   Well into the twentieth century, arguments were still being made that literacy preceded ÒrealÓ thinkingÑthat literacy begat history and science, and, the general ability for rationality of any type.  Goody and Watt (1963) suggested that there was a compelling argument to be made that there was a Òcausal connection between writing and logicÓ (p. 330).  They argued that writing actually changed the way the brain works such that thinking became more organized and systematic.  More than a decade later, Olson (1977) maintained this same thesis and made the   4 bold claim that, Ò[t]he faculty of language stands at the center of our conception of mankind; speech makes us human and literacy makes us civilized,Ó (p. 257).  Arguments that conflated civility with particular, discrete skills like reading and writing non-pictographic words were consistently dismantled and disproven, with L”vi-Strauss (1966) leading the charge from the field of anthropology and many following thereafter.  However, reverberations of this attitude towards literacy are still felt acutely by many communities.  Now that more people have access to building skills in reading and writing, there is a demand for that reading and writing to take particular forms.  Despite the changing demographics of the U.S., the ability to read and write in English is the only literacy that some will affirm.  And, certainly, the only English variant that ÒcountsÓ is Dominant American English.  These stances remain widespread in spite of overwhelming research that dispels them.  Research that is oriented towards this autonomous view of literacy necessarily has a very narrow scope.  If literacy is made up of discrete acts of reading and writing printed words, than those acts are the only objects upon which research might be focused.  Such research is limited and exclusive, having the ability to see and consider fewer people, events, practices, things, and experiences as participating in literacy. Literacy as a situated social practice.  As previously noted, ethnographic research done in the second half of the 20th century sought to dispel the myth of reading and writing as autonomous.  Interdisciplinary work done in psychology, anthropology, and education began to pay close attention to the contexts in which reading, writing, and talk occurred, which helped to illuminate the social nature of literacy.  This work has formed the basis for all sociocultural research on literacies produced since and has had such an dramatic impact on the study, teaching, and learning of literacies that it is virtually impossible to give it too much credit.  "This   5 pluralistic stance on literacy responds to, and resists, a still-dominant psychological perspective often assumed for purposes of schooling: that literacy is a singular, linear, developmental process similarly experienced by all individuals, as well as by all cultures progressing toward modernity," (Juzwik, et. al., in press). Sylvia Scribner and Michael Cole.  Scribner and Cole approached the study of literacy from the field of psychology.  In their landmark study on the Vai people of Liberia (1981a), Scribner and Cole demonstrated that the Vai1 mobilized different literacies and languages for different social purposes.  The Vai were unique in that they regularly made use of three different written scripts in their everyday lives, one of which they created.  Vai script had been in use for over 150 years at the time of Scribner and ColeÕs study.  It was learned at home and in the community, with the Vai using it in day-to-day living.  English was learned in state-sponsored schools and Arabic was learned for religious practices.  The means of acquisition and the ways in which the scripts were used provided a rich research context to test autonomous theories about literacy.  Scribner and Cole noted, Ò[t]he fact that literacy is acquired in this society without formal schooling and that literates and nonliterates [sic] share common material and social conditions allows for a more direct test of the relationship between literacy and thinking than is possible in our own society,Ó (1981b, p.62).  What Scribner and Cole discovered was that complex sociocultural domains play a large role in the ways that people communicate, and, in relation to the Vai specifically, with the ways that they learned and used various symbol systems.  Scribner and Cole also discovered that there was no correlation between the VaiÕs success in cognitive tests and whether or not they could read or write particular scripts.  Scribner and ColeÕs findings were ground-breaking at the time and they stated plainly, Òwe found no evidence of                                                              1 It is worth noting that Scribner & ColeÕs sample is made up of almost entirely men as they found that it seemed women did not generally learn a script and, ultimately, they noted, Òwe can only report and not account for the male-restricted nature of schooling and literacy in Vai society,Ó (1981a, p. 62).   6 marked differences in performance on logical and classificatory tasks between non-school literates and nonliterates [sic],Ó (1981b, p. 66). Brian Street.  Around the same time that Scribner and Cole were in Liberia, Brian Street was conducting anthropological research in Iranian villages around the city of Mashad.  Street was interested in the notion, held by many in the city, that people in the villages were ÔilliterateÕ which stood in stark opposition to his experience of living in the villages and seeing an array of what he understood to be literate behaviors.  Villagers2 variously learned Farsi, through public schools and what Street called school literacy, and Arabic, learned through the study of the QurÕan or maktab literacy as Street named it.  He observed that, when the local economies grew and commerce expanded beyond the borders of individual villages, Arabic was used for business rather than Farsi.  Street found that, Ò[t]hose with QurÕanic literacy had the status and authority within the village to carry on these commercial practices, whilst those trained in the State school were seen to be oriented outwards and lacked the integral relations to everyday village life that underpinned the trust necessary for such transactions,Ó (2013, p. 2).  His research demonstrated that literacy is always tied to ideologies and identities, occurring in complex, particular social contexts.  Literacy is never neutral and is always more than a discrete cognitive act.  One might have hypothesized that Mashad villagers would use Farsi for commercial endeavors as it was connected already to state-sponsored activity.  And, if literacy was nothing more than a set of decontextualized tools or cognitive skills, then perhaps that is precisely what the villagers would have done.  However, public schooling was associated with modernization and, therefore, so was Farsi; whereas maktab literacy and the use of Arabic grew out of religious learning and practice extending back generations.  When it came time for a language to be used for an emerging                                                              2 Again, in the context of StreetÕs study, an overwhelming majority of those that learned to recite, read, and/or write Arabic were men.   7 context, what Street named commercial literacy, Arabic naturally evolved as those that were taught the QurÕan were held in a higher regard than those taught in state schools.  Thus, Arabic was used in commerce as lists were made, crates were labeled, and checks were written.  And though not everyone in the villages learned to read and write Arabic, they did learn a wide variety of literacy skills and textual features through their business dealings.  This led Street to consider literacy at the level of what he named literacy practices in order to account for literacy skills and interactions that were not strictly reading or writing symbols on a page.  He found that though, Ò[t]he social group which shared perceptions and uses of literacy in the village may not have all exhibited comparable levels or kinds of skills but they did share a common ideology and a common understanding of the ÔmeaningsÕ of that literacy,Ó (1984, p. 176).          Shirley Brice Heath.  Concurrently, Shirley Brice Heath was studying literacy in the Piedmont Carolinas in the United States in communities she named Trackton, Roadville, and ÒmainstreamersÓ (1984, p. 236) who live in town.  Trackton was made up of working-class African-Americans, Roadville was comprised of working-class Whites; and townspeople were middle-class families of both races.  Heath was interested in the ways that children from each of these communities both learned and made use of talk, reading, and writing.  Her study attended to how literacies were acquired and used differently within and across race, socioeconomic status, sex, and age, in and between each community.  Learning and using literacies was embedded in childrenÕs everyday lives and socialization into their families and communities.  Each community had different values for and aims of using talk and texts which was reflected in childrenÕs literacy learning.  As Heath studied the interactions between parents and children, she focused her attention on literacy events (1984, p. 386) where textual production or interpretation was a vital element.  She found that, while all children learned and used literacies in their   8 communities, the kind of talk, reading, and writing reified in and through school mapped more directly onto that of the wealthier townspeople.  Additionally, by comparing the communities to one another, Heath was able to demonstrate the complex way that indexes of difference layer and combine to produce rich contexts.  In some instances, race seemed to be the common thread that produced similar events in different communities; in others, socioeconomic status produced the connection; in yet others, sex seemed to determine common events.  These findings further illustrated the ways in which literacy is not autonomous and is woven together with and produced by social worlds. Research conducted with a sociocultural orientation towards literacy has the potential for a much wider scope of inquiry.  The work of Scribner and Cole, Street, and Heath provided the language for taking up literacy research with literacy events and/or literacy practices as units of analysis.  Literacy events allow researchers to examine moments in which texts are involved in human sense-making enterprises and literacy practices allow researchers to examine the skills, abilities, and dispositions used in such events.  Researchers can pursue depth and breadth of description with either events or practices with many ways to focus and/or pivot their gaze.  One might examine a singular type of event in one context over a period of time (e.g. Hughes Elementary School childrenÕs recitation of double-dutch rhymes on the playground over the course of a school year) or a variety of events in one context over a period of time (e.g. All playground talk at Hughes Elementary School over the course of a school year).  Or, one might examine an event or a variety of events across different contexts (e.g. childrenÕs recitation of double-dutch rhymes on playgrounds at 10 elementary schools in New York, Chicago, and Los Angeles; or all playground talk at 10 elementary schools in New York, Chicago, and Los Angeles).  Similarly, a researcher could look closely at one practice (e.g. composing the text of   9 an Instagram post) in one or many places.  Researchers might follow a particular young person to learn about a variety of events or practices that s/he participates in; or, a researcher might follow a particular practice to see where and when it happens, and with whom.  There are countless ways to frame research questions around literacy events and literacy practices as evidenced by the vast majority of work conducted since orienting to literacy as a situated social practice.  However, insofar as events are often bound by time and space; and, practices are bound to observable actions, there are things that researchers do not have access to in studies framed with these units of analysis.                                                     Literacy as a participant in social worlds.  For this reason, scholars have increasingly sought ways to orient to literacies as they occur in the flow of everyday life, within and between contexts, in order to gain access to that which had previously been difficult or impossible to see with sociocultural theories and methods.  A shift towards conceptualizing literacies as participants in social worlds rather than simply products of social worlds has been particularly generative.  This conceptualization has been useful in opening up the possibility to consider what things might come together, function, and break apart in the being and doing of literacies.  As such, researchers have been able to map relations and interactions or trace things like affects, power, and agency between all of the participants in literacies.  This helps to account for the movement and flow of literacies as they participate in social life whether in specific, liminal, or hybrid places.  This move has also laid the groundwork for researchers to consider expanding their focus, beyond context and beyond the human subject, to what other things might participate with reading, writing, and language in the being and doing of literacy. Bruno Latour.  One productive line of inquiry has been through the use of Bruno LatourÕs Actor Network Theory (nicely packaged in the 2005 volume Reassembling the Social).    10 Latour provides the theoretical undergirding necessary for thinking of how a variety of things, what he calls actants participate in social life and the ÒassociationsÓ (2005, p. 5) that these actants have with one another.  Brandt and Clinton (2002) suggest that Actor Network Theory might offer an approach to literacy studies that breaks out of an over-reliance on place-based understandings of contexts and the role contexts play in literacies.  Using Latour, Brandt and Clinton (2002) call for deeper consideration of the objects that are a part of literacy practices rather than sole focus being placed on human agency (p. 346).  They suggest that Ò[f]iguring out what things are doing with people in a setting becomes as important as figuring out what people are doing with things in a settingÓ, (Brandt & Clinton, 2002, p. 348).  Tracing the actants, both humans and things, that are associated in a moment of reading, writing, or language use serves to break out of the confines of context alone and allows for the illumination of Òliteracy-in-actionÓ (Brandt & Clinton, 2002, p. 349).  Brandt and Clinton offer literacy-in-action as a new unit of analysis for literacy studies and ask us to reorient our research gaze to studying associations rather than seemingly stable, static events.  Leander and Lovvorn (2006) join Brandt and Clinton by similarly using Latour and Actor Network Theory to forward the concept of Òliteracy networksÓ (p. 293).  In their study, Leander and Lovvorn (2006) follow one young man, Brian, and trace his participation in school classrooms and at his home as he plays an online, multiplayer video game.  By taking up the notion of a network, Leander and Lovvorn (2006) are able to trace the relationships and associations between Brian, his literacies, the physical and online spaces he inhabits, his various identities, and the textual objects he creates and encounters.  This analysis allows them to consider how all of these actants join, function together, produce affects/effects, then break apart and reconfigure into new networks.  Movement is built into the analysis and provides opportunities to account for BrianÕs literacy networks across very different   11 places.  It also allows for attention to be paid to the objects involved in BrianÕs literacy network and the impact these objects have on him and his reading, writing, and language use. Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari.  Another seemingly generative line of inquiry into thinking of literacy as a participant in social worlds has been through the use of Deleuze and GuattariÕs (1987/2005) concept of the rhizome.  ÒA rhizome has no beginning or end; it is always in the middle, between things, interbeing, intermezzo.  É[T]he fabric of the rhizome is the conjunction, ÔandÉandÉandÉÕÓ (Deleuze & Guattari, 1987/2005, p. 25).  This is set up as antithetical to the construction of a tree that grows in a linear way beginning with roots through to branches then to leaves.  The rhizome is necessarily multiple, with no fixed Òpoints or positionsÓ (Deleuze & Guattari, 1987/2005, p. 8) and many ways in, out, and through.  ÒA rhizome ceaselessly establishes connections between semiotic chainsÓ (p. 17) in ways that are surprising and prize difference.  Using the rhizome to understand the relationships within literacies makes visible the instability of categories when thinking about contexts, texts, and practices.  Leander and Boldt (2012) undertake a rhizoanalysis to examine 10-year-old LeeÕs engagement with manga through reading, the movement of his body, conversations, enactments, and other improvisations.  Through their study of Lee, Leander and Boldt (2012) assert that we should understand Òliteracy-related activity not as projected toward some textual end point but as living its life in the ongoing present, forming relations and connectionsÉin often unexpected waysÓ (p. 26).  Through this rhizoanalysis, we are able to see the way that unexpected things join up with Lee and his reading of manga to produce affects.  For instance, at one point in LeeÕs reading he jumps up, searches his closet, and puts on a kimono that was part of his Halloween costume of a manga character which ends up causing some trouble when a friend shows up to play and must participate without a costume.  It seems that Ò[t]he advantage to the kimono-  12 sword-fighter in confidence, intensity, and pleasure is self-evident to the boys,Ó ( Leander & Boldt, 2012, p. 36).  LeeÕs reading, the kimono, the swords, and the play all join together in this literacy rhizome and produce complicated affects and felt emotions in the boys. Research oriented towards literacy as a participant in social worlds allows researchers to study relationships, interactions, and the non-cognitive domains of literacy that were previously inaccessible, thus further broadening the scope of what can been seen in a study of literacies.  As this orientation to literacy privileges connections and interactions, new ways to approach research have been suggested that similarly correspond.  As noted above, Brandt and Clinton (2002) suggested literacy-in-action as a new unit of analysis for studies that seek to map the relationships that literacies have with other things, particularly when using LatourÕs Actor Network Theory.  Literacy-in-action would give researchers the ability to capture the movement and flow of literacy as it occurs.  Leander has played with units of analysis in his work, using literacy networks as a new option in his study with Lovvorn (2006) and the rhizome in his study with Boldt (2012).  These units of analysis both offer the ability to capture the nature of relationships between things in the being and doing of literacies, though the term networks evokes images of machines and rhizomes are necessarily more organic.  These units of analysis are not necessarily mutually exclusive from those used in studies that have sociocultural orientations to literacies.  A researcher might study, to return to a previous example, Hughes Elementary SchoolÕs children reciting double-dutch rhymes on the playground; however, if this researcher approached the project with an orientation towards literacy as a participant in social worlds, she might employ methods that allow her to trace the ways that the rhymes participate with moving bodies; the alternating opening and closing of the rope; the clip-CLAP sound of the rope; the vocal rhythm of the rhyme; the current state of the relationship between the twirler and   13 the jumper; the displacement of air as the rope cuts through space; the affective intensity produced through the whole scene as experienced by spectators, just to name a few.  And, while units of analysis like literacy-in-action, literacy networks, and literacy rhizomes have provided researchers with greater theoretical purchase for studying literacy from a literacy-as-participant orientation, these are not wholly adequate for providing access to the full range of relationships and participants made possible by such an orientation. Literacy Experience Orienting to literacy as a participant in social worlds requires a commensurate evolution in the way that researchers orient to the study of the being and doing of literacies through units of analysis.  Current units of analysis used in literacy research are too limiting for this new orientation and allow some of the participants in literacies to remain obscured.  Though units of analysis are but one part of any research enterprise, they dramatically impact what theoretical and methodological apparatus might be mobilized and therefore lie at the very heart of any study.  Therefore, if a unit of analysis does not provide adequate access to the phenomenon under consideration, then the potential power of the theory is diminished and the methods of data collection may be unnecessarily restrictive.  As noted above, literacy events are too bound by space and time and literacy practices are too bound to observable happenings.  Literacy-in-action certainly provides access to and accentuates the dynamic nature of literacies as they move in and through everyday life.  And yet, this unit of analysis has the potential to exclude literacies and participants in literacies that might not be easily gerunded.3  Likewise, making use of literacy networks or literacy rhizomes as units of analysis provide access to and accentuate the relationships between participants in literacies.  However, these units of analysis make it challenging to map relations that are ephemeral, nonsensical, or fractured across different                                                              3 I made up this word and though it is kind of awful, it seemed to me to say just what I wanted to say here.   14 timescales.  This work offers a unit of analysis that is commensurate with an orientation towards literacy as a participant in social worlds and provides a more expansive grounding that allows new theories to exert their full power and a wide range of methods to be utilized in literacy research.  Defining literacy experience.   I am conceptualizing literacy experience as an emergence of sense when people read and write the world through relationships with (im)material texts in everyday life.  Though some of what I mean by the above will continue to be made clear as this work continues, I will make a start by providing a bit of explication about the definition.  I ground literacy experience in the inheritance of Elliot EisnerÕs (1991) definition of literacy, Ò[b]ecause meaning is the core of literacy, we can (and I believe we ought to) conceive of literacy in terms broader than is customary.  Literacy can be conceived of as the ability to decode or encode meaning in any of the social forms through which meaning is conveyed,Ó (p. 120).  Eisner helped to move the field beyond conceptions of literacy as only pertaining to the written word into the realm of interpreting meaning.  He suggested that this meaning could exist is a variety of social forms and that literacy was the ability to create and understand these meanings.  With the conceptualization of literacy experiences, much of EisnerÕs thinking about literacy remains with a few notable departures.    First, I relocate literacy to the realm of sense rather than in meaning.  Sense encompasses meaning and can be used as a synonym for meaning.  However, sense also encompasses something beyond and/or before meaning that can entail pre-conscious affective intensities as well as the sensual or thinking with the body.  With literacy experiences, either definition of sense is thinkable and could be used to frame a study.  I also foreground the notion of   15 emergence4 to account for the ways that sense might take shape on pre- or sub-conscious levels.    Second, I shift from the notions of decoding and encoding to reading and writing.  This might seem like a regression, but, I specifically suggest that it is reading and writing the world rather than simply the word.  By this, I aim to highlight the idea that meaning does not exist, preformed and waiting out in the world to be discovered and decoded or encoded.  Rather, meaning is created, read, and written through sets of relations5.  These relations can occur across varying timescales of past/present/future as well as span any number of spaces and places that might be real, online, or imagined.  Third, I extend EisnerÕs multiplicity of meaning to a wide variety of texts, both material and immaterial.  Considering that sense emerges through sets of relations, there is no way to predict what things, bodies, and objects6 might take part in such sense-making relationships.  Therefore, it is necessary to account for texts of all kinds when conceptualizing literacy experiences.    Finally, as more of an affirmation rather than a disjunction, just as Eisner extends literacy out into social worlds, I also place literacy experience in everyday life.  This move opens up the possibility that everyone is somewhere in the process of doing literacies in the course of their everyday lives.  It is this that suggests an ontological view of literacies, where being literate is simply a part of being human.                                                                            4 Emergence is dealt with in great detail in Chapter 2. 5 The concept of meaning made in sets of relations is also discussed in Chapter 2. 6 Again, things-bodies-objects are explained in Chapter 2.!  16 CHAPTER 2 Ñ COMING TO LANGUAGE ABOUT LITERACY EXPERIENCE: OR, ON THEORY Interlude 1 Ð As once the wing‘d energy of delight  To work with Things in the indescribable relationship is not too hard for us; the pattern grows more intricate and subtle, and being swept along is not enough.  Take your practiced powers and stretch them out until they span the chasm between two contradictionsÉ  Rainer Maria Rilke Introduction  Opening the unit of analysis for the study of literacies to literacy experiences allows theoretical experimentation to create a broader conceptual and linguistic framework for understanding the widely varying and ever shifting participants in the doing of literacies in everyday life.  For this study, I use Non-Representational Theory (NRT) as a filter through which I develop concepts and find language to describe the literacy experiences that emerged and were studied by the group of student researchers with whom I worked.  NRT evolved in the field of human geography in the United Kingdom in the early 2000s and has been gaining traction in disciplines across the social sciences since.  As Non-Representational Theory is named as an antithesis, let me begin with a clarification.  NRT, as a theoretical project, is not interested in eradicating the representational or suggesting that representation does not exist or is not, in its way, useful.  As Dewsbury (2010) suggests, ÒThe representational is not the enemy,Ó (p. 322).  However, NRT proposes that the representational is but one small player in humansÕ day-to-day existence.  NRT would hold that everything else, the non-representational or, as Lorimer (2005) prefers, the Òmore-than-  17 representationalÓ (p. 84) actually makes up the larger part of everyday life.  Lorimer (2005) goes on to sum up the Òmore-thanÓ or the everything else thusly: The focus falls on how life takes shape and gains expression in shared experiences, everyday routines, fleeting encounters, embodied movements, precognitive triggers, practical skills, affective intensities, enduring urges, unexceptional interactions and sensuous dispositions. (p. 84) How all of these things emerge, come together, function together, produce affective intensities7, and break apart is at the heart of NRT work.  This makes NRT particularly compelling as a filter through which to view literacy experiences.  To focus my discussion of NRT, I will compress some of the core tenets of the theory8 and present those ideas that are most useful to this work: diffused agency between things-bodies-objects, relationality, and emergence. Thinking/Feeling with Marina  To be helpful and, I suppose, to be slightly contrary, I offer a heuristic for thinking through NRT in the form of one of Marina Abramovi!Õs performance art pieces.  Perhaps herein lies what Dewsbury (2010) calls the Òdouble-bind of representational and non-representational modes of thoughtÓ (p. 322): where I offer a representation to ensure the non-representational is simultaneously thinkable and sensuous.  In any case, I believe thinking/feeling with Marina will be useful in helping to frame NRT.  I also used this heuristic with the student researchers in the study as a way to talk about meaning so it seemed only appropriate to do the same here.                                                              7 I will pause here, for a moment, to quickly define the term affect as it is a word that seems to be used in a variety of ways.  Affect is often thought to be a synonym for something like emotion or feeling.  For proponents of NRT, affect is a pre-conscious intensity experienced before or outside of the interpretation of these intensities through nesting/filtering them in/through culture, history, social worlds, politics, and spaces to be understood as emotions, thoughts, or feelings. In NRT, affects may be produced and circulated by all manner of things, not just human subjects.   8 For a thoroughgoing discussion of the tenets of NRT, see the opening chapter of Nigel ThriftÕs (2008) Non-Representational Theory: Space | politics | affect, pp. 1-26.!  18  In 2010 the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York put on a retrospective of performance artist Marina Abramovi!Õs work titled The Artist is Present9.  Young artists, under Abramovi!Õs tutelage, re-performed some of her most iconic work and Marina herself performed a new work for which the exhibit was named (see Figure 2.1).  Throughout the entirety of the three months the exhibit ran, Abramovi! was physically present at MoMA during opening hours which amounted to something like 8 hours a day.  During these hours, she sat in a chair in the center of the exhibit with an empty chair facing her.  Anyone could sit silently in the chair across from Abramovi! for any length of time that s/he wished.  Abramovi! would stare, expressionless, directly into the eyes of whoever was across from her.  Some people sat for minutes, others for hours and many were brought to tears10.   It is important to acknowledge the dramatic limitations of a photograph or even a video to convey all of what made up Abramovi!Õs piece.  It is an act of the imagination to consider even some of the participants in the relations that made up the piece.  However, the photograph at least is suggestive and may be used to prompt such imagination.  Even these imaginaries will help to provide a means of focus in my discussion of NRT.  As I move through a description of how NRT treats things-bodies-objects, relationality, and emergence, I will refer to Abramovi!Õs piece as a touchstone or, perhaps, a springboard for thinking with NRT.                                                                   9!"#!$%&'#($!)#($!*+#,-!-./0!$%./+/-!+$1#23!-.$!&.#-#4(*&.!+$'#56!7/0/-!.--&899555:)#)*:#(49/2-$(*;-/7$09$%./+/-/#209<=>=9)*(/2**+(*)#7/;9/23$%:.-)'!#(!-#!7/$5!-.$!-(*/'$(!?#(!-.$!3#;,)$2-*(1!+*0$3!#2!-.$!$%./+/-6!7/0/-!.--&899)*(/2*?/'):;#)97/$5@-(*/'$(!!10!A0!$7/3$2;$3!+1!-.$!B*(/2*!A+(*)#7/C!B*3$!B$!D(1!",)+'(!E.--&899)*(/2**+(*)#7/;)*3$)$;(1:-,)+'(:;#)F!&#&,'*-$3!5/-.!/)*4$0!-*G$2!?(#)!*!&.#-#4(*&.$(!#7$(!A+(*)#7/CH0!0.#,'3$(:!  19   Figure 1: Marina Abramovi!, The Artist is Present, 2010, Museum of Modern Art, New York.  Photo by Andrew Russeth.  Licensed under Creative Commons.    Things-Bodies-Objects   One of the essential features of NRT is the expansive way that it views the participants in everyday life.  Thrift (2008) notes, NRT Òhas always given equal weight to the vast spillage of thingsÓ (p. 9, emphasis in original).  As such, humans are not necessarily privileged as the center from which all meaningful relations emanate.  Rather, humans are but one element in any given set of relations of which they are a part.  NRT provides a grammar for making the other things that are participating in those relations visible by Òpositing that all things exist on the same epistemological planeÓ (Fendler, 2013, p. 2).  In fact, many proponents of NRT even dissolve the distinction made between humanness and thingness.  Thrift (2008) says, ÒI do not want to count the body as separate from the thing world,Ó (p. 10).  Doing so diminishes the powerful relations   20 between bodies and things that help to create and evolve them both.  Bennett (2010) takes this notion a step further, suggesting that Òhuman being and thinghood overlap, the extent to which the us and the it slip-slide into each other.  One moral of the story is that we are also nonhuman and that things, too, are vital players in the world,Ó (p.4).   Flattening the differences between the agential power of humans and things creates an opportunity to study the relations between all of the things participating in any given moment.  And though attending to the thinghood of humans might seem to jeopardize the humanity of humans, it does not.  Rather, it provokes the consideration of the non-cognitive dimensions of being a human and the way we often move, act, and adapt in the world without reflection.  Consideration of these dimensions does not diminish the importance of the willful, thinking, planning, mindful, thoughtful ways that humans navigate the world.  In fact, it provides new ways to look at what thinking entails.  Using NRT as a filter, Carolan (2008) argues that Òmind is body; consciousness is corporeal; thinking is sensuous,Ó (p. 409).  NRT, then, in a move that dissolves the Cartesian split between mind and body, attributes thinking to the movements and actions of the body wherein thinking is not relegated to one set of relations that must include particular mental states and intentionality.  In this model, things-bodies-objects can enter into an infinite number of dynamic, thinking relations unbound by consciousness.  So, as I inhale and exhale, my body is thinking through action, though I am not willfully choosing to breathe.  As such, thinking Òlies in the body, understood not as a fixed residence for ÔmindÕ but as a dynamic trajectory by which we learn to register and become sensitive to what the world is made of,Ó (Thrift, 2004, p. 90).  Similarly, considering the humanness of things and objects provides an opportunity to consider their power and how they might exert themselves in everyday relations.  These things   21 may be tangible, material objects or they might be immaterial and even ephemeral things like a memory or a smell.  NRT suggests that such objects and things (and a whole host of others, of course) can create affective intensities as a result of their relations with other things just as humans can.  As Deleuze (1994) suggested, Òsomething in the world forces us to think,Ó (p. 154).  Humans are pushed and pulled by the forces produced by/through all of the things with which they come into contact. If these objects and things are understood as possessing a sort of humanness, then these forces are more easily seen and therefore studied as a vital part of everyday relations.    Using Abramovi!Õs piece as a tool to think with, we might imagine some of the things-bodies-objects that are suggested in the photograph.  These imaginings give rise to any number of questions that might be investigated through research and, I suggest, offer a much broader range of study than to simply focus on the relations between the humans11.  Speaking of the humans, I would venture to say that most social scientists would immediately take note of Abramovi!, the man sitting across from her, and the crowd behind them.  Those same scientists might also think about the context in which this is all taking place, both in terms of the literal room as well as the museum and the broader sociopolitical, historical context.  In this photograph, the crowd does not seem particularly diverse across the spectrum of race, ethnicity, or age.  Who goes to MoMA?  For whom was this piece made?  And while social scientists might think these and any number of other questions, NRT might suggest that all of those questions are actually present and active in the midst of the pieceÑexerting their weight on Abramovi! and everyone else, whether or not they are aware.                                                                11!I am assuming that most educational researchers would focus on the relations between humans and, perhaps, the context(s) in which those humans might be.!  22 NRT would also allow us to notice the table and chairs and wonder how they are impacting the piece?  Those chairs seem a bit strange and, with close inspection, a cushion is visible under MarinaÑare their bodies uncomfortable and how might that discomfort impact their experience in this moment?  Might the man get up more quickly because he is physically uncomfortable?  Did someone make the chairs that way so that people would be disinclined to sit for too long?  Also, the table12 is creating a barrier between Abramovi! and the man.  Does that distance impact the experience?  Another material object in the photograph is the water bottle.  When does she drink?  Does she get up to use the restroom?  And on we might go, considering all of the things in the room in how they are participating in this moment between Marina and the man:  her dress, his glasses, each of their memories, their physical and emotional feelings, the temperature, the paint the walls, the tape on the floor creating a barrier around the exhibit, the smell in the room, the transportation used by each person to arrive, and so forth.  Through NRTÕs treatment of things-bodies-objects, we are given the language to consider any of these participants in this moment.  And though the number of participants is nigh unto infinite, we would be able to name and think with an astounding variety of some subset of all the possible participants in this moment.  Depending upon our goals for the study, we might select those participants that are most heavily felt by whatever human we are working with; or, we might select those that most confound us; or, those we find most beautiful or moving.  Regardless, NRT provides a grammar for considering any number of things through its radical equality between things, bodies, and objects.       Relations  Another core belief of NRT is that all meaning is made in relations between humans, things, objects, machines, the natural world, and so forth.  Meaning does not exist a priori, out                                                              12!I-!/0!5#(-.!2#-/24!-.*-!)/35*1!-.(#,4.!-.$!(,2!#?!-.$!0.#56!A+(*)#7/C!.*3!-.$!-*+'$!($)#7$3:!  23 there in the world, waiting to be discovered by people but is created through things cyclically coming together, functioning together, and breaking apart.  As Anderson and Harrison (2010) note: humans are envisioned in constant relations of modification and reciprocity with their environs, action being understood not as a one way street running from the actor to the acted upon, from the active to the passive or mind to matter, but as a relational phenomena incessantly looping back and regulating itselfÉput simply, all action is interaction. (p. 7) Action is central to sense-making and highlights NRTÕs commitment to the dynamic nature of relations between things-bodies-objects.  Meaning is often contingent upon how long any set of relations stay connected and function together.  Relations are prone to change yet some operate on longer timescales and appear to be quite stable.  Still other relations function together for an instant and appear ephemeral or even have the potential to join together and break apart before they are consciously noticed.  In NRT all relations are viable and all relations have the potential to be important.  In other words, meaning might emerge or erupt from anywhere.  It is impossible to know in advance what might be produced through any given set of relations between various things.  ÒRather everything takes-part and in taking-part, takes-place: everything happens, everything acts,Ó (Anderson & Harrison, 2010, p. 14).  This is suggestive of the performative nature of things-bodies-objects which is the root of the dynamic quality of relations.  Every new relation offers an opportunity for a new performance or presentationÑa chance for everything to act.  Barad (2007) underscores this notion by stating, simply, Òour knowledge-making practices are social-material enactments,Ó (p. 26).  Understanding that these enactments, these relations, are   24 what make up our sense-making shifts our orientation towards thinking as well.  Thinking, then, becomes relational rather than definitional or, as Deleuze (2001) suggests, Òthe conjunction ÔandÕ dethrones the interiority of the verb ÔisÕ,Ó (p. 38).   To think with and invites experimentation.  This experimental attitude gives researchers the freedom to Òtake seriously whimsy, chance, inimitability, or freak occurrences as viable candidates for analysis or modes of explanation,Ó (Fendler, 2013, p. 9).  What emerges or erupts from relations is not always tidy nor is it wholly thinkable.  That does not mean, however, that it might not be a productive channel of inquiry13.  As Anderson and Harrison (2010) note, Òmany different things gather, not just deliberative humans but a diverse range of actors and forces, some of which we know about, some not, and some of which may be just on the edge of awareness,Ó (p. 12).  The experimental nature of relations is, necessarily, an opening up.  This opening is an explicit goal of NRT.  Thrift (2008) aims Òto produce a politics of opening the event to more, more; more action, more imagination, more light,Ó (p. 20). To return to the example of Abramovi!Õs The Artist is Present as a heuristic to think relations with, consider some of the aforementioned things-bodies-objects.  NRT would suggest that any of those things might enter into relation with one another.  We do not have the opportunity to physically observe what appears to be functioning together, nor can we speak to any of the human beings that are a part of the exhibit at the moment reflected in the photograph.  If we did, we might have a starting point14 for our exploration of some sets of relations that were producing affect or meaning or, perhaps, new and different relations.  Embracing NRTÕs call for experimentation, we can imagine some of the possibilities for the relations that, at the very least,                                                              13 In fact, there is precedent in in cultural anthropology for beginning an inquiry with the unthinkable through the notion of Òrich pointsÓ (Agar, 1995, p. 31).  I use this concept as a grounding principle for Chapter 4. 14 Even if we were there, in the room, at the moment the photograph was taken, we would still have limitations on what sets of relations we would have access to ÒseeingÓ.   25 produced some feelings (hence the crying people) and also, surely, some kind of affective intensities that had people sleeping outside the museum in a line to have the chance to sit opposite Marina.  For instance, it is easy to imagine any number of sets of relations between Abramovi!, the crowd watching, the ambient noise, her unwavering and emotionless gaze, joining with everything that a person brought with him/her into the chair.   We cannot know what prompted people to cry nor what moved so many people to go to the exhibit for a chance to sit in that chair.  However, this piece of art was different than many others because there was no real potential to conceive of the notion that there was a there there.  Abramovi! did not offer some kind of meaning that existed, dormant, in the piece simply waiting to be found out by the observer.  Rather, she offered relationshipÑpresenceÑfor the meaning to emerge through interactions.  The Artist is Present was dynamic, relational, and interactional which makes it an effective example of NRTÕs view of sense-making being dynamic, relational, and interactional. Emergence Emergence, though discussed here last, is perhaps the element most central to the NRT project.  In fact, Thrift (2008) discusses the emergent as the first of his tenets, noting that Ònon-representational theory tries to capture the ÔonflowÕ of everyday lifeÓ (p. 5) which values and centers lived experience at both conscious and Òpre-consciousÓ (p. 6) levels.  As such, NRT seeks to countenance the variety of registers in and through which we make meaning without privileging intentionality or consciousness; rather, it wants to equally consider that which occurs on the phenomenological periphery.  If anything, NRT might pay closer attention to that which is pre-conscious and ephemeral due to the fact Òthat most of the time in most of our everyday lives there is a huge amount we do, a huge amount that we are involved in, that we donÕt think about   26 and that, when asked about, we may struggle to explain,Ó (Anderson & Harrison, 2010, p. 7, emphasis in original).  NRT suggests that we move through the world, experiencing emergent meanings that happen just outside of our conscious awareness and act, react, and adapt without necessarily cognitively processing anything.  This is a fairly significant shift in the way that sense-making is construed in much social scientific research.  The research gaze is often trained on those ways that humans engage the world with intention, will, and purpose.  And while NRT does not suggest that humans do not interact with the world in those cognitive-based ways, it does suggest that there is quite a lot to account for in the non/pre-cognitive ways that humans interact with the world.  It is also worth noting that these non/pre-cognitive aspects of human sense-making are not thought of as any less vital to living or inferior to cognition.  Rather, NRT centers the emergent as Òa poetics of the unthoughtÉa well-structured pre-reflective world which, just because it lacks explicit articulation, is not therefore without grip,Ó (Thrift, 2008, p. 16). NRT, then, focuses on action and performance due to the fact that Òso much ordinary action gives no advance notice of what it will become,Ó (Lorimer, 2005, p. 84).  I am reminded, here, of how often I have come to find myself standing in the middle of some room in my house and wondering, Òwhat am I doing here?Ó  My body has gotten up from where I was and moved to another location before my conscious mind actively attended to the fact that things were changing.  Or, perhaps, those moments when something has been knocked off the table and before I am fully aware that it is falling, I have already caught it.  ÒThis roiling mass of nerve volleys prepare the body for action in such a way that intentions or decisions are made before the conscious self is even aware of them,Ó (Thrift, 2008, p. 7).  This is what Thrift (2008) refers to as bare life, Òthat small space of time between action and cognition,Ó (p. 24).     27 Sometimes, this bare life can give rise to meaning that is created through action and interaction, where the pre-conscious becomes conscious.  It may be that this conscious awareness is ephemeral and disappears as quickly as it appeared.  Or, it may be that the awareness lingers and becomes an understanding or practice that appears more stable.  Perhaps I part from established thought in NRT here, but I would argue that while some bare life is borne from Òfragile and sometimes fleeting combinations of percepts, affects, and concepts,Ó (McCormack, 2013, p. 4), bare life might also be the result of the mundane and routinized bits of everyday life.  Or, as Latham (2003) terms it, Òthe accretion of embodied experienceÓ that Òhas accumulated through straightforward usage,Ò (p. 2001).  In other words, it is possible for the space of time between action and cognition in bare life to lengthen in the practical doing of life that has become habitual15.  Regardless of how bare life takes shape, it does, and emerges as affective intensities, action, and interaction.  For this reason, NRT ÒemphasizesÉthe power of the precognitive as a performative technology for adaptive living, as an instrument of sensation, play, and imagination, and a life force fueling the excesses and the rituals of everyday living,Ó (Vannini, 2015, p. 4).  Our final return to Abramovi!Õs The Artist is Present will require the greatest acts of imagination in order to think with NRTÕs notion of emergence.  However, I think there are still some useful points that might be illustrative of emergence.  One such point is to consider the length of time that each person sat in the chair opposite Abramovi!.  The photographer who was taking pictures over MarinaÕs shoulder was also documenting how long each person occupied the chair.  As previously noted, the timing was incredibly idiosyncratic with some people sitting for only a few minutes and others sitting for hours.  I wonder what moved people to get up?  The                                                              15 Maybe this phenomenon needs its own term as this type of interaction is more post-cognitive rather than pre-cognitiveÑwhere whatever is occurring has already be thought about enough and it now dwells in a place beyond cognition.   28 impetus to leave the chair, IÕm certain, was the result of any number of things coming together in the moment.  IÕm certain, also, that for some people, their departure from the chair was an emergent action where their bodies started to move before they had an awareness as to why they were moving.  Similarly, the photographs of the people in the chair show a wide variety of responses to the experience of sitting across from Abramovi!.  Some people erupted in tears while others smiled or laughed.  Some did all three.  While some of these emotional reactions were certainly due to thoughts, feelings, and memories that the people were having, others, surely had reactions that came with no warning16.  Some of the photos seem to show surprise alongside some other emotion that is registered on the personÕs face.  Another element of The Artist is Present that is suggestive of emergence is the actual photographs taken by the photographer, Marco Anelli.  He took multiple photographs of each person that sat in the chair opposite Abramovi!.  Something made him hit the shutter button on his camera at particular moments.  Certainly, as a professional artist, there were some photographs he took due to generous lighting conditions, a compelling composition, and so forth.  However, I am certain that some of the shots he took were simply the result of some emerging affective intensity that he experienced that moved him to hit the button without his explicit awareness as to why.  The description of this situation will reappear in later chapters as this was a common occurrence for the students in this study.                                                                16 Though I am confident this is the case, I may also be projecting.  I did not see The Artist is Present and cannot speak to my reaction to/with that piece.  However, I enjoy musical theatre and have, on more than one occasion, begun crying or laughing as the lights go down and the first swell of music fills the theater.  Though it has happened multiple times, it is always a surprise to me because it seems as if the reaction comes out of nowhere.  IÕm reading the program and then suddenly tears are erupting from my eyes.  I am never consciously aware that this is going to happen as it is always the product of my experience of some pre-conscious intensities produced through some relations between me, the space, the music, and any number of other things.   29 Conclusion  NRT is a useful filter through which to view literacy experiences.  It offers a grammar that helps to describe all of the many participants in the everyday doing of literacies.  Through NRT, more things, bodies, and objects are able to be seen, discussed, and studied as being a part of literacies.  NRT also provides a foundation upon which to build a conceptualization of literacies as sets of relations rather than as simply events or practices.  Finally, through acknowledging and centering the pre-conscious and emergent in everyday life, NRT provides necessary argumentation for the importance of the non-cognitive domains of literacy experiences and an ontological view of literacies.      30 CHAPTER 3 Ñ GAINING ACCESS TO LITERACY EXPERIENCE: OR, ON METHODS Art does not reproduce the visible; rather, it makes visible. Ð Paul Klee Interlude 2 - Excerpt from Fieldnotes Lakeview High School 3 September 2014 2nd Period Photo B/C/D  8.53 am - 9.35am It is the first day of school. I arrived early to make sure that I didn't hit traffic and to ensure that I'd have time to check in at the main office.  The office had about half a dozen kids hanging around the desk of a kind-faced woman who appeared to be the point-person for lockers.  One student begged for a locker on the first floor but was told that, "They're only giving first floor lockers to seniors who are free first period."  Upon hearing the bad news, he sighed deeply and told his friend, "Let's bounce."  Another student's locker just wouldn't open: "I tried...my teacher tried..." which gained him a knowing look from the kind-faced woman who called for backup to an unseen, yet assumed, locker wizard. I was signed in and given a sticker to wear, noting me as a visitor.  It was the brightest pink I've ever seen.  LikeÉcould-see-it-from-outer-space pink.  Presumably, this was to convince people that I was approved to be here but, for today at least, I'm a stranger.  I put the sticker on, trying to avoid tangling my hair in the adhesive, and this somehow made me feel nervous.  Since I had been to the school before, I found my way to the Art corridor and to Ms. McCurryÕs room.  The room was empty since McCurry had Graphic Design during first period and that class meets in the computer lab.  I was happy that I had the room to myself for a little while as I could settle into the space a little bit.  There were four large tables with painted metal   31 stools stacked on top.  I took the stools down and put them around the tables.  Something about this movement and the act of preparing the seats for the students reminded me of one of my daily routines as a teacherÉso, I did the same thing.  I walked around and stood for a moment by each stool, meditating on the young people who would sit there during the next class, holding them in my thoughts, and wishing peace for the student.  While performing this ritual, I felt the nervousness dissolve and was more centered.  The bell rang and the quiet was broken by typical high-school-hallway cacophony.  Class began with a brief introduction to the course & Ms. McCurry.  She made a point to note that it was now an advanced class and told the students that, "you guys gotta' step it up.Ó Ms. McCurry consistently referred to the students as artists.  I found this intriguingÉthe students were already artists.  Not students learning to be artists, but artists already.  This identity framed much of the rest of the conversation.  McCurry encouraged students to keep artistic journals and to constantly be aware of what they were seeing.  ÒAs artists, you realize that we live in a visual culture and that there are ideas all around you!Ó  She suggested that they might like to use something like Pinterest to do this digitally.  And, perhaps, to have a physical journal where students could cut out pictures and tape them in.  She said, Òif you see something in a magazine or a postcard and you like it, get it in there.Ó  Students could use these journals then, as Ms. McCurry said, Òas inspiration for your projects.Ó Much to my surprise and, if IÕm honest, chagrin, Ms. McCurry turned to me and asked me to introduce myself.  I was not planning to do this on the first day and was totally unprepared to talk.  I said a few words and had no idea what I actually said.  And though I was uncertain about my words, I was fairly certain that I sounded like an idiot.  Then I remembered that we   32 would all have lots of time together and no one would ever remember that I sounded dumb on the first day.  That made me breathe a little easier. Students introduced themselves and said what was the best thing about the summer for them.  There were sophomores to seniors and they had summers that included, Òvisiting familyÓ, Ògoing to New York CityÓ, Ògoing to the LakeÓ, Òseeing One DirectionÓ, and Òwatching NetflixÓ.  Ms. McCurry had me do this too and I sounded like an idiot again, saying the best thing about my summer was going on vacation with my parents...loser.  But, tomorrow is another day! A Brief Commentary on Methodology By paying close attention to the how things-bodies-objects enter into relations and produce emergent meaning and affective intensity, NRT helped to provide a grammar for all of the participants in the doing of literacies.  The next challenge was in finding methods that helped to provide access to all of the participants in the doing of literacies.  In this study, I used participant photography and art-making as ways to access and capture bodies, objects, and affects in moments of textual engagement.   On photography.  Though photographs are inherently an attempt at representation, they can also open up a window to the non-representational.  Through the mood, lighting, composition, and positioning of the subject, photographs can, at times, get closer to the experience of a person than might be possible with words alone.  Photographs offer many layered registers for understanding or sensing the relations not only captured in the photograph but also those created with the photograph upon viewing.  For this reason, it is particularly useful in exploring and studying literacy experiences.   As noted by visual anthropologist Marcus Banks, visual data brings two major advantages to qualitative research.  First, it can Òbypass language or add an additional channel of   33 understanding to languageÓ (Banks, 2009) which can be particularly helpful when seeking to describe complex sets of relations like literacy experiences, and when working with young people.  By allowing students to show me what their textual engagement looked like, rather than having to find the words to fully describe it, the possibilities of what students could communicate was expanded.  Additionally, unbound by language, students had greater freedom to name a wide variety of things as texts and had the opportunity to capture their complicated ways of being and making meaning in the world.   Second, it provides Òanother route into accessing peopleÕs interior worldsÓ (Banks, 2009).  If, in some ways, a camera functions as an Òinstrumental extension of our sensesÓ (Collier & Collier, 1986, p. 7) then when we look at photographs taken by another person, we are given access, however limited, to understanding the ways in which s/he experiences the world.  Through the content and framing of their photos, students offered a glimpse of the world through their eyes, which often communicated more about their lives than words were able to adequately describe.  And though, as Sarah Pink suggests, Òwe canÕt experience other peopleÕs experiencesÓ, a photograph still Òinvites you to imagine the embodied experienceÓ (2009) of the photographer and of the subject(s) in the image.  As this was the foundational desire of this studyÑto see into the world of young peopleÕs literacy experiencesÑusing visual data was essential to the project.   On art-making.  To further expand the registers of our inquiry, the research team, who you are about to meet, decided to use art-making as an analytical and interpretive tool to study the photographs17 produced through the study.  Art was the ideal method for the final analysis in this study for three vital reasons.  First, as the intention of this work is to question some of the orthodox ways of thinking about literacy it seemed like a coherent way forward to employ novel                                                              17 In the following sections, there are thorough descriptions of the photographs and the art produced in the study.   34 methods to underscore the difference in a literacy experience approach.  As Barone and Eisner (2012) suggest: Instead of contributing to the stability of prevailing assumptions about these phenomena byÉreinforcing the conventional way of viewing them, the arts based researcher may persuade readers or percipients of the work (including the artist herself) to revisit the world from a different direction, seeing it through fresh eyes, and thereby calling into question a singular, orthodox point of view. (p. 16)  Second, approaching the analytical task to make sense in/with/through the photographs as an artistic, creative task offered the opportunity to slow down the relations.  This slowing, then, created space for things-bodies-objects and different sets of relations to surface for/with the artist.  When invited into an act of creation rather than just an act of observation, the research team was able to see and feel differently with the photographs.  As Eisner notes, through art, Ò[w]e are given permission to slow down perception, to look hard, to savor the qualities that we try, under normal conditions, to treat so efficiently that we hardly notice they are there,Ó (Eisner, 2002, p. 5).  As the focus of this study was to notice those things that are often invisible, using art as a way to slow down and see was crucial. Finally, art has a different relationship with thinking, action, feeling, and perceiving than other analytical methods such as talk or writing.  While those other methods were used in the study, to be sure, employing art was a way to gain access to more sensual and embodied ways of thinking with the data.  Elliot Eisner (2002) best captures this notion of art as a different way of knowing so I will quote him at length:   Somatic knowledge, what is sometimes called embodied knowledge, is experienced in different locations.  Some images resonate with our gut, others with our eyes, still others   35 with our fantasies; artists play with our imagination.  Some visual images are essentially tactile experiences.  Works of art can call upon both the ideational and any of the sensory resources we use to experience the world; the fact that an image is visual does not mean that the experience we have of it will be visual.  All of us have synesthetic experiences.  In a sense all these capacities for human experience are resources the artist can call upon in the crafting of the image.  In the hands and mind of the artist they are avenues for communication. (p. 19) So, through art, not only were the students able to consider ways to access the sensorium of potential viewers of their work, they also had to access their own senses to create the pieces.  In this way, creating art as an analytic tool for thinking about literacy experiences was, itself, a literacy experience.   Therefore, through youth participatory photoethnography and art-making, in this study, I investigate the following questions: ! How does a group of suburban high school photography students visually represent their engagement with texts in their everyday lives?   ! How does a focal group of students make sense of/in/with these photos through individual and group talk in PhotoLab? ! How does a focal group of students make sense of/in/with these photos through art-making in ArtLab? Context This study was conducted in the town of Lakeside, a large suburb of a mid-sized city in the Northeast.  I selected Lakeside through happenstance, really.  As my previous teaching experience had been in a big, urban school district, my initial plan was to do the study in a   36 similar setting.  Using local contacts, I found an English teacher in the city that agreed to work with me on the project and pursued permission to work with her from the district.  After a year of back and forth, the city school district told me that I could not conduct the study in their district as they did not have the resources to complete the necessary paperwork for a researcher from an out-of-state institution.   Having exhausted my contacts, I took some time to regroup.  I realized that the project, as I envisioned it, might produce some different, generative data if conducted in a photography classroom rather than an English classroom.  So, I researched some districts surrounding the city to see if any of them offered photography.  I happened upon the website of Lakeside High School (LHS) and found my way to the webpage of the photography teacher, Ms. Lu McCurry.  Her website has a quote by Paul Klee which appears as an epigraph of this chapter, ÒArt does not reproduce the visible; rather, it makes visibleÓ, and I knew that I had found a potential research partner.  I contacted Lu who was immediately excited about working on the study with me.  She sent a few emails and I had district approval to conduct the research within two weeks. The research at LHS began during the 2014-2015 school year when there was a student body of 1,264 dispersed fairly equally across grades 9-12.  The school population was not particularly diverse across racial and socioeconomic indexes of difference.  Statistics reported on the districtÕs website showed that 78% of students were white and 22% were students of color.  Insofar as it is often perceived to stand as a proxy for socioeconomic status, 18% of students were eligible for free and reduced-price lunch.  These demographics are common in the suburbs surrounding the city and it is worth noting that they are not particularly conducive to providing a look at a wide variety of student experiences.  However, through careful selection of focal   37 students, I was able to create a research group that sought to represent as much racial, ethnic, and socioeconomic diversity as was possible in the context of LHS.   Lakeside High School is home to a vibrant Art program that offers students courses in studio art, sculpture, painting, graphic design, and photography.  Every student that graduates from LHS is required to take either Art or Music classes as a part of their academic program, so these courses have the benefit of remaining funded (for the most part)18 and valued in the district.  The study began in the context of Ms. Lu McCurryÕs Fall 2014 semester of Photo B/C/D, an advanced photography class that combines students that are technically in three different levels of Photo into one class.   There were 23 students in the class, 22 of whom gave their assent, with corresponding parental consent, to participate in the study.  20 of the 22 participants were women, an imbalance that Ms. McCurry said was abnormal.  LHS had one of the last remaining high school darkrooms19 in the area, and the class was a mixed format class where students shot both film and digital photos.  All film that the students shot was processed and developed by them in the classroom.                                                               18 In the year of the study, a bond measure providing funding for Lakeside School District failed and cuts were madeÑsome of them to the Art programÑwhich offered fewer sections of advanced photography and sent Ms. McCurry to an elementary school in the afternoons to teach one section of fifth grade Art instead. 19 Ms. McCurry made the decision to get rid of the darkroom and move to an all digital photography program.  This decision was incredibly challenging and Ms. McCurry felt very conflicted about what she should do.  WeÕve kept in touch and she shared, in the Spring of 2016, that she has some regrets about the loss of the darkroom.   38   Figure 2: Photo B/C/D course, Lakeside High School, Fall 2014.  Research Design StudentsÕ lived experiences and their unique perspectives can be lost in studies where the naming of literacies are left solely in the hands of the researcher.  I follow Duncan-Andrade and Morrell (2008) in seeking to conduct Òcritical research [which] holds the potential to reposition these young people as the subjects of their own researchÓ in order to avoid Òmak[ing] them the objects of our research gazeÓ (p. 106).  And though Duncan-Andrade and Morrell are speaking, specifically, of working with youth of color who have been marginalized by systems and structures of inequality, their ethos of transgressing traditional research relationships is one that I share and had in mind as I designed this study.  While some of the advanced photography   39 students at LHS did not suffer the same marginalization that Duncan-Andrade and MorrellÕs youth participants suffered, they are also put in positions where they must cede their power to adults, particularly in school.  In order to avoid this, LHS Photo B/C/D students were centered as co-researchers throughout the project and served as the primary data collectors and data coders.  This move to invite participants into the research process has a rich history in Participatory Action Research (PAR).  However, ÒPAR has an explicit goal of ÔactionÕ or intervention into the problems being studied,Ó (Irizarry & Brown, p. 64) which would seem to indicate that the study discussed here is not really utilizing PAR, per se, since there is no real social action at the center of the project.  Even so, it does share the same belief that Òlocal people possess expert knowledge about the conditions of their lives that outsiders cannot access on their own,Ó (Irizarry & Brown, p. 64).  As such, students were provided with tools that not only helped them to become researchers, but also allowed them to strengthen their literacies while creating artifacts of their literate lives.  In this way, the project affirmed AppaduraiÕs notion of Òthe right to researchÓ whereby every person has Òthe right to the tools through which any citizen can systematically increase that stock of knowledge which they consider most vital to their survival as human beings and to their claims as citizens,Ó (2006, p. 168).  I make no claim that this work is critical, nor do I suggest that these particular students viewed their participation in literacies to be vital to their survival in the ways that Appadurai argues.  I do, however, want to suggest that my goal in inviting students into the research enterprise was intended to invert the research relationship by ceding my power as a researcher to the students, to some small extent.  It was also a pedagogical move as I hoped to provide the students with research tools they could use to study themselves and their world.   The study moved through several phases that are outlined in Figure 3.     40  Figure 3: Summary of MethodsÑphases in green are those that generated a bulk of the data discussed in this work.  Ongoing quasi-ethnographic classroom study.  I began the study as a quasi-ethnographic researcher in the Photo B/C/D course, acting as a participant-observer (Agar, 1996).  I hoped that my presence in the class on a daily basis would help me to build rapport with students and would provide me with necessary background on the school, the course, Ms. McCurry, and the students.  I attended nearly all of the class sessions from the time school began until the break for the winter holidays.  In the classroom, there were days when I was primarily an observer and other days when I filled a role that was more like a teacher, particularly when   41 students were working on the projects20 that I designed.  I took daily fieldnotes, jotting down any events or talk that seemed relevant to the study or revealed something about the students, Ms. McCurry, or photography that I found interesting.  On days that I was teaching and unable to take notes on events as they unfolded, I would make notes after class.  I also audio recorded all of the classes that I taught and video recorded many of them as well.  These records were not transcribed but were referenced, as needed, to recall details that may not have made it into the fieldnotes. Phase 1: Students created the ÒTexts and LivesÓ photoethnographic self-studies.  I created a photography project for Photo B/C/D and, after much discussion and collaboration with Ms. McCurry, we presented it to the students as the second project for the course in which they would complete a photo-essay on their everyday engagement with texts21 of all kinds.  The prompt for the project from the assignment sheet (see Appendix A) read: ÒStudents will produce a photo-essay that will be a Ôweek in the lifeÕ where you document the moments in your everyday life when you are reading or writing a text.Ó  This project was a mixed photo format project with the final product including both film images and digital images.  Students were to shoot at least one roll of film and print three images; and, shoot around 200 digital photos in order to select the top 30-50 images to include in a PowerPoint presentation.  Images were to be captioned with the date, time, and location of the photograph along with the photographerÕs mood at the time.  In the final products, these captions were very inconsistent and therefore did not provide much in the way of robust data as I was hoping.  In the original assignment sheet,                                                              20 In addition to the project at the heart of this study, I also designed a project for the students in which they were exploring the difference between self-portraits and selfies, as genres and as tools of identity expression; however, that is outside the scope of this proposalÉapart from providing the photographs IÕve included of the focal students. 21 At the beginning of the year, the principal chose ÒtextÓ as a theme of LHSÕs professional development series for the school year.  Teachers went to various sessions about pedagogical moves for helping students interpret texts of all kinds, including images.  This was tremendously apropos and, I believe, helped to make my presence feel like an asset to the Art Department rather than a distraction.   42 students were also asked to write short artistsÕ statements, but that requirement was cut towards the end of the project as there was simply no more time to complete it. We began the project by discussing the word text and how it might be defined.  I led the class in an exploration of the contours of the wordÑwhat kinds of things did they think were or were not textsÑand had students work in small groups to generate their own definitions for text to end the day.  The following are all of their responses: ! Something, whether a picture or group of words that describes an emotion, tells a story/describes a scene; ! A piece of Art that describes something or expresses a feeling, emotion, opinion, etc.; ! Something that conveys a bigger idea from a smaller idea; ! Conveying or communicating a certain/specific message; ! Used to convey meaning and/or be interpreted by the viewer; ! Words or images that communicate a story or specific message; ! A variety of things that convey a message or has an intention; ! Something made to communicate a story or message; ! SomethingÉa picture or words that describe or communicate to the reader/observer. Clearly, students had varied notions of what text might mean.  Some students held more abstract or open ideas about what a text might do (e.g. Òsomething that conveys a bigger idea from a smaller ideaÓ) while others were more traditional (e.g. Òwords or images that communicate a story or specific messageÓ).  Common through all of the definitions was that texts (somehow) communicate.  And though each studentÕs approach to the project was   43 idiosyncratic based upon their own, personal definition of text, this core concept of text as communication seemed fairly consistent and was represented in the photos the students produced.  After students were clear on the prompt for the project, they started to shoot their photographs.  They spent about two weeks taking photographs for the project both during class time and at home, at their leisure.  There were no parameters for what students should take photographs of or when they should take photographs.  After students took their photographs, the class spent two weeks processing and printing their film, and putting together their PowerPoint photo essays.  Students would alternate between working in the darkroom on their film and working in the computer lab on their digital photos.  Working with film was an intensive process, described in much greater detail in chapter four, requiring students to roll the film onto spools, process the negatives, print contact sheets of the negatives, print enlargements, cut the photos, and mount the photos.  StudentsÕ work with their digital images entailed them curating the hundreds of photos they took by selecting their favorite 30-50 for the slideshow; then, using Photoshop if they wanted to manipulate the images and then designing the PowerPoint through photo placement, cropping, adding text, using color, etc.   There was a mid-point critique about three weeks into the project where students shared their work-in-progress with one another and gave each other feedback about what was working and what wasnÕt working.  After about 5 weeks, students completed a self-critique and reflection then shared their work with the class in a final critique.  The final critique of studentsÕ work took place over three days.  On the first day, film prints were posted up on rolling presentation boards and students took time to look at all the prints in order to have a full class discussion of the work.  On the second day, the class went to the computer lab to view the PowerPoint presentations.    44 Each student opened their own presentation at their computer and then everyone got up and rotated around the room until they had viewed everyoneÕs PowerPoint while jotting down notes.  On the third and final day, we had a full class discussion on the digital projects and the work in general. Phase 2:  Focal student interviews.  After the project was completed, I selected six students to interview one-on-one.  The selection process was in no way an attempt to scientifically create a representative sample of the class or the school.  Rather, the logic behind my selection of focal students was guided by my desire to have as heterogeneous a group as possible and to select students that seemed genuinely interested in the project through their comments in class, to me and Ms. McCurry, and what they wrote in their reflections at the end of the project.  Students who wanted to continue to work with me in the study provided me with their mobile numbers and/or their email addresses.  I used their preferred method of contact, which for five of the six was text, to arrange times for interviews.  Interviews took place several weeks after the photo-essay project was completed due to scheduling constraints, and, in order to give students some space from the work so that when reviewing it, they might see it with fresh eyes.  Four of the interviews took place in school during periods that students had free.  Two of the interviews took place on the weekend at coffee shops in the community.   The interviews were active and semi-structured (Holstein & Gubrium, 2002), lasting between 60-90 minutes each.  After conferring with Ms. McCurry about what the students seemed to be interested in during the class discussions about the work, I designed the interview protocol (see Appendix B) to focus on the studentsÕ approach to and experience of the photo-essay project.  I also sought to understand what sense students might make with/of their own work after taking a break from it and seeing it again weeks later.  I also hoped to get a sense of   45 how they understood their work as texts themselves and the different readings that different audiences might have of their work. My initial intention was to also use these interviews as an opportunity to pivot students towards conducting a deeper photoethnographic study of themselves.  I was imagining that students might discover something in their work for Photo B/C/D that they found interesting and that would be a good subject for more photographs.  Some students had wonderful ideas of what they might do.  For instance, Donovan, who you will meet in a moment, wanted to explore ideas of identity, a theme he thought ran through a lot of his work.  However, many students did not have a firm idea of what they might like to explore and nearly all of the students mentioned the challenges of finding time to take a bunch of photographs that were outside of the requirements for their photo class.  The students, did, however, express a desire to keep working together and seemed to really enjoy talking about their work and their lives.  I began to formulate ideas about what it might look like to bring all six students together for group discussions.  I realized that, since I had already asked students to be the primary researchers of themselves, that I could simply invite them into the next phase of the research with me.  Five of the six students were able to begin what evolved into PhotoLab with one dropping out after two meetings.  The remaining four students, pictured in Figure 4, participated in the entire project as it unfolded.     46   Figure 4: Focal participantsÕ self-portraits at the start of the study, from left to rightÑSylvia, 16, junior; Donovan, 17, senior; Mia, 17, senior; and Kate, 16 junior.  Phase 3:  PhotoLab meetings to map and discuss the corpus of photographs.  Once it was clear that the focal students preferred to do something other than take more photographs and were interested in collaborating, I invited them to meet me after school in the photo room to begin the next step in the research process.  It was time for mapping.  I printed out all of the photographs the six students I interviewed included in their photo-essays (approx. 225 total).  I made the first step towards initial coding (Charmaz, 2006) by dividing the pictures into two groups: portraits and still lifes.  I created these groups based on Kate & DonovanÕs comments during the project critique who, when asked if there were any patterns that emerged, both suggested that most students took photos that would fall in one of two categories: portrait (photos of people) or still life (photos of places, things, etc.).  That seemed like a productive first division of the photos.     47 On the first day we met, I spread the portraits over several tables in the photo room so we could deal with only one group at a time.  When the students arrived, I told them that our next task together was to try to make sense of the photos as a big group and explained my rationale for the first division.  We talked about looking for patterns and about different Òentry pointsÓ when thinking about how we might analyze the photographs.  I provided them with a diagram from Gillian Rose (2012) that I adapted for our situation (see Figure 5) as a tool we might use to help us ÒcodeÓ or ÒmapÓ the photographs.  Figure 5: Interpreting Visual Data diagram, adapted (Rose, 2012, p. 21).   48 Rose (2012) suggests that in the interpretation of visual data, there are three ÒsitesÓ to consider: the Òsite of productionÓ which I adapted to the moment(s) of photo being taken; the Òsite of the image itselfÓ which in our diagram was simply the actual photograph; and the Òsite of audiencingÓ which we talked about as the moment(s) of the photo being viewed (p. 21).  Rose (2012) also proposes that each site has different aspects or, as she calls them Òmodalities,Ó that can Òcontribute to a critical understanding of imagesÓ (p. 19).  She names three, but for the purposes of PhotoLab, I offered only two: the compositional meaning and the social meaning.  After we reviewed the Rose diagram, I told students that there was no wrong way to divide up the photos and that they would need to come up with categories together based on whatever logic made the most sense to them.  I suggested that, if they got stuck, that they could come back to the Rose diagram to see if there was another way they could think about the photos.  We spent one meeting with the students coding the portraits and another meeting with the students coding the still lifes. Once the coding was complete, we continued to meet to discuss the work.  For the first meeting, I prepared a loose protocol (see Appendix C), adapted from Jody Shipka (2011, p. 154-155), to help guide our conversation.  The aims of this conversation were to talk our way into meaning with/about the photos, the project, the notions of text, and the lived experiences of these teenagers.  We very quickly ended up off-script and the conversation spanned a wide variety of topics that I could never have predicted like the nature of art, the velocity of boredom, the growing pains that come as they seek to evolve out of racism and homophobia they see in themselves and those around them, and the trouble with the revolving door of style (that you might find an old picture of your granddad and think he is hot).  The students wanted to continue to meet so we met for the remainder of the school year and into the summer, every few weeks,   49 for a total of eight meeting that lasted an average of about 2 hours each.  Through these meetings, we decided that we wanted to do more with the photos than just discuss them.  The students wanted to artistically explore the photographs in a way that would give viewers access to some of the ideas we had been discussing that might otherwise remain invisible. Phase 4:  ArtLab.  To accomplish this goal, we had several meetings to plan our art-making endeavor.  Inspired by the integrated imagework dissertation methodology of Maureen Michael (2015), who, through her own art-making method, interpreted images thusly, ÒI used the ways in which the images were made as forms of analysis, and I used the aesthetic content of the finished artefacts [sic] as a form of interpretationÓ (p. 71).  We similarly decided to use the photographs the student-researchers took as the focus of individual art-making interpretation projects. Student researcher Kate described her process as a dissection, saying, ÒI felt like I was dissecting the layers that were already in the photo.  Like, this is the way I see the photo but if I had to take it apart for somebody else, this is the way I would do it.Ó  Thus, in PhotoLab we analyzed the photos and in ArtLab we moved to interpret the photos through creating mixed-media art pieces.  The students each selected a few photos from the collection that spoke to them in some way to serve as the basis of their art pieces.  We printed enlargements (12Ó x 18Ó) and used a d”coupage technique to adhere the photographs to large pieces of wood (see Figure 6).  Students then used sheets of transparency film to create literal layers to overlay the photograph.  On the layers, or as some students termed them, slides, students chose to do a variety of techniques including line drawings, written annotations, and painting to interpret the sense they made of/with the photograph.  We held several ArtLab days at my house where students came to work on their pieces.  Mia & Kate also took their pieces home, with some of the supplies, to finish   50 their work when they had time available to do so since their schedules did not permit them to attend all of the ArtLab days.     Figure 6:  Mia d”coupaging one of her focal photographs onto a piece of wood. To finish the pieces, we used a grommeting tool to create metal-enforced holes in the transparencies and then hammered small nails into the wood on the outer edges of the photographs and on the outer edges of the negative space above/next to the photographs.  This allowed for an interactive experience for viewers, where they could choose to look at each transparency either in the negative space or overlaying the photograph.  Transparencies could also be viewed individually or layered on top of one another in either location.  So, while the students designed the transparencies as a way to interpret the photographs, any viewers of the art pieces could use those interpretive layers as tools to work with, against, or alongside the meaning they were making with the piece.   51 We finished up ArtLab with a dinner and presentation time at my house.  Students brought their work and shared each piece with the group, telling us a bit about what they did and why they did it.  We talked a bit about the evolution of the project and what it was like for the students to study themselves and to think so deeply about texts, photography, art, meaning, pop culture, and the lives of suburban teenagers.   Phase 5: My analysis.  My analysis of the data was ongoing, iterative, and emergent throughout the project.  And though I did follow some traditional methods for data analysis such as transcribing audio recordings of PhotoLab meetings and coding those transcripts, much of my analysis was guided by the affective intensities produced through my relationship with the data, my perceptions of studentsÕ relationships with the data, and the relations between different pieces of data with one another.  Fendler (2013) captures the essence of this process when she notes, Òtheorization becomes a matter of collage and topography: the re-arrangement of items in such a way that the process and resulting product becomes educational, elucidating, pleasing, inspirational, and/or enlightening,Ó (p.5).  This work, then, is the product of one such collage of the data with the knowledge that there are likely countless other ways for all of the things produced in/through/with this project to be put together.  The analysis is, therefore, partial and always will be so as there is no one real meaning surfaced in the relations between the students, texts in their lives, photographs, talk, art, and me. However, for this particular collage of the work, my process of analysis might be understood as something like affective constant comparison.  Throughout the research process, as various relational configurations came together and produced intensities, meanings, confusions, art, feelings, understandings, and so forth, I compared them to previous configurations and productions.  Sometimes, these comparisons aligned or harmonized while   52 other times they were more juxtaposed or dissonant.  Perhaps MacLure (2010) describes this process best: One way to describe its beginnings would be as a kind of glow: some detailÑa fieldnote fragment or video imageÑstarts to glimmer, gathering our attention.  Things both slow down and speed up at this point.  On the one hand, the detail arrests the listless traverse of our attention across the surface of the screen or page that holds the data, intensifying our gaze and making us pause to burrow inside it, mining it for meaning.  On the other hand, connections start to fire up: the conversation gets faster and more animated as we begin to recall other incidents and details in the project classrooms, our own childhood experiences, films or artwork that we have seen, articles that we have read.  And, it is worth noting that there is an affective component (in the Deleuzian sense) to this emergence of the example.  The shifting speeds and intensities of engagement with the example do not just prompt thought, but also generate sensations resonating in the body as well as the brainÑfrissons of excitement, energy, laughter, silliness. (p. 283, emphases in original) This glow that MacLure speaks of is a result of the ways in which the researcher becomes entangled with the data through contact with participants, the material debris of research, the immaterial vibrations from data, as well as the accumulation of her lived (and perhaps imagined) experiences.  My analysis then, as represented here, is one collection of the glowing for me.  It must be acknowledged that this glow can be ephemeral and disappear as soon as IÕve committed it to paper.  Revisiting the data in some imagined future would likely produce different glowing since neither the data nor I are static.  Everything is always changing.     53 CHAPTER 4 Ñ THE EMERGENCE OF LITERACY EXPERIENCE(S): VIGNETTES OF DISCOVERY The most beautiful experience we can have is the mysterious.  It is the fundamental emotion that stands at the cradle of true art and true science.   Ñ Albert Einstein  Introduction  In this chapter, I will demonstrate how the concept of literacy experience emerged through the early stages of the study.  I present three vignettes that represent some of the Òrich pointsÓ (Agar, 1995, p.31) that occurred during my semester in Ms. McCurryÕs advanced photography course both during the school day and during after school PhotoLab meetings with the student research group.  These rich points were moments where I, and often the students, were brought up short and realized, as Agar notes, that our Òassumptions about how the world works, usually implicit and out of awareness, [we]re inadequate to understand something that had happened,Ó (1995, p.31).  While Agar argues that ethnographic rich points occur in the distance between the world of the researcher and the worlds of the researched, in the case of this study, the rich points seemed to occur in the distance between what we as a research team were experiencing and the conceptual and linguistic tools we had available to make sense of these experiences.  It was through these rich points, where concepts and language proved lacking, that we made our way towards the necessity for literacy experience as an approach to investigating the multiple registers of sense-making with texts.  There is nothing particularly extraordinary about these three rich points beyond their facility in demonstrating the breadth of challenges we faced in the work and therefore, perhaps, some of the nuances of the utility of literacy experience as a concept.   54  I present the three vignettes in chronological order to allow the opportunity for the reader to experience the accrual of (mis)understanding in a manner similar to me and the research team.  First, IÕll discuss my observations of the procedure by which students roll, process, and print film.  This was one of the first rich points I experienced in the study as I watched the intensely detailed and multi-step activities that required complex relations between both the cognitive and non-cognitive dimensions of literacies in the photography classroom.  Next, IÕll consider the difficulties the research group faced as we worked through the coding of the corpus of photographs produced by the focal students in the photoethnographies.  Though the students were able to come up with various logics to code the photographs, there were constant difficulties as many categories seemed either too restrictive or too permissive.  Finally, I present some of the PhotoLab group conversation wherein the research group tried to talk our way into an understanding of what texts do and where meaning might exist and emerge.  Though it may be a bit unorthodox, I will offer the transcript of the conversation itself as an argument for why literacy experience is a useful approach to the kind of sense-making the group was struggling to find the language to describe.  The discussion is a clear demonstration of the research groupÕs challenges in finding language and conceptual purchase around sense-making.  Hearing the studentsÕ words and how they talked about meaning and affect is much more compelling than any attempt I might make to describe the talk.  The conversation that the students and I had in the excerpt is, in itself, an analysis of sense in its various forms.  In that way, perhaps it might be considered a piece of non-fictional theatre wherein the students and I are the characters, in a similar style of Anna Deavere Smith though, surely not as artfully done.        55 Film  As previously noted, LHS had one of the last remaining darkrooms in the city during the year I worked in the school.  All photography students learned the entire process of developing film: rolling, which includes getting finished film out of the canisters and preparing the negatives; processing, which includes developing the negatives; and printing, which includes enlarging the negatives and printing them on photo paper.  Rolling film and processing film took roughly one class period each to complete.  Printing could take many days, depending on how many prints the student might be making and how many attempts it took to produce an acceptable print.  It was a very complex process that required idiosyncratic skill sets, multiple literacies occurring simultaneously, an experimental attitude, and a lot of patience.  Even so, for many of the Photo B/C/D students, this was their favorite part of any project.  The photoethnography project offered the first opportunity for me to observe this process as the previous classwork in the semester had only used digital photography.  I was immediately taken by the rather complicated steps involved and all of the literacies the students had to mobilize to be successful.  Success was hard won as there was potential for failure all along the way, some of which was impossible to remedy.  With so many people, objects, things, feelings, spaces, and affects coming into relationship with one another, studentsÕ work with film was the first real moment in the study when I had a sense that I did not have a way to make sense of what I was seeing, nor did I have the language to fully describe it.  To consider this rich point, I will make use of my field notes, research photos, and one video of the process in order to demonstrate the ways that students marshaled both cognitive and non-cognitive dimensions of literacies in their work with film.     56 Rolling.  Figure 7: leftÑMs. McCurryÕs illustrated equipment list for rolling film; middleÑtanks & reels used in rolling; rightÑclose up of reels.  Excerpt from Fieldnotes, 20 October 2014 Students are rolling film today.  This entails doing a series of steps in the pitch black darkroom or sitting in the classroom with their hands in black, light-tight bags (see Figure 8), feeling their way through the steps.  It is clearly a difficult and challenging task.  People are grumbling different comments: "I can't feel if I'm doing it too tight..." Kate "Feel for 3 & 4...those are the magic numbers!" Ms. McCurry "I'm getting 2 on one side and 1 on the other!" "I rolled it backwards so I had to redo it." Bronwyn "3, 4, round?" Ms. McCurry to various students. "Ow! This is literally cutting off my circulation (the bag).  Ew...its all hot in here." Sylvia, as she puts her hands in the black bag Kate was using in order to check KateÕs film after Kate asked for help.   57 "Samantha, have confidence in yourself! 3 & 4 & round!  You're good."  Ms. McCurry  Rolling film is exactly what it sounds likeÑone must roll the film around a metal reel in order for it to be developed.  However, it is much more complicated than it may sound as the entire process must occur in total darkness.  If the film is exposed to any light whatsoever, it will turn completely black, also known as getting fogged, as the light will saturate the film and wipe out all of the images previously photographed.   Therefore, to roll film, students either went in a side room of the darkroom that was pitch-black, without even the aid of the low, red lights in the darkroom; or, what seemed the preferred method, they used really weird black bags that have sleeves with super tight elastic at the end that slide over their arms (see Figure 8).  Students grabbed all of the supplies listed in Figure 7, and deposited them inside of one of the black bags along with their roll(s) of film.  Then, they slid their arms into the sleeves, making absolutely sure that the elastic was tight around their armsÑmuch to SylviaÕs dismay in the excerpt from my fieldnotes, above, as she declared that the bag was, Òliterally cutting off my circulation.Ó  From that point on, they had to follow several steps with utmost precision using only their sense of touch.   58   Figure 8: Donovan rolling film with Elli on the left and Bronwyn on the right.  Charlie is in the bottom-left foreground.  They are all using the black bag method.    First, they had to open the plastic canister and remove the film.  They had to keep track of the front end of the film and cut the corner off of it with the scissors before threading it onto the center of the reel.  Then, they had to roll the film, gently, around the reel making sure to keep each roll smooth and perfectly circular.  Students could check to see if they were successful by feeling the number of metal rings remaining on the reel (see Figure 7) and if there were 3 on one side and 4 on the other side, then their film went on the reel smoothly.  If they got numbers other than 3 and 4, something went amissÑperhaps they rolled too tightly or the film got kinked or didnÕt go onto the reel straightÑand they had to start over.  Once the film was rolled correctly, they had to place the reel(s) into the canister and completely seal the canister.  After the film was in the canister, it was safe.  Students would then put their name on a piece of tape, affix it to the canister, and store the canisters until they could be processed the following day.   59  There was a certain charge in the air as students sat, arms in bags, staring into space with intense looks on their faces.  Each student handled the task differently, with varying expressions of focus, nervousness, and confidence.  No wonder, considering the skills that were required.  A great deal of fine motor skills and dexterity was needed to open, cut, and roll the film.  Students also needed to be able to imagine the spatial relationships between the film and the reel, reading whether or not the film was lying smoothly.  And, all of these skills were coming together in a scenario where students were only able to use a singular sense.  They had to feel whether they were proceeding correctly and if they had done the tasks correctly.  It was very clear to me that this process was deeply uncomfortable for several students.  There was a sense in which rolling film engaged studentsÕ cognitive machinery: reading the poster, gathering tools, following steps, cutting, rolling, and so forth.  However, rolling film also engaged studentsÕ non-cognitive sense-making as well.  Though studentsÕ ability to tactilely feel might be considered a kind of haptic or embodied literacy, what was to be made of the studentsÕ ability to feel the space in the darkness of the bag or to feel ÒconfidenceÓ as Ms. McCurry implored Samantha to do in the excerpt?  Might those be examples of something like spatial literacy or emotional literacy?  And, if so, what do they have to do with everything else that was going on?  Observing the day of rolling film raised to the surface many of the questions that circulate through this study about how all of these things come into relationship and function together.  This question was extended to the next day, as students processed their film.            60 Processing.   Figure 9: Processing film.  TopÑmeasuring chemicals and water; middleÑAria agitating her canister of film; bottomÑthe whole crowd watching clocks during an agitation rest.     61 Unedited Excerpt from Fieldnotes, 21 October 2014 students are processing film today.  this involves adding water and chemicals to the big round tanks where they put their rolled film yesterday.  students need to remember the order of the chemicals and how each must be used: with water or alone; at 70 degrees; for 6 or 8 minutes, etc.  also students have to agitate the film for a certain amount of time and then let it rest.  this results in a rhythmic set of movements where students shake the tanks, then bang them on the table, then let them sit on the table.  students intuitively move out of one anotherÕs way as they are crowded around the sink in a tight circle.  everyone is facing the clock in the room and a set of timers that ms. mccurry has on a counter.  occasionally, ms. mccurry will shout out some directions for the next step, "remember agitate for the first 30 seconds then taptaptap then let it rest 30 seconds.  then agitate 5 seconds, rest for 30."  "agitate for 1 minute and then don't forget to recycle your fixer!"  "don't worry you can't over-fix your film."  students are listening to her because they sometimes respond, but they do not generally turn to face her or look at her directly while she speaks because they are all looking at the clock.  they are all pretty quiet, not often talking to one another and they all look incredibly focused.   when someone touches ariaÕs tank while it is ÔrestingÕ she reprimands them and says, "i've never had a roll of film turn out bad.  if this one is, it is your fault and i'll be so mad."  there is a seriousness about this process that is fascinating.  students appear deeply committed to doing this process correctly.  there are also quite a few students that make arrangement with ms. mccurry to come in to the classroom during another period of the day in order to process their film.  this makes a lot of sense to me when i see how involved the process is and how little space there would be to maneuver if the entire class was processing their film at the same time.  students also cooperate with one another.  while bronwyn is washing her film in the sink with the   62 water running, mara asks, "do you mind if we set up the tub over here?"  and bronwyn says, "sure," and grabs a big plastic bin and lets it fill up with water, putting her tank in it and letting mara put her tank in there also.   after she has washed the film, bronwyn comes over with her roll of film all spread out off of the wire roll and they are all totally black (OH SHIT!!!  my stomach is instantly in knots).  she says, "ms mccurry, mine are all black."  ms. mccurry asks, "do you know what that means?"  bronwyn says, "they got fogged?"  ms. mccurry says, "yeah...they got fogged.  they turn black when they somehow get exposed to light.  do you know when that might have happened?  i'm so sorry bronwyn."  ms. mccurry tells bronwyn she will give her another roll of film and more time to take pictures.  "i'm so sorry.  do you want me to toss it so you don't have to?"  (iÕm totally gutted and it isnÕt my film!  i nonchalantly look away when bronwyn throws the black strip of film that used to be 24 photographs into the trash.) As with rolling film, processing film engages a wide array of domains in sense-making.  Students were following steps, mixing chemicals, making calculations, and watching the clock.  At the same time, they were moving their bodies in measured ways, shaking the canisters slowly and then tapping them, and navigating around other people (see video https://youtu.be/3P9K5qldId0).  Bodies, objects, things, feelings, spaces, times, and affects were all entering into relationship with one another as students processed their rolls of film.   Throughout the process, there was mildly nervous tension at the front of the room, which was occasionally manifested in studentsÕ interactions with one another or the objects with which they were working.  For instance, Aria chastised one of her classmates for touching her canister of film as it rested in between agitationsÑwhich seemed to have been named for just that moment.  But, perhaps, never quite as clearly as when it seemed all the air went out of the room   63 and everyone went silent when Bronwyn opened her canister and held aloft her unfurling, totally black film.  There was something quite compelling about the movement of bodies and the passage of time that evoked choreographed dancing.  And yet, there were so many layers of sense that accrued and were made in/through the studentsÕ dance.  Their arm movement while agitating the canisters might have been one text, their following written directions might have been another text, their relationship to the result of the processing might have been yet another text.  All of these layers existed simultaneously and were produced together through the interaction of reading, science, movement, being, and feeling.  I was aware, for the second day in a row that I did not, exactly, have a clear way to talk about what I had observed.  Which of these counted as a literacy practice or literacy event?  Might they qualify as literacies-in-action or a literacy rhizome?  If so, did I have the apparatus to consider them as all existing together and mutually constituent?  StudentsÕ final stage of working with their film served to corroborate the questions that had already emerged and underlined my need for some new tools to think with regarding what I was observing in Photo B/C/D.    Printing. Excerpt from Fieldnotes, 29 October 2014 today the class is split btwn photo b and c/d.  b's are getting instruction from ms. mccurry on dodging/burning and filters22.  c/d are in the darkroom printing images.  i shadowed some students in the darkroom to see what the process was like to print.  let me tell you, it is really dark in there.  so much of what happens in the dark room is done by touch.  students who use matte paper to print on have to just go by the feel of the paper & their own experience to know if                                                              22 These are all techniques that can be used to add more or less light to the negative during printing.   64 they are printing on the reactive side23 of the paper.  this is why photo a students are only given glossy paper because it is easier to determine which side of the paper is the reactive side.  to create test strips, students use small pieces of photo paper and test the exposure at 2 second intervals so that students can see what length of exposure will create the best print.  most students count in their heads even though there are timers at each station.  they determine which exposure is best by looking at what section of the test strip has the first true black color.  all student show ms. mccurry their test strips so they don't get frustrated picking the wrong exposure and printing photos that aren't ideal and wasting paper.  once they print something on the photo paper, they walk through a series of steps, soaking the photo paper in a series of 3 chemicals (developer, stop bath, and fixer).  this is the quintessential image of processing film from movies and such: trays of chemicals, with paper dropped in, plastic edged tongs moving the paper in the trays until images appear.  the paper is supposed to be in each chemical a certain amount of time.  i'm standing near the trays of chemicals when mia, elli, and kate are over there working with images.  i ask about what i observed them doing and if they were going by touch/feel.  they said that knowing what side of the paper is reactive is determined through feel, experience, and a bit of rolling the dice.  mia says "well, it is a 50/50 chance.  i'm going to go with this side and hope for the best."  the girls said that they count in their heads because the timers "are annoying" but also because, as kate notes: "if i messed up on the timing of the exposure, i can fix it by leaving it in (the developer) a little longer...so i sort of just go by what i see."   i'm taken by the way that students move around the darkroom.  they weave between one another on their way from the enlarger stations to the "trough" station with all the chemicals (see Figure 10).  there isn't a lot of talking.  students appear quite focused on what they are                                                              23 Only one side of photo paper is reactive and will actually produce a print of the negative when exposed to light.  If you use the wrong side, you get nothing.   65 doing and seem to be pretty intent on what they are doing.  occasionally they will chat with the person next to them or talk about where they are in the process, etc. but...by & large, they are quiet.  there is, however, fairly constant movement and lots of action happening at any given time.  Figure 10:  The darkroom.  TopÑenlarger stations where the negative is printed on paper; bottomÑchemical ÔtroughÕ where the print is developed and fixed onto the paper.  Many of the same elements that were involved in the earlier stages of processing film were similarly a part of the final stage of printing the film.  Students were working in the dark,   66 using chemicals, counting, and reading the space as they printed their photographs.  Ms. McCurry shared and, much later, the research group affirmed that the work done by a photographer in the darkroom was the most difficult element of the artistic enterprise.  Getting a good shot was certainly an important first step and required an artistic eye, but knowing how to treat the negative in the darkroom seemed to be what separated the truly gifted photographers from the pack.  In the darkroom, it was possible to correct poor choices made at the time the photograph was taken.  If the exposure was less than ideal or the lighting wasnÕt great, there were techniques that could be used in the darkroom to still produce a beautiful print.  And though some of these techniques relied on some specific artistic and even, perhaps, scientific literaciesÑsuch as KateÕs comments in the excerpt above about fixing errors in exposure time by leaving the print in the developer longerÑthere were some ways of working in the darkroom that relied on something akin to a gut instinct.  There was some kind of non-cognitive maybe even subconscious, emergent sense about what should be done with the negative or print.  On one of the printing days, Ms. McCurry had a quick conversation with Charlie that is illustrative:    [Charlie exited the darkroom with a print to show Ms. McCurry.] McCurry How long is this?  (How long did Charlie expose the negative to light in order to make the print?)    Charlie 11 seconds McCurry Can you do one more for me?  IÕll give you more paper at the end of the semester if you need it.  HmmÉIÕd hit this up at thirrrrÉfourrrrÉthiiirrrrrrteen seconds? Charlie Yeah.  That is what I was thinking.   67 McCurry So 13 seconds.  Is that what you were thinking?  How does that feel in your gut? Charlie Good. McCurry Okay!  (Turning to Amanda) ItÕs a guessing game.  Kids want it to be a hard science, but it is art!  It isnÕt a hard science. Ms. McCurry was prompting Charlie to listen to her instinct and attend to that subconscious sense by asking, Òhow does that feel in your gut?Ó  Charlie had the same instinct that Ms. McCurry had regarding how to treat the negative, but she was unsure of herself and sought corroboration.  Students had varying relationships with their instincts and could be deeply uncomfortable like Charlie or much more in tune like Kate.  I wondered if this instinct might count as a literacy practice or if it might be able to be mapped rhizomatically. In the printing stage there was also a machine introducedÑthe enlarger24, pictured in the top photograph in Figure 10Ñwhich added a layer of complexity to the enterprise. Kate mentioned that she always used the same enlarger, ÒI just know how to work this one best and I always get good prints so I donÕt want to jinx it and ruin my print by using another one.Ó  Many of the other students in the darkroom at the time said they did the same thing.  Printing was such a tenuous process that students put their trust in established relationships they had with particular machines, equipment, and routines.  They used the same enlarger every time or, as seen in the excerpt, they relied on their own counting rather than a timer to maximize their chances of success in creating a perfect print.  When Kate spoke about ÔherÕ enlarger, there was certainly the sense that she had learned how to work successfully with that particular machine but there was also a sense that the enlarger, albeit an inanimate object, wouldnÕt let her down.  KateÕs faith in                                                              24 The enlarger is the machine used select the size of the printÑhow much to enlarge the image from the negativeÑand to expose the negative to light in order to produce said print.     68 that enlarger was partially technical but also partially relational.  KateÕs use of the enlarger as a tool in her process of composing the visual text of the photograph could certainly be construed as a literacy practice or event, but what to make of the relational dynamic between Kate and the enlarger?  Was there something there that was a necessary element to consider in KateÕs composing?  If so, what language was available to discuss it?  What theoretical apparatus might allow for this discussion to be sensible?    Conclusion. As students worked with their film through the process of rolling, processing, and printing it in the early stages of the study, I became aware that I did not have the tools to understand or discuss the full range of happenings I observed.  All of the moments shared in the above vignette highlight this lack and demonstrate the questions that emerged as a result.  Much in the same way that acts of creation took place in the darkroom as a result of earlier deficiencies, these early rich points in the studyÑthe absence of sense and languageÑprovided the opportunity to begin to create.  In the vignettes that follow, I will discuss more of these rich points, more such absence, and the ways in which the research team and I began to work our way towards creating the tools we were discovering we needed.  Coding Photographs  As noted in Chapter 3, after the class completed their photoethnographies and I interviewed a group of focal students, I invited those students to work with me on the next phase of the research.  It is nearly universal in qualitative empirical research design that after data is collected it is coded.  While the concept of traditional coding is by-and-large unintelligible in a NRT approach to research, it is such a convention that I failed to see how I might proceed without doing something that was, at least, coding-adjacent.  Via Gillian Rose (2012), I provided students with a heuristic for analyzing visual data which provided various entry points for   69 making sense of the photographs.  Though the students very quickly abandoned RoseÕs framework in favor of following their own logics, I can be heard in the early recordings occasionally interjecting a, ÒI think Rose might call this a genre!Ó or ÒThis seems like RoseÕs visual meanings!Ó  I so badly wanted to help the students find their way to meaningful coding schemes that in moments of doubt, I circled back to the diagram.  However, somewhere in the course of our work over those days, I also abandoned Rose and gave in to the velocity of the studentsÕ idiosyncratic approaches to organizing the photographs. What emerged from these approaches was the understanding that any category the students developed was terribly limited in any number of ways.  This was not due to faults in their logic or deficits in their knowledge, rather, it was clear that any sense made of/with the photos was not stable.  There were countless variables at play in the relations between the students and the photographs that made their categorization incredibly difficult, made all the more so given that this task was undertaken collectively, with all of the members of the research group participating in the process together. As previously discussed, I made the first distinction between portraits and still lifes as a result of comments made by Donovan and Kate during the class critique of the photoethnographies.  I felt this was a productive first step and one that would help break up the task into more palatable pieces rather than starting with all 225 photographs at once.  However, I realized later that this move had implications for what categories were available in the subsequent coding.  Mia let me know that she struggled a bit with the task because of my initial cut, ÒI wouldnÕt have done it that way.  I always see light first so I wouldÕve made the first division based on that.  Like, if it was inside and dark or outside and bright.Ó  From the outset, then, the potential meanings the students made with the photographs were limited by the   70 portrait/still life distinction though there was nothing to suggest this distinction was better or more generative than any another might be.  And yet, this same type of decision was continually made by the students as they coded the photographs.  One person would make a suggestion which was negotiated, to varying degrees, and then the group committed to a particular course of action even though there was an awareness that there were many other courses of action available.    Figure 11: The coding scheme the students designed for the portrait photographs.  Mia, Sylvia, Donovan, and I tackled the portraits first, spreading them across several tables in the photo room at one of our afterschool PhotoLab meetings.  As we looked at the photos, Donovan was trying to figure out how to approach the task, ÒI guess IÕll just go off of whatever my head tells me toÓ and suggested Òset-up versus candids? Or group pictures versus   71 singular?Ó  Sylvia affirmed this suggestion by saying, Òshould we just start with, like, candids?Ó  And then everyone started moving photographs into what ended up being the posed category and the candid category.  However, fairly immediately we ran into some challenges with what, exactly, counted as candid as evidenced by the brief excerpts of the conversation below:   Mia  Would you say this is posed or candid?   Donovan Posed.  Seems like she is looking right into the camera.   É.  Donovan Is this candid?  I canÕt tell.  I mean two people [of the   several in the photo] know [they are getting their picture taken] butÉ   Sylvia  Two people knowÉbut stillÉ   Donovan You know whatÉjustÉIÕm going to put it in candid.   É.   Sylvia  Okay.  Chloe is looking but I still think itÕs candid.   Donovan Yeah.  Candid.   É.   Amanda [holding up a photo of two sets of feet] What about this?   Mia  I think posed because of the angle.   Donovan How can you not know someoneÕs taking a picture of  your feet like that?   Sylvia  Yeah.  Posed. The students and I found that our understandings of what a candid portrait was were being challenged by the content in some of the photographs.  It was as if the meaning of candid   72 became destabilized in light of the number of photographs that fell into some sort of liminal space between candid and posed.  Can a portrait remain candid even if the subject is looking in the direction of the camera?  What if there are multiple subjects and some are looking and some arenÕt?  Does candidness depend more on the awareness of the subject rather than the gaze of the subject?  Is a portrait candid if that was the intention of the photographer?  What if there is no face in the portrait so that the awareness and gaze of the subject are unknown?  For every portrait about which we were certain it was candid, it seemed like there were an almost equal number about which we had doubts.  When a group member voiced doubts or asked other group members for help, there was no noticeable logic applied to determining whether or not something should be considered candid or posed.  Instead, the decision was always made on a case-by-case basis and seemed to largely depend on whatever feeling the students had at the time.  Mia wondered about a photo being candid but Donovan considered it posed because the subject was looking at the camera.  Later, Sylvia had questions about a photo where the subject is looking at the camera and she and Donovan decided that it was candid.  The two photographs were relatively similar but different decisions were made about eachÑone went into the posed category and one went into the candid category.   After making the candid/posed distinction, the students then evaluated each category individually beginning with the posed photos (see Figure 11).  In my stubborn commitment to Rose (2012), I reintroduced possible methods for analysis suggesting visual meanings or composition as entry points into the photos.  In spite of my moves to bring overly tidy order to the proceedings, the students largely maintained their pattern of making coding decisions on the fly.  As they began, Donovan noted one photo that stood out to him that looked like it was taken on a roadtrip.  Sylvia commented that a lot of her project photos were of her friends in various   73 locations and then said, Ògoing placesÉit was a lot of going places in general.Ó  We then started noticing several photos that were taken in a car.  The students proceeded to try to figure out if being in the car counted as an interesting place if someone was on their way to an interesting place.  This conversation seemed rather casual but ended up being the decision about how to sort the posed photographsÑbased upon the perceived location the photo was taken.  It isnÕt clear whether or not the students intended for this discussion to be a decision, but as they continued to talk, they started moving around the table and moving photos based on the ideas they were discussing.  After continued negotiation, they decided upon community, school, exploring interesting places, and studio as the categories for the posed photographs.  These categories were very idiosyncratic and would likely not apply to any other collection of posed photographs.  The community category evolved largely based on the fact that Mia worked at the YMCA and took many photographs there; which was coupled with the small handful of shots taken at homes that seemed too few in number to warrant their own category.  The studio category was created for just a few photographs taken by one student, Aria, that were the only high-concept studio shots in the project and did not fit in any other category.   For the candid photos, the students suggested sorting the photos based upon the perceived movement25 of the subjects in the photos.  The originality of this suggestion was noteworthy, particularly since they had just finished sorting the posed photos based on the place the photo was taken.  Yet, with this new set of photos the students pursued a new line of thinking.  As the candid photos were selected as such on the basis of the subjectsÕ apparent lack of knowledge of the photo, they depicted a wider range of activities than the posed photos.  This difference was a fairly noticeable one and was seemingly compelling for the students.  As we started thinking                                                              25 It is worth mentioning that movement is one of the elements of design that all of the photo students have learned about from Ms. McCurry.   74 about how to work with the concept of movement, Mia introduced an idea that proved confounding:  Mia  How about a category of, like, people taking pictures of  peopleÕs backs?  Donovan Oh! É Yeah.  I see what you meanÉ  Mia  Because I see, likeÉ  Sylvia  YeahÉthere is a lot from behind.  Here is this oneÉthat  oneÉ(handing some photos of backs over to Mia)  Amanda Then this is going to get hard because it this a moving  person or is it a back?  Because, it could be bothÉ?  (holding up a photo)  Sylvia  Yeah.  Because I was just going to say that I have a  moving back (holding out the moving back photo).   [everyone laughing]  Sylvia  Dibs on that band name!!!  Dibs on that band nameÉ  Donovan Moving backs.  Sylvia  Active backs.  Donovan OkayÉletÕs do moving backs or whatever  [everyone begins placing photos of moving backs to one side]  Mia  These are all moving. (all of the backs photos)  Sylvia  I think they all are except that one of people sitting.   Donovan HmmÉI donÕt know (what to do since now there is a    75 category of backs that only has one photo while moving backs has acquired all the others).  Sylvia  I donÕt know.  I think maybe just movement. Amanda I donÕt know.  Maybe backs is taking us in a weird direction.  Then, I guess there is a question of if there is some movement, but notÉ Mia ThatÕs why I was saying backs because the movement is hard to describe.  I guess maybe it was just not seeing a face.  É. Amanda What about this one with the bike?  (holding a close up of a bikeÕs handlebars with hands holding on to the bike and an iPhone simultaneously)  I canÕt tell if heÕs movingÉbut, does the bike imply movement?  Sylvia  (dramatic stage exhale) Amanda I know!!!  It is getting weird!  Maybe we should just take a time out. Sylvia Seriously.  IÕm sweating.  IÕm getting so worked up right now (smiling). Though the idea of having a backs category was fully accepted due to the overwhelming number of candid photos with backs in them, the team discovered that incorporating backs with the idea of movement produced too many tangles to ultimately be useful.   However, eliminating backs and focusing solely on movement was not without its difficulties.  The students decided upon active movement, everyday movement, and non-  76 movement as the final categories.  Though, there were still some photos that just didnÕt seem to fit any category or required making distinctions that felt arbitrary.  For instance, Mia had taken a photograph of some of her young dance students as they were receiving instructions.  The subjects appeared largely stationary, but it was clear that they were in the middle of a dance class.  We all deferred to Mia who ended up splitting the difference and putting it in everyday movement.  After this decision, Mia suggested that we actually create a continuum from active movement to semi-movement/everyday movement to non-movement to eliminate the need to make sharp distinctions.  This would have allowed photos that were difficult to categorize to remain in gray areas that would be sanctioned through the continuum model.  All the photos were already coded and were spread out on the table in some semblance of a continuum so this idea was not fully attended to or taken up by the research group at that time. Three days later we met to code the still life photographs.  This time, the group was larger with Kate and Mara joining Mia, Donovan, Sylvia, and I.  The process of looking for patterns and creating categories continued much in the same way as it had during our work with the portraits.  The absence of human bodies as the subjects of the photographs resulted in many of the coding distinctions centering on place-based categories, categories based on the subject of the photograph, as well as categories based on different photographic techniques like depth-of-field and lighting (see Figure 12).  We engaged in similar negotiations and difficulties, but not nearly as many as we had encountered with the portraits.  Without human subjects, it seemed as if there was less debate about what we were seeing.  Instead, debates focused on the conceptual nuances of the categories.  For instance, does school count as public or privateÉand, what about a specific classroom?  These conceptual debates were usually resolved in the somewhat mysterious fashion observed previously wherein someone would make a point and others would   77 just begin to act.  One remarkable occurrence during the coding of the still lifes was that the idea of a continuum was floated again, this time by Kate, and was taken up in earnest.  Three of the final seven categories made use of what the students ended up terming a gradient in which there were not sharp distinctions made in the previous x versus y model but rather offered a spectrum from x to y.  In fact, in the nature category, the team created two simultaneous gradients with the photos organized with brighter photos at the top through the darkest photos at the bottom; and, with photos that had a specific object as the subject on the left through to photos with more broad landscapes on the right.  The team felt that the gradients allowed them the freedom to take advantage of the liminal spaces between categories and, in the case of the nature photos, to explore two different logics at once.  It was not completely clear why this idea took root during the still life coding session but not during the portrait coding session.  Figure 12: The coding scheme the students designed for the still life photographs.   78 Conclusion. There are various ways to construe the studentsÕ idiosyncratic categorization of the photos, all of which point to a complex, dynamic system of relations.  The photographic text in question was obviously a key consideration in these relations.  Any given photograph offered a set of possible codes and excluded others.  Sometimes every member of the group had similar notions of what was possible and what was not.  Other times, it was difficult for the group to decide what they were actually seeing and what it might mean.   This difficulty often seemed exacerbated by the exertion of time scales on the whole of the enterprise.  Earlier decisions were brought to bear later on in the process, eliminating the ability to choose some categories that might be available had we done something differently.  Though the group made a decision to eliminate the backs category, the subject came up again, several times, about how many backs we were seeing and what it might mean.  In the end, we all wished there was a way to deal with backs that had somehow functioned better with the other categories.  How, then, might I account for the ways time implicated studentsÕ sense-making with the photographs? Another element that had implications for the studentsÕ coding choices were the social dynamics of the process.  The social dynamics included the past, present, and the future as the social relationships between the members of the research group evolved.  Mia was a bit softer spoken at this stage of the project and had less of a history with other members of the research group.  Perhaps this was a factor in the group not fully attending to her suggestion to create a continuum.  Whereas Kate was more gregarious and was friends with Sylvia which might have made it easier for her suggestion of a continuum to be heard and taken up.  Yet these relationships were always changing.  When we began, Kate and Sylvia were close but then Sylvia and Donovan became closer.  Donovan and Mia both graduated before the project was   79 over which shifted them into roles as older and wiser college freshmen.  Kate and Mia both worked for the YMCA and as activities increased in the summer so did the closeness of their relationship.  As we wrapped up the project, Kate and Sylvia were still at LHS and were in a class together for building their art portfolios for college, which renewed the strength of their friendship.  If the research team and I wanted to consider the social world as part of the context for the studentsÕ sense-making, how would we do it?  Which social world?  Or, maybe, when social world?  Could these relations, which were constantly in flux, somehow be mapped even if they fractured across different timescales?    Finally, the coding of the photographs illuminated the ways that the students sometimes worked their way towards sense through talk and the movement of their bodies.  Many times in the coding process a student would begin to talk about what s/he was seeing in the photographs and bodies would just start moving, acting on the talk as it was occurring.  In acting out the talk, the group was thinking with our bodies.  In our movements, we were testing the emerging sense of the categories.  By moving the photographs around and moving ourselves around the tables to gain different vantage points, we were thinking our way to categories with our bodies.  Were our bodies materializing the talk?  Did the talk and the movement create one another?  And, where did sense emerge? Talking about Text The following excerpt from one of the PhotoLab transcripts underscores the questions about the relationship between talk and emergent meaning that were discussed in the previous section.  As noted in the introduction to this chapter, the excerpt should be read as a demonstration of the way that the research group struggled with language to adequately account for the ways the sense emerges through sets of relations with texts.   80 Donovan But the thing is as an artist you shouldnÕt listen to the viewer, I would think.  It should be what is coming from you. Sylvia  ItÕs hard, though, when youÕre getting graded on it (laughter). Kate I think also -- sometimes weÕll take pictures -- especially in a project like this -- I donÕt know if you guys were just talking about this -- not that the pictures would look boring but you would be like, ÒA backyard of somebody,Ó but to somebody else thatÕs their life and so I think -- Mara  How it has whole different meanings. Kate Yeah.  [Ms. McCurry] kind of gives a perspective of someone who might not necessarily know the story behind it or whatever so if a picture looks kind of bland she can be like, ÒAlright well thatÕs not really coming across,Ó and then you can make your decision. Amanda So thatÕs interesting -- the way you treat a subject matter -- thereÕs ways to capture it that maybe can communicate deeper meaning to a stranger and there are ways to capture it that maybe wouldnÕt communicate that where youÕre like, ÒThis is just a backyard?Ó  I wonder if part of that is developing that artistic eye, you know? Mara IÕve always thought of it in a different, less glamorous way.  You know when an English teacher reads a sentence like, ÒThe sky was blue,Ó and youÕre like, ÒWhy do you think they use the color blue?Ó  ÒBecause the sky is blue.Ó  They look for meaning where it really isnÕt sometimes which is in some ways -- if youÕre like, ÒOh, youÕre praising my picture and you   81 found meaning in it, good for you, thank you for that,Ó but then in other times itÕs like, ÒThat really wasnÕt supposed to mean anything.Ó Sylvia  Some people overthink and -- Kate ItÕs like that with poems in English.  The only reason I bring it up is because I know youÕre [Amanda] more of an English -- when we studied certain poems, I think English has literally has ruined some of my favorite -- because they analyze every single thing and even with creative writing -- I used to like Òcreative writeÓ when I was younger and honestly I would just kind of write something because it was part of the story, you know, just going along.  They will literally be like, ÒWhy did they use a comma here, but not here?Ó and itÕs really -- I understand thereÕs like syntax stuff, but itÕs -- sometimes I feel itÕs not there, you know -- sometimes itÕs just -- I took this and it ended up being cool. Donovan I agree but sometimes visual clues -- or just clues -- IÕm thinking more movies right now -- like visual clues -- I know in like -- my favorite director is David Lynch so in all his movies like Mulholland Drive or whatever -- there are different visual clues youÕre supposed to pick up on that reveals deeper meaning or something.  So -- I know it sounds stupid but sometimes when the lampshade is red or something -- itÕs like, ÒWhat does that matter,Ó but sometimes that can mean something -- like that can mean something -- or tell the viewer something. Kate Have you ever seen the movie Heathers?  IÕve read this article and itÕs probably just somebody being stupid --   82 Donovan WasnÕt that Winona Ryder? Kate I love her.  But I read this entire article and I donÕt know if there was any truth in it or if somebody just over-analyzed this and found this, but hereÕs a lot of red vs. blue in that movie and they wrote this entire thing about how itÕs about communism vs. the American being the blue and this kind of war that was going on and there are places where thereÕs red and blue in the shot and itÕs like the conflict -- it was kind of crazy -- and of course I rewatched the movie and I was like, ÒOh my god.Ó Amanda So this is a weird question that I think is coming up -- so if we think about texts -- even if we go to thinking about friends as texts, or schools -- whatever -- all the different movies and things we are thinking about -- where is the meaning?  Because youÕre talking about different people looking at the same thing and youÕre saying like, ÒI just took that pictureÓ or whatever or you think about David Lynch and visual cues -- could you watch that film and have no idea about the visual cues and still interpret it or read it in one way?  Do you see what IÕm saying?  So is the meaning with the artist, is the meaning in the text, and is the meaning with the person who views it? Donovan ItÕs hard because from what IÕm thinking now, right away is itÕs in the person who created it. Mara There are going to be cues that no one else is going to pick up except those certain people.   83 Donovan Exactly.  Exactly.  So youÕre going to be the one -- someone will be like, ÒThis was a happy picture,Ó but you could be like, ÒNo, I was totally miserable.Ó Or ÒI hate thisÓ you know? Mara See I kind of get that -- what you were first saying like can you get the meaning across.  I get that when I read a lot.  Our English teacher is like, ÒOh, look at this word and the syntax and all thatÓ and IÕm like, ÒI just get this feel off of it that I didnÕt need to look into the words to see that.Ó  ItÕs just kind of there. Amanda ThatÕs an interesting idea. Kate It makes me think of -- and no one has ever done this to me -- but in movies where the therapists show the blob and (laughter) but that -- Sylvia  What do you see?  A man stabbing a woman (laughter). Amanda I see a humming bird so let me talk to you about that. Donovan So let me talk to you about that (laughter). Kate I think itÕs one of those questions that you canÕt really --- it can be anywhere; meaning can be anywhere.  I mean -- it might be more prevalent in certain places in an image or in a whatever -- but -- Mara Certain people might relate to it differently and interpret it differently.  Like that backyard analogy.  If itÕs your own backyard, youÕre going to have a different meaning, but if itÕs your friendÕs back yard, itÕs going to have a different meaning. Amanda Yeah.  ItÕs like when you [Kate] were describing to us on Thursday -- somebodyÕs backyard Ð CharlieÕs backyard -- because itÕs a picture of a   84 table and weÕre like, ÒItÕs a table,Ó but youÕre like, ÒWait -- and thereÕs this ravine and thereÕs a hot tub ÐÓ right -- thereÕs different levels. Mara  And itÕs a nice gulley, or whatever you were saying. Amanda Yeah.  ThatÕs a nice gulley.  But thatÕs an interesting idea about feeling.  I think youÕre getting at this a little bit too, Kate, when youÕre talking about poems -- the over-analyzing -- that sometimes maybe you can be like, ÒOh this is about the Cold War,Ó but on a first read maybe itÕs just more about some kind of -- I donÕt know -- Mara  Internal conflict orÉ Amanda I donÕt know.  ItÕs just a feeling you get. Donovan A connection. Sylvia  Yeah.  An initial vibe. Mara Sometimes it bugs me when you try to put things into words that donÕt need to be into words or shouldnÕt be put into words.   Whereas you get that vibe and you donÕt want to describe it, you just feel it. Amanda You just feel it?  So in those ways do you think that visual -- creating visual texts in those moments make it easier to communicate that vibe or that feeling than it would be if you had to write something down on paper? Kate  Oh, God, yeah (laughter). Amanda Ms. Daniels liked that one (the Art Department chair who had just walked in the room and, upon hearing this exchange, started laughing).   85 Mara ItÕs really hard to put your feelings into words if you donÕt know what youÕre feeling, really.  You feel that you donÕt want to explain it.  ItÕs just kind of there.   Kate  And not to be corny but thatÕs really why I like photography --  Mara  You donÕt have to explain it really. É. Donovan I totally agree with that.  I can go on forever -- but not be able to communicate in words.  I donÕt know if you [Amanda] remember but when we were talking about it at Wegmans or whatever [during our one-to-one interview after the photoethnography project] -- sometimes when youÕd ask me what the meaning of a picture was that I took IÕd just go on forever and IÕd be like, ÒI really donÕt knowÓ and IÕm like, ÒI donÕt know.  I just took this and somehow I just had a connection.Ó Sylvia It was in the moment and it looked good so you snapped it and thought maybe it would come out. Donovan WasnÕt there a word for that? Amanda Affect?  Donovan Yeah.  It just happened in the moment and I was just like, ÒThere.Ó Amanda Yeah.  This is a word that IÕve started to really like as IÕve been thinking about the work that you guys have done is this idea of affect, which is exactly what youÕre talking about -- vibe is another good way to think about it -- itÕs like the core ingredients of what an emotion is, but before your brain or -- before you have time to process it -- itÕs just like that   86 feeling.  When Mara and I were talking you were doing this a lot [making a gesture with both hands simultaneously making circles in front of the body]-- itÕs that kind of thing -- thereÕs this -- itÕs before you have time to process whatÕs happening but itÕs that -- I wonder if thatÕs the moment when you decide to take a picture and when you donÕt?  Like when youÕre just taking candids and stuff.  ThereÕs just something that moves you -- or when you read a poem and you just read it and you think, ÒOh,Ó itÕs when you have some kind of response to it and you might not be able to dissect down to the nitty gritty. Mara You donÕt register right away, youÕre like, ÒI took this picture because it felt,Ó -- I donÕt know. Donovan You just get a feeling and then youÕre just there. Mara  You donÕt even acknowledge it sometimes. Amanda Yeah. Donovan Yeah.  You donÕt think in your head, youÕre not like, ÒIÕm getting this feeling right now,Ó you just get that feeling and then do it and then after youÕre like, ÒOh.Ó Conclusion  Though it was not always clear at the time, the moments captured in these vignettes were rich points that evolved to be the very heart of the study.  The dynamic relations involved in studentsÕ everyday literacies often confounded my ability to name what I was seeing using the currently available formulations of literacies, as well as the theoretical and methodological tools used to study them.  As the research team found ourselves struggling to make sense of these   87 relations, we were compelled to look for new tools to assist us.  While the theoretical tools and the pragmatic details of the methodological tools have previously been described, the following chapter considers how the research group used those tools to deeply study the literacy experiences captured in some of the photographs produced through the photoethnography project.     88 CHAPTER 5 Ñ THE EXPLORATION OF LITERACY EXPERIENCE(S): PARTICIPANT ART-MAKING AS ANALYSIS AND INTERPRETATION  Everything we see hides another thing, we always want to see what is hidden by what we see.  There is an interest in that which is hidden and which the visible does not show us.  This interest can take the form of a quite intense feeling, a sort of conflict, one might say, between the visible that is hidden and the visible that is present.   Ñ Ren” Magritte Introduction As the epigraph by Magritte, above, suggests, this chapter will consider how Sylvia, Donovan, Kate, and Mia sought to discover and account for the visible that remained hidden in the images taken for the photoethnography project.  After many weeks of discussion about the corpus of photographs produced by the class, the research group decided that they wanted to select a handful of photographs from the class projects that they found particularly compelling to further study.  Upon the failure of our vocabulary to account for what we learned in the process of conducting the earlier stages of research, as demonstrated through the vignettes in the previous chapter, we devised this art-making endeavor as a method for exploring the contours of the literacy experiences depicted in/with the focal photographs.  Once we could conceive of the photographs as attempted representations of literacy experience that captured things that were more-than-representational, art gave us a way to access or, in some instances, materialize some of the participants in these literacy experiences.  In an attempt to raise the various layers of meaning that the group was seeing in and making with the images, we employed art-making as a means of analysis.  What emerges from this art-making and the talk the group did about the artwork offers a look at complex literacy experiences which entail moving bodies, intense   89 relations, fractured timescales, unstable texts, and the studentsÕ implacable adaptation to the ever-shifting sense they made in/through/with the photographs they studied.  For the objects of their art-making analysis, both Donovan and Mia selected only their own photos to study while Sylvia and Kate selected their own photos as well as one photo each by another student.  There were no specific parameters given for how the students might study the photographs through their art-making beyond a conversation we had in which we discussed the method.  That conversation took place in a Starbucks and I shared with the students a small sample project I created using Maureen MichaelÕs (2015) notion of Òintegrated imageworkÓ (p. 70) as a starting point.  The project that I completed utilized the same artistic techniques described in the ArtLab section of the chapter on methods, only on a much smaller (4Ó by 6Ó) scale.  For the transparencies, I used line drawings, painting, and written annotations in an attempt to materialize the meanings I was making in and with the photograph.  I presented this as a sample of what we might do in order to study some of the photographs in-depth through art-making.  The students really responded to the sample and fairly quickly decided to give the method a shot as our final analysis of the photographs.  Though we discussed the fact that the students could do anything they wanted to do with the transparencies, or, as some of the students called them, slides, many of them took up the techniques that were in the sample I created.  Therefore, most of the artwork that the students created with the photographs made use of line drawings, painting, and annotations.  However, some of the students veered a bit from these more universal techniques by using texture, spray-paint, found materials, and eschewing annotations in order to highlight relations in idiosyncratic ways.  Some of those choices were happenstance while others were part of what the students considered their individual style or aesthetic.  It is also worth noting that Sylvia and Donovan completed their art pieces at my   90 house, together, during an art work-day we scheduled.  Both Kate and Mia completed their art pieces on their own (after I delivered their requested materials to them) as their schedules did not permit them to come to the work-day.  The fact that some students worked at the same time and others worked independently made their similarities and differences compelling.      To examine the studentsÕ art-making analyses, this chapter is organized to mirror the final meeting of ArtLab where each student presented their individual art pieces and the results of their analysis.  So, the chapter unfolds in sections dedicated to each student and their work.  Each section is multivocal with the focal student presenting their work, the other students discussing the work, my analytical voice, and my attempts at making-sense of what is produced by and through the relationship between these voices.  It is also worth noting that the sections vary widely in length and in depth as each studentÕs approach to the work, relative comfort and engagement in the conversation, and complexity of connection-building were in no way consistent. Sylvia  Sylvia took a rather minimalist approach to her work in ArtLab.  She elected to study two photographs, one of her own and one of DonovanÕs.  For each work, she created two slides to overlay the photograph she was studying.  These slides were done in a measured, modern style with Sylvia focusing her attention on a few meaningful details or ideas in the photograph.  She did not attempt to capture everything that might be said or felt about the images, rather, she highlighted the relations that were the most salient to her at the time of the art-making.   91  Figure 13: SylviaÕs subway tunnel art piece with the slides on top of the photo (left) and above the photo (right).   Three kids in the subway.  The first piece that Sylvia created used one of her own photos as the subject of the work.  It was a photograph of three young people sitting on a ledge in the defunct subway tunnels in Rochester.  This location was a somewhat popular location for the students to take photos during the photoethnography project.  In PhotoLab it was suggested that it was an obvious choice due to the copious amounts of graffiti in the tunnels which automatically insured thematic relevance with the Òtexts in livesÓ prompt for the project.  Sylvia said that this was, in fact, the reason she had taken photos in the subway.  She maintained, throughout the entirety of the project, that text was simply written words on a page and that she couldnÕt think of it any differently.  And yet, she still raised relations that were not strictly alphabetic-based in her work and in her comments on her peersÕ work.  This might appear to be an inconsistency in her view of text, however, Sylvia was perfectly comfortable holding both   92 ideas at the same time.  When asked to provide a definition, she held to the traditional definition; but, when in conversation with the group about various facets of communication and other similar themes or in her creation of her artwork, she strayed far from this restrictive definition.  For the subway piece, each slide that Sylvia created to overlay the photograph was used primarily to demonstrate the relationship between her and the subjects in the photograph.  On one slide there was a line drawing of all of the subjects in the photograph to highlight what was, to her, the most important element in the shot.  Sylvia preferred this slide to be the first slide put on top of the photograph.  She noted, ÒI like it when I put the outline one on first because then everyone is equal and then I put the thing that separates everyone.Ó  What separated everyone was the status of their relationship with Sylvia at the time that she did the art piece.  Therefore, the next slide had textured, white ÒsnowÓ surrounding each of the subjects on the outside of the group and a gold outline surrounding the subject in the middle.  She said, ÒI put snow around people who I donÕt talk to anymore and then gold over Rose because I donÕt talk to her anymore [only because] sheÕs in college.Ó  Kate responded to SylviaÕs method for materializing relationships and attempted to explore the nuances of sense that were possible in the snow:   Kate   I think itÕs cool how the snow is around the people you donÕt talk to anymore because when I think of, like, snow, I think of being cold to someone orÉ  Sylvia  Yeah, itÕs a cold shoulder kind of thing.  Kate  Well also not to be morbid, but deathÉof the death of a friendship or something like that.  And then gold is happyÉ    93 Amanda I actually thought, before [Sylvia] said it was snowÉI thought they were ashes, like it was burned to the ground and that they were sitting in a pile of ashes.  Sylvia It has a similar meaning, soÉ In this way, Sylvia searched for a visual metaphor to demonstrate the relations between her and the subjects in her photograph.  At the outset of the project, they were all friends and were hanging out so she created a line drawing to communicate a unity between them; but, by the end, she was no longer friends with two of the people and used the snow and the gold to capture the rupture in the relationship.  The slides might also be considered SylviaÕs attempt to materialize the affective intensities that she experienced across different timescales in her relationships to the subjects in the photo and in her relationship to the photo itself.   It is also worth noting that SylviaÕs intended meaning in the snow clearly communicated her feelings to both Kate and I, even though we all had different ideas about what we were seeing.  To Sylvia, the snow evoked a cold shoulder while to Kate, it evoked a death of friendship.  I didnÕt see snow at all, rather, ashes from a relationship that had burnt out.  So, while the meaning largely maintained its stability through different viewings, the actual signifier of the meaning was somewhat unstable.    Donovan noted the serendipity regarding the composition of the photograph and began to tease out the implications:  Donovan ItÕs kind of funny how Rose is in the middle.   Sylvia   Yeah, that just worked out.  Donovan  If the gold person was on the left, it would beÉ   Sylvia  I wouldÕve done it differently if that was the case.   94 There is a sense that the past somehow cooperated or participated with a future reality through the composition of the photograph.  In October, these three young people likely just sat down while they were exploring the tunnels, paying little to no attention to the order in which they sat.  Yet, they somehow set up a perfectly symmetrical composition for Sylvia to create this beautifully balanced art piece in June.  Even so, Sylvia noted that the composition of the photograph disciplined her choices as an artist and that a different compositionÑa different textÑwould have offered some other opportunities within the constraint of an imagined asymmetrical composition.  There was another moment that captured SylviaÕs ambivalence about what text actually means.  On the slide that had the snow and the gold line drawing, she made an annotation that made note of the words that were on the shirt of the guy on the left, ÒMY PASSION LIES IN MY OWN EARSÓ.  When she was describing the slide, Sylvia nonchalantly said, Òthen I just pulled out what his shirt said.Ó  Thinking that this might be another instance of Sylvia taking advantage of an element of the photograph which might underscore her relationships with the subjects, I asked her, ÒWhy did you do that?Ó  To which she replied, Òbecause there was a neat little quote and textÉthis is life and text,Ó and then moved on to the next element in the slide.  She did not intend for the quote to carry any type of relational weight, though it could easily do so.  Rather, she viewed the t-shirt as simply an instance where she could make note of the literal words that were present in the photograph.  Sylvia also noted that she really liked the song that those lyrics were from and thought that was a ÒcoolÓ element of the photo that they lyrics were present in it.  I found it curious that she did not attempt to draw particular attention to the graffiti in the photograph.  However, as previously noted, SylviaÕs focus in this piece was to materialize relations confined to the human subjects in the photograph.  When I noticed, verbally, to Sylvia   95 that she did not highlight the graffiti she shared that she considered the graffiti to be part of the backdrop of the photograph more than the focal point and that what was most striking to her were the people in the picture and their relationships to her over time.   Figure 14: SylviaÕs Wegmans art piece with the slides on top of the photo (left) and above the photo (right).   WegmansÕ city. SylviaÕs second art piece used one of DonovanÕs photographs from his photoethnography project.  It is shot of an incredibly popular local grocery store, Wegmans.  The architecture of the store itself has a very mid-century aesthetic and the lighting of the photo also evokes a certain 60Õs-advertisement-photo feeling, betrayed only by the types of cars in the parking lot.  When I asked Sylvia why she chose this shot of DonovanÕs to work with in her art-making, she said, Òit had a lot of open space I knew I could work on a lot for the project.  And, honestly, I love WegmansÉthis is actually my home Wegmans that IÕm at every Sunday with   96 my mom.Ó  Her motivation for studying this photo was driven by the artistic opportunities that the composition offered her as well as a deep connection to the placeÑboth Wegmans generally and this particular Wegmans specifically, as well as Rochester, the city her suburban town of Lakeside bordered.  SylviaÕs treatment of this photo is similar to her subway piece in that it is very focused and very stylistically modern.  Her emphasis in this piece was to explore the idea of place and her relationship to/with her hometown, using Wegmans as an anchor.  Sylvia completed this piece at my house and when she finished it she told me that she wanted the slides to Òlook like a different pictureÓ when viewed by themselves.  On one slide, she used the negative space of the sky above the store to create a line drawing of an imagined city with the outline of the store and its windows to serve as a bridge.  She also did line drawings of some of the cars from the parking lot, but only those that formed a straight line so that it Òlooked like a streetÓ.  On the other slide, she used gold paint to create a sun, illuminate the windows in the city buildings, and to paint the WegmansÕ sign.  Through her creation of an imagined city on the slides, Sylvia created an interesting juxtaposition between the urban and the virtually Platonic ideal of suburban life captured in DonovanÕs photograph.  She told me that she wanted others that viewed the work to Òbe surprisedÓ by the different visions of place that were offered by the slides and the photograph.  It was important to her that an audience would be offered various ways to imagine the city and the urban/suburban (dis)junction through the different spaces and the way they were illuminated.  When Sylvia presented this work to the group, she and Kate talked about these constructions of the real and imagined city: Sylvia And this is the lights of the city, showing two different perspectives of the same place.   97 Kate I know that a lot of people are like, ÒOh, Rochester is blahÉÓ but this is so Rochester.  I mean that in a really good way. Sylvia Wegmans is a huge part of my life; I love Wegmans. Kate Well, like, yeahÉbut even the cityÉthat reminds me of the Kodak building. Amanda Me too. Sylvia I did that on purpose (said with sarcasm and followed by the groupÕs laughter).  This is RochesterÕs history. Kate So it looks very likeÉlike you could tell itÕs somebodyÕs hometown. Though Sylvia did not intentionally draw the cityscape to match RochesterÕs skyline, the tallest building was evocative of the tallest building in Rochester, the Kodak Tower (see Figure 15 for reference).  The city that Sylvia drew was, to her, simply a city of her imagining but the dominant structure in her imagined city is virtually identical to the dominant structure in her actual city.  It may have been the case that the affective intensity produced through her connection of Wegmans to her home moved her to subconsciously draw the Kodak Tower in her imaginary cityscape.  The weight of home, imbued in Wegmans, led to the real being blurred with the imagined as Sylvia drew her city.      98  Figure 15: A photograph of the Kodak Tower by Viktor Nagornyy.  Licensed under Creative Commons.  Finally, Sylvia, as the first to present her work to the group, was the first person to suggest an idea that was taken up and spoken about by the other artistsÑthat aesthetics is somehow independent of cognition.  When she showed us the slide with the gold illuminations of the sun and the lights in the windows, I asked her what her motivation was for this move.  She somewhat sheepishly responded: Sylvia Yeah, it just showsÉIÕm going to be honest with youÉI didnÕt have a specific thought process but I just thought it added more light to the city.   99 Amanda Was it just that you were kind of feeling it? Sylvia Yeah, I wanted it to look like it was lighting up.  It didnÕt really look like that at the end in the windows because they are all kind of off but thatÕs what I wanted it to look like.  With theÉlike they were lighting up. Mia It makes it look pretty. Amanda It does.  And I think it does look lit up, too. Donovan Yeah.  The sun, I feel, matches the picture too.  How, like, the photo is lit up.  I mean, thereÕs soft light about it so the sun kind of goes with it. Sylvia noted that she didnÕt have a Òspecific thought processÓ but was just aiming for a specific aesthetic look.  Mia affirmed this choice, saying that the lit up windows were pleasing and Donovan extended the conversation to the golden sun, suggesting that in adding it, Sylvia matched the original aesthetic of the photo.  This move to separate aesthetic or artistic choices from ÒthinkingÓ or other cognitive-based actions is one that is repeated by all of the artists and certainly warrants deeper consideration. Donovan Donovan elected to take a series of new photographs from which to select focal images for the ArtLab phase of the project.  Though there were a handful of object-based or still life photos in DonovanÕs original photoethnographic self-study, a majority of his photos were portraits of friends.  It was therefore no surprise when the new photos he took, including those he chose to be focal photographs in the art-making process, were all portraits.  Donovan created four art pieces, all of which used his own photos.  His work focused primarily on the human subjects in the photographs and his relationship to these subjects, both at the time the photograph was taken and at the time he was studying the photograph.  In his talk about his artwork,   100 Donovan repeatedly referred to the people in the photographs and the various messages conveyed through their bodies.  One idea that Donovan consistently invoked as being embedded in the portraits is the zeitgeist.  This conceptualization of the zeitgeist was offered to the group by Donovan as a way of thinking about how the presence of cultural texts in/on bodies flowed powerfully through his (and other artistsÕ) portrait photographs.  In addition to his relationships to the human subjects in the photos, these cultural texts were foregrounded in his coding of his focal photographs. Donovan made use of the ubiquitous line drawing on his slides to highlight both people and objects he found to be important in the photographs.  He liberally used paint in unique and evocative ways to gesture towards how he was reading the zeitgeist in the images.  Donovan also wrote many verbal annotations on the slides to make notes, ask questions, add song lyrics, and convey his feelings about the subjects and settings of the photographs.  In this way, Donovan sought to raise a wide variety of feelings and ideas that were part of his sense-making in/with/through the photographs in what seems to be his attempt at capturing everything that he deemed important.   101  Figure 16: DonovanÕs Jesus art piece with the slides on top of the photo (left) and above the photo (right).   The Jesus one. For the piece we took to calling The Jesus One, the reasons for which are outlined below, Donovan painted the board for the piece gold and created three slides for the photograph.  One slide was painted gold, save for negative space he created so that the two human subjects in the photo might be seen when it was overlayed on the photo.  The second slide was a line drawing of these human subjects and a few of the objects in the photo, like the central figureÕs flower crown and water bottle, as well as both girlsÕ bags.  The third slide had written annotations.     102 Donovan explained that, though he wasnÕt a religious person26, he was Ògetting major Jesus vibesÓ from this picture, hence the name of the piece that evolved.  He suggested this was a result of the warm, golden tone of the photograph and the way the figure at the center, his friend Chloe, was lit by the sun, Òit hits her right in the head and everything else just glows from it.Ó  Add to that the crown of flowers on her head and Donovan was instantly put in mind of religious iconography, particularly from the Renaissance.  He said of his related art-making decisions: I spray painted this whole thing gold.  Aesthetically, mostly.  There really wasnÕt that much purpose.  Except something is really religious about this to me.  Chloe looks like Jesus.  Sylvia looks like Judas.  Like very Renaissance.  Her crown looks like the crown of thorns. Apart from his reading the photograph as religious, it is worth noting that Donovan, here, tried to separate intentionality from aesthetics, suggesting that his artistic decisions were different than well-thought-out cognitive decisions.  The lighting, the flower crown, and the composition acted together with/on Donovan such that he created his slides according to his ÒvibesÓ.  And, even as he was declaring there was no purpose in his choice to paint one of the slides and the whole board gold, he began to list reasons for his approach that might be construed as a description of his purposeful choices.  However, to him, painting Òthe whole thing goldÓ seemed to be more about feeling, or, I might suggest, more about experiencing affective intensities, than it was about cognition.  He felt Òmajor Jesus vibesÓ and just grabbed the gold spray paint.                                                              26 Donovan and I had discussed this earlier in the project when he shared a bit about his upbringing.  His parents moved to the United States from Bosnia several years before his birth to flee all of the unrest in that region.  He thought their experiences of living under dictatorships and seeing the harm caused by unyielding dogma led them to raise him in a way that appreciated difference in all its forms.  This conversation was very present to me during his discussion of this piece, though neither he nor I brought it up at that time.  This bit of his history, though, I see deeply impacting his sense-making with this particular piece.   103 In addition to the religious meaning that Donovan made of/with the photograph, he also noted several other cultural messages contained in the image which he largely raised through his verbal annotations.  Speaking of Sylvia, the other subject in the photo:  Donovan So, she was giving me Pulp Fiction vibes because I always said that with her pink hair she reminds me of MiaÉ? Sylvia  That doesnÕt make sense27.   Donovan I know.  Mia Wallace!  She reminds me of Mia Wallace so much.  I donÕt know why.  The pink hair doesnÕt make sense.  I think itÕs just how it is cut? For reasons he could not fully account for, he read Sylvia as a character from a film though, arguably, the actual resemblance between her and Mia Wallace was not particularly obvious.  In this way, the relations between Sylvia and Mia Wallace were actually rather nonsensical, but still produced in Donovan a particular reading of the image as containing a cultural referent to/from Pulp Fiction.  SylviaÕs pink hair was part of another element of the zeitgeist that Donovan coded in his focal photographsÑfashion.  He was very in tune with the ways that people were dressed and commented that fashion and/or personal aesthetic was another way that cultural texts are communicated through bodies.  Though there was no formal system for noting when the sartorial aesthetic of a subject qualified for zeitgeist status, Donovan knew it when he saw it.  One barometer he seemed to use was considering how the photograph might be viewed in ten or twenty years.  If the style in the photograph was distinct enough that it might seem ÒweirdÓ to a person in another time, then Donovan deemed it to be an indicator of the zeitgeist.                                                              27 The character of Mia Wallace in Pulp Fiction has jet black hair.   104  In describing this piece, Donovan also referenced the notion of a Golden Age of life through his annotations.  He noted this as he circled back to the gold paint he used on the wood and on one of the transparency layers,   ÒGold was a big color of [that] summer for me.  Golden Age of my life is how I describe it.  I guess I might have another Golden Age of my lifeÉI donÕt know.Ó  The trope of the Golden Age of youth was present in all of the artwork that Donovan created.  He incorporated gold paint in all of them.  All of his pieces were made during the summer after he graduated from high school and before he went off to college and the force of that nostalgia streamed through the ways that he treated each of the photographs in his artwork.  In this particular piece, there were several written annotations that sought to capture DonovanÕs nostalgia.  It is worth noting that when Donovan presented this piece to the group and drew our attention to these types of annotations, he always verbally hedged as a means to somewhat distance himself from his own emotions, as evidenced in the following description he provided: Then I wrote, ÒThe start of an exciting and one of the best summers,Ó because IÕm corny.  (laughter)  It was a really great summer.  This summer was a big milestone in a lot of things because itÕs me starting college and the end of high school and me and Sylvia and Chloe basically just started becoming best friends during that time.  Also it was a really stressful summer too because of work and dealing with college stuff and IÕm like not being able to see those thots28 anymore.  (laughter)  Oh I was corny, I wrote ÒMy best friends; I miss them.Ó                                                              28 This is pronounced th/aw/t and is an acronym that means Òthat hoe over thereÓ.  The word came out of the Chicago hip-hop scene with many suggesting that videographer Duan Gaines is the one who began its popular use on social media like Twitter, Instagram, and Snapchat.  As Donovan was an avid user of these platforms, my assumption is that this is where he learned the term, though that was never confirmed.  Donovan was the only student in the study who used it as a word in his oral language and he did so, often, as a term of endearment, a move that inverted its generally understood meaning.   105 In front of the whole research group, he struggled to fully own his emotions around the nostalgia produced through his relationship with the photographs, but shared with the group the ways in which these photographs produced a lot of feelings for him.        Figure 17: DonovanÕs Lolita art piece with the slides on top of the photo (left) and above the photo (right).  Lolita. This piece was DonovanÕs favorite.  The photo was a portrait of his friend Emma on an afternoon that they were sunbathing on her roof.  He said that when he saw the first prints from this roll of film, that he knew that he would use this image for the project.  Donovan called this the Lolita picture because there was something in it that evoked that story for him.  He never fully described the exact nature or explanation for this impression, but, much like his response to the Jesus photo, he made a rather instant connection between the image and the character.  He finished this piece at my house and told me a bit about it just after it was completed:   106 Donovan  It (the photo) reminded me of Lolita so much.  Even though Lolita has, like, the grossest themes in the world, at the same time, it is kind of like, about innocence and youth and, I mean, disgusting, again, like, the sexual themes in itÉ Amanda   Ébut itÕs an innocence, a loss of innocenceÉ Donovan Exactly.  The connection was somewhat uncomfortable to Donovan due to the nature of LolitaÕs distressing plot which entails the sexualization of a child and pedophilia.  He struggled to explain the relationship between the photo and the book, making several asides to distance himself from the sexual themes in Lolita that he found troublesome.  It is interesting to note that when Donovan presented this piece to the whole research group, he did not initiate the conversation about Lolita even though it was the strongest connection he made when he created the piece.  The relationship between the photo and the book came up, instead, rather indirectly as he discussed some of his artistic choices on the slides.  DonovanÕs artistic choices on Lolita were somewhat unusual for him.  On the first slide, he began with a line drawing of Emma which evolved into a fairly intricate painting.  Donovan always said that he wasnÕt very good at ÒartÉlike, with my handsÓ like painting and drawing, saying he was far more confident about his photography skills.  Yet in Lolita, his favorite piece, he did a very intensive painting.  As noted above, Donovan was at my house when he created this piece and I observed his process, which I asked about when he was done, ÒHow did the painting come to be?  Why did you do it?Ó  To which he replied, ÒI donÕt knowÉ  I just did my line drawing and thought, like, ÔI donÕt knowÉlet me just play around with thisÕ and then, this came out!  And IÕm so happy!Ó  The painting surprised Donovan, even while he was doing it.  As   107 he reflected on the process, he kept trying to find his way to an explanation for the painting.  Both when we spoke on the day he completed the piece and on the day he presented the piece to the whole research group, Donovan noted that the painting might have evolved out of his intention to make the photo look like images from Lolita.  However, there was some slippage when it came to which image he was seeking to reference and the level of his certainty about his own intentions varied.   When we spoke on the day he completed the piece, he was noting that he was pleased with the style and the simplicity of the color scheme.  Donovan said, ÒThereÕs no real specific reason I picked out the color except red because Lolita.  Maybe thatÕs why I did it.  I wanted to make it look more like the Lolita poster.Ó  Here he experiments with the idea that he was painting the photo to look like the poster for the Lolita film.  He isnÕt fully certain that this is what he intended, but offers it as a possibility.  When he presented the piece to the research group, the subject came up again when Sylvia asked him about his choice of colors:  Sylvia  Why did you make the sunglasses red when they werenÕt red?  Donovan I know.  Wait.  Why?  Sylvia  I said I like that you did that. Donovan Yeah, me too.  Because I was looking for the Lolita look.  I was thinkingÑit reminds meÑthe picture of her reminds me of the Lolita movieÉnot the movie cover, but the book cover. Here, Donovan spoke with much more confidence about his intention.  He was no longer experimenting with the idea that the purpose of the painting was to gesture towards images of Lolita, rather, he cemented that idea as his intention.  Yet instead of committing to drawing a connection between the photo and Lolita the film, as he did initially, he shifts to a connection   108 between the photo and the cover of the Lolita book.  It seems that the relationship between the photo and Lolita persisted over time, but the exact nature of this relationship was unstable.  Another unstable relation that Donovan noted was the relationship between this piece and other works of art that might have served as inspiration for his approach.  The day he completed the piece, I mentioned that it reminded me of those ubiquitous paintings in the 80s by Thomas Nagle29.  Though he had never heard of Nagle and was not even alive in the 80s, he referenced this in his presentation to the group.  My personal connection, which in many ways would have been nonsensical to him, became part of his connection to the piece too.  However, he layered his own meaning with mine:  Donovan (to me)  What is it called?  What is it called again?  Who is the artist  who did these?  Amanda Thomas Nagle  Donovan Thomas Nagle  Amanda But you got to itÉyou did that on your own.  Donovan Yeah.  TBH, because, when I saw Thomas NagleÕs thing, I literally was  like, ÒItÕs not exactly what I did but it definitely isÉÓ  Kate  Reminiscent.  Donovan Yes.  Reminiscent.  Amanda It evokes that.  Donovan Yeah.  Also, I was looking back at my Instagram and I think I was                                                               29 I had to look up the artist as I couldnÕt remember his name, but certainly remembered the paintings.   109 actually subconsciously inspired by this one picture (see Figure 18) I saw at the 6x6 show30 and it was sort of like the same thing; I think it was inspired by Thomas NagleÑis that his name?   Figure 18: A screen shot of DonovanÕs post on Instagram of the 6x6 piece he thought subconsciously inspired him.  At the time of DonovanÕs painting, he had no conscious awareness of why he was doing it.  He had just decided to Òplay aroundÓ and see what happened.  During this play, however, subconscious connections were being made and Donovan was acting upon them, unaware, until he revisited his Instagram account at another time and for another purpose.  Thus, the sense he was making was fractured across several different timescales and across several different persons.  My connection to Nagle, DonovanÕs connection to the 6x6 artist, and the 6x6 artistÕs                                                              30 The 6x6 show was a popular art show and local gallery fundraiser in the city.  Anyone can submit a 6 inch by 6 inch art piece to the gallery and they will show it and sell it.  Every piece is the same price and the artists are all anonymous until after the pieces have all been sold as the artists sign the back of their work.  You may have bought a piece by a 4-year-old or a famous artistÉyou never know until it is all over.   110 imagined connection to Nagle all joined together to participate in the inspiration of DonovanÕs painting, but only after it was completed. Kate  As previously noted, Kate completed her pieces independently.  In some ways, she took a very different approach than the other artists.  She did individual analyses on each photograph but also developed an overall theme, seeing the three pieces she created as a series.  She titled this series Viewing as Artist! and created a title slide31 on the first piece (see Figure 19).  Kate signed her own name, which IÕve obscured to preserve her anonymity, and left a blank space to include the name of the photographer whose picture she analyzed in the first piece, Aria.  To unify the series, Kate wrote the word remember, in gold, on a slide for each piece: I put remember on all of them just because it was representative of all of the memories that go into a picture that you take.  When I was thinking about text in photos I was thinking about how even though I didnÕt take this picture, my theme was viewing a picture as the artist, even if, in this case, IÕm not the artist necessarily.  Everybody that                                                              31 This title slide brought up a difficulty that we had run into a handful of times previously in the project: how can these young people take credit for their artwork in the context of a project where their identities have to be protected as part of IRB requirements?  Kate  This is the cover page for it and IÕm going to have Aria sign this (too)  because she took this picture and so I named my series Viewing as Artist! andÉ  Amanda  I love it.  Kate  Éand so I used tape and I spray painted it off because gold was also  like a reoccurring theme in mine.  Sylvia  Wait.  You put your name on it?  Kate  Yeah.  IÕm going to do Aria (thinking Sylvia is calling into question her  taking credit for AriaÕs photo).    Sylvia  Is that going to be an issue with the fake name thing?  Amanda  WeÕll figure it out.  DonÕt worry.  Donovan SheÕll Photoshop it (laughing). A236!*0!1#,!;*2!0$$!/2!J/4,($!K6!I!3/3!)*2/&,'*-$!-.$!/)*4$!0#!L*-$H0!($*'!2*)$!/0!/''$4/+'$:!!M,-6!*0!*!4(#,&6!5$!5#23$($3!/?!-.*-!5*0!*;-,*''1!,0$?,'!-#!-.$)!#(!2#-:!!A0!1#,24!*(-/0-06!-.$1!5*2-$3!&$#&'$!-#!G2#5!5.#!-.$1!5$($!*23!-#!0$$!-.$!5#(G!-.$1!3/3:!!N,(!;#)&(#)/0$!5*0!-.*-!-.$1!0/42$3!-.$!+*;G0!#?!-.$/(!*(-!&/$;$0!*23!-.*-!#2;$!-.$!&(#O$;-!5$+0/-$!5*0!'/7$6!-.#,4.!I!5#,'3!,0$!-.$/(!&0$,3#21)06!-.$1!;#,'3!3/($;-!*21#2$!-.$1!5*2-$3!-#!-.$!0/-$!*23!-*G$!;($3/-!?#(!-.$/(!5#(G:!!"./0!5*0!#2$!$'$)$2-!#?!-.$!($0$*(;.!&(#;$00!-.*-!5$!*''!0-(,44'$3!-#!G2#5!.#5!-#!?/23!#,(!5*1!-.(#,4.!-#4$-.$(:!!  111 sees something sees it differently.  So having that on each of the transparencies represented all the different things associated with a picture.  KateÕs invocation of remember was a cue to the those that might view her work to attend to all that is immaterial and non-representational that accumulates in/through the material image captured in the photograph itself.  She suggested that, to an artist, an image is always more than it is.  At this, I imagined the image, speaking in the voice of Whitman, ÒI am large.  I contain multitudes,Ó (1855, line 8, part 51).  And yet, Kate was also careful to point out the importance of individual visionÑthat the multitudes contained in the image have something to do with the relationships forged between particular artists, art, and viewers across times and spaces.    KateÕs work also differed from her peers in that none of her focal photographs were of human subjects.  This difference is noteworthy as every focal photograph used by every one of her fellow researchers had a living subject (8 of humans, 1 of a dog).  Kate, however, chose various still life photos to analyze and therefore raised very different relations than were apparent in the work of Sylvia, Donovan, and Mia.  It was also apparent that there was a different intensity to KateÕs sense-making which was, perhaps, a product of her personality, her artistic vision of viewing, her selection of still life photos, her independent art-making, and any variety of other things that remain invisible to me and, possibly, her.  This intensity will likely become clear in the coming sub-sections that focus on KateÕs work.  I am diverging a bit from the multivocality present in the other artistsÕ sections with KateÕs voice being more dominant here.  She had such a strong vision and presented it to the group with such clarity, it felt right to really honor her story as she was so intentional in presenting it to us.      112  Figure 19: KateÕs factory art piece with the slides on top of the photo and the cover page on the side (top) and the plain photo (bottom).     113 Abandoned factory. As noted above, the photo of the abandoned factory was taken by Aria for her photoethnography project.  Kate was friends with Aria and sat next to her in photo class so it was likely that she was able to see this photo even before Aria shared her project with the class.  Kate was drawn to working with this photo because she loved abandoned buildings, though, it was important to her for us to understand that her love was somehow special or different: I love abandoned buildings and not the way that every 16-year-old loves abandoned buildings, so I feel like thereÕs soÑand obviously this isnÕt, like, a very individual thoughtÑbut I think thereÕs so much mystery to them and especially because buildings like this a lot of times you can break into them pretty easily and they are accessible so you can explore.  I just love abandoned buildings.  Just the reasonÑIÕm sure a lot of people go into, like, Terrance Tower because itÕs like, ÒOh my god, IÕm going to break into this building and itÕs an insane asylum and itÕs so creepy.Ó  But, for me, itÕs that thereÕs a story and itÕs so cool to look at it and imagine what was there. The still life photograph of the abandoned factory, for Kate, offered a mystery made all the more compelling because she did not get to physically explore it.  She knew that the factory was Òwhere they made the World War II boatsÓ but that was the extent of her knowledge.  The photograph was her only experience of the factory and she used her art-making as an opportunity to experiment with possible stories and imagined histories of the place.  Kate created only one slide in addition to the cover page on which she included all of her annotations.  This slide was made up of single-word provocations, including the remember that ties all of the pieces together, as well as a difficult-to-see circle around one of the objects in the photo, a chair against the wall in the background.  KateÕs choice of words was playful and she   114 made use of irony, juxtaposition, and metaphor in an attempt to materialize the mystery of the factoryÕs history.  On the two big, circular objects in the foreground of the photograph she wrote thirst on one and clean (with the word split to look like it was written repeatedly around the circumference) on the other.  Kate imagined that these objects were Òwash basinsÓ or Òvintage things where you stepped on the bottom and the water came out.Ó  So, she chose those words Òbecause itÕs kind of like this irony thing because obviously they are trashed and this is bone dry.Ó  By drawing attention to the current state of the basins by labeling them with words noting the opposite, Kate raised both the possible history of the basins being clean and providing water as well as imbuing them with a kind of longing for the usefulness and vitality of their past life.  Kate also wrote splash along the wall on the right side of the photograph.  She offered a detailed explanation for this choice: I put splash on this low wall tile thing for a couple of reasons.  First, I think it goes with the water theme that I had here with the faucets and then also this reminded me of a backsplash in a kitchen.  And then, the colors on the tilesÑyou can tell they used to be really vibrant and I thought it was interesting because I was thinking about when they were building this building for the first time and how everything based on the other pictures that she (Aria) had of this buildingÉyou can tell that initially when they were made, they were kind of boring, whatever, and that I saw thatÑI felt like when they put in these tiles it was like a splash of color, ÒOh my god, like, this is so bright and so funÓ.  Yellow and red tilesÉand now itÕs literally trash.  I thought it was funny that it was this little colorful thing that was supposed to be whatever and now itÕs a sad building.  Kate made use of multiple meanings of the word splash as she connected them to the tiled wall in the factory.  Splash provided a coherence to her commentary on the wash basins by similarly   115 evoking water.  She then connected the colored tiles in the factory to her own life and her experience with the familiar, mundane backsplash in kitchens she has been in.  Though Kate didnÕt specifically mention it, I wondered if this connection was also produced through her focus on elements that evoke water in the photo since backsplashes are thus named because they are the area behind a sink that might get wet due to splashing water.  Kate moved on to discuss the idea that the tiles might have offered the designers of the building an opportunity to incorporate a Òsplash of colorÓ into an otherwise monotone space.  She created a story in which the yellow and red tiles offer brightness and fun.  And, while this is a lovely imagined history, it is likely not a realistic one.  The scarcity of resources during the interwar period combined with the somber nature of manufacturing war ships and the often difficult conditions of factory work lead me to believe that the choice of those tiles had little to do with brightness.  I imagine an alternative history in which yellow and red tiles were the cheapest ones available and thus purchased based on their economy rather than their whimsy.  However, KateÕs story of a Òsplash of colorÓ history offered a compelling juxtaposition not only to the present condition of the space but also to what one might assume to be the ÒrealÓ story behind the tiles.  The last word Kate wrote was why on the ceiling and connected this to the circle she drew around the chair in the back of the photo.  These annotations served as placeholders for all of the questions that Kate had about this room, the factory, and abandoned buildings in general: Kate This I just put why on the ceiling because when I see buildings like thisÑwhat happened here? So many questions.  Who was the last person to be in this building that worked here or that when this was a real thing?  Then I circled, you canÕt really see it, but I circled this chair in the background because it was likeÑwhy is there a chair there?   116  Sylvia  Is it a nice chair?  Is it put together? Kate No, itÕs just a metal chair and especially since I wasnÕt there, itÕs like, was that chair from when this building was a thing?  Did somebody bring a chair into this building?  How come all this is falling apart and thereÕ this chair here?  Why is that there?  Donovan Symbolism from corporate America (sarcastically).  Kate  (laughing) Yeah.  Donovan Deep.  Amanda So deep.  With one word and one object, Kate suggested the myriad questions she had that arose from the factory and other buildings like it.  To her, they were deeply affective spaces.  Kate made sense of/with this space by bringing into relationship herself, the room, the objects in the room as they are, the objects in the room as she imagined them to be in the past, the people who used this space, the people who designed this space, and the stories embedded in all of these things.  Donovan suggested another idea that the photo produced for/with him that immediately connected for Kate: Donovan The thing that was cool was the concept of how nature always reclaims.  How everything is growing back in. Kate Especially with mold and moss and stuff.  ThatÕs what I love.  This sounds kind of off topic, but my entire life IÕve always known that the way I want to be buried is that once I was listening to this radio show and they were talking about how thereÕs this place in England where people can be buried where itÕs just their body and they are put with all of theseÑnot   117 preservatives, but naturalÉlike the way they are curated after they dieÑyou are just put in the ground.  YouÕre not in a coffin and not in anything.  I like the idea of being put into the earth.  ThatÕs what it reminds me of when I see abandoned buildings.  It also reminds me of Avatar when they put them in the vines, or, how people are buried with their guitars and stuffÉlike, how they are in their home. DonovanÕs comment provided Kate with an opportunity to talk her way to other feelings and ideas that were produced in/through her relationship to abandoned buildings.  The wildness of nature reclaiming previously developed spaces evoked in Kate an imagined future of her own death and burial.  This future existed, for Kate, alongside the imagined past and stories of the building Òwhen it was a real thingÓ as well as evoking the cultural referent of the film Avatar, another imagined future, centuries hence, on an alien planet.  Despite the disparate time scales, all of these imaginings existed in the present with Kate as she was making sense of/with AriaÕs photo.     118  Figure 20: KateÕs bedroom art piece with the slides on top of the photo (left) and above the photo (right).  Bedroom. One of the photographs that Kate included in her photoethnography project was a picture of her bedroom at the time.  She noted that the room looked a bit messy and that was her motivation for studying the photo, saying,  Someone just looks at this picture and itÕs just a messy room so I literally went through and I analyzed the crap out of it to say, this isnÕt just a messy room!  Like, all of these things have all of theseÉmeanings.   It was very important for Kate that someone looking at this photograph would have an opportunity to understand her experience of viewing it as the artist, and as the young woman who lived in the midst of all of these things and the sense she made with/through them.  This was the only piece that Kate heavily annotated; and, the piece that she shared the most about as she   119 talked the research group through the annotations.  This piece also produced an intensity in the room we were all in when Kate shared it.  As she told stories about various objects in her room, it was like there was some kind of affective transferÉthat her talk brought the affective pull of the objects in her room into my living room.  It was quite extraordinary and is difficult to capture in words.  However, I will make liberal use of the transcript in this section so that the reader might have the opportunity to enter into the experience of listening to Kate describing her old bedroom.  Kate created two slides for this piece.  The first was full of the aforementioned annotations of objects in the room made up primarily of labels that either described the object, KateÕs feelings about the object, or a memory associated with the object.  Kate painted the second slide and included the gold remember, however, on this piece, she included a question mark so that it read remember?.  She decided that she would walk us through the slide with all of the annotations first.  Much of what Kate raised through her annotations had to do with the affective weight accrued in the material objects in her life.  She drew our attention to the pair of pants in the foreground of the photo which were outlined by little lines and the annotation ÒI lost these pantsÓ.  Kate said: I lose everything and itÕs a very frustrating thing for me because I donÕtÉI get really frustrated with the fact that I lose everything.  My parents and my family will see it as me being irresponsible and itÕs just that I put things down and I never find them again.  So, these pantsÉthis is the last time I ever saw these pants. The lost pants, simply through their absence, were an index for Kate of her struggles with her identity and with the growing pains of becoming an adult.  Losing things produced a lot of   120 frustration for her, yet, she still always lost things.  She did not want to be irresponsible, or, at least, she did not want to appear irresponsible but it seemed as if she could not help but losing things.  Sometimes, she was not the one at fault for losing things.  Kate told us that the purse in the foreground of the photo was stolen out of her momÕs car, though she didnÕt know why.  She labeled it with what it typically contained, the debris of livingÑÒpaychecks, food, trashÓ.  Kate was confounded by why someone would steal her Òcrappy ass purse because they literally left other things in the car and they took the purse.  What are you doing?  There was $10 in it.  I donÕt know what they wanted.  But they left my calculatorÉit was in the middle of the street!  I was like, Ôyou couldÕve sold thatÕ.Ó  And then there were the things that Kate ÒlostÓ on purpose.  She drew our attention to a tiny sliver of pattern at the bottom of the photo which were another pair of pants that she didn't have anymore because she got rid of them:  thereÕs this little inkling of these pants that I used to own that never fit.  I got them from Archimage and I held onto them for likeÉdo you have pieces of clothing that you hold onto for so long because you think, ÒIÕm going to wear this; IÕm going to make it workÓ, because you bought it and youÕre like, ÒIÕm going to use it.Ó When Kate shared this, it seemed that these pants were offered as a counterpoint or juxtaposition to the pants that had been lost.  Some things she may lose track ofÉbut other things, she held on to quite tightly.  In fact, she suggested that perhaps she sometimes held on too tightly to some of the objects in her life.  Kate spoke of her snow globe collection that was in a drawer on the floor in the background of the photo Òbecause they canÕt fit anywhereÓ.  She was going to move past this annotation quickly, but Mia, who was often silent, interrupted her:   Mia  What are the snow globes of?   121 Kate I have snow globes from everything.  I have a couple from when I was baptized, when I went to Disney World, different family vacations.  My friends went through a phase where they all got me snow globes because they knew I was collecting them. Mia I have one from every state.  Either I went there or my dad does business trips. Kate I kind of wish I could still collect them but thereÕs nowhere I can put them.         Mia joining Kate in her love of snow globes revealed the desire she had to keep collecting them and perhaps explained why she had held on to the ones she had.  She actually liked them but there was simply no room for them.  Similarly, Kate shared her love for the ugly chair in the photo that she labeled ÒI canÕt let goÓ.  Kate share that she had drug that chair into every room she had since sixth grade, no matter how small the room was, to save it from her momÕs desire to either get rid of it or get it reupholstered.  Kate said, ÒIÕm so protective of this chair for no reason.Ó  When I asked if there was a specific memory tied to the chair or what her relationship to the chair was, Kate shared, ÒIt reminds me of the apartment and thereÕs so little that I have left from that apartment and it was this whole different part of my life and so it just reminds me of my childhood.Ó  For Kate, the chair had an affective pull as it was a material artifact from her remembered childhood.  I, like Kate, am the child of divorced parents and felt deeply moved as she shared this comment, even though she said it quickly and then, in the same breath, moved on to the next annotation, ÒÉreminds me of my childhood. (beat) I wrote that I can hear the football gamesÉÓ  There was an element of longing and loss that was entangled in the relationship between Kate, the chair, the apartment of her childhood, and KateÕs memories of a time in her   122 life of which ÒthereÕs so littleÉleftÓ.  This chair was, for Kate, a way to keep something of her childhood, of another life, present with her in a new place and time by sustaining her relationship with the chair and all the meaning it had accrued.  The intensity of this relationship, though, seemed too great for Kate to bear in that moment.  She moved on quickly, talking about football games, incense, shitty see-through curtains, and her cat who she Ògave a little thought bubble and wrote Ôover itÕ because my cat is a bitchÓ.  And though running through this list of annotations lightened some the heaviness in the air after KateÕs comments about the chair, it did not last long as some of the same subjects returned when she discussed what was seemingly the most innocuous element of the roomÑthe paint on the walls: Here, I wrote I remember who painted these walls because my momÕs ex-boyfriend, her boyfriend at the time, painted my room for me.  And, I have a lot of negative memories associated with him so, like, it was always really weird that he had painted this room.  And itÕs weird looking back on it now because I actually painted this over with Daniel (KateÕs former boyfriend).  And it was really emotional for me, like, painting it over because heÕs (KateÕs momÕs ex) not alive any moreÉso it was really weird to be painting over it.  So, like, looking at this picture, not only is this not my room anymore butÉitÕs justÉlike, itÕs kind of eerie to me.  Looking at it.  So I wrote that on there because something so small made me feel weird about it.  At this point there was a very heavy feeling in the room that somehow even seems palpable when listening to the transcript.  The research group was silent for a second and then conversation picked up quickly with a question from Sylvia that evolved into what might be described as comic relief, offering a break from the intensity in the room:   Sylvia  Did you write about that or no?   123   Kate  Well, I wrote, I remember who painted these walls and thenÉ   Donovan That sounds like a song.   Sylvia  It does.  So mysterious.   Amanda ThatÕs a perfect start to a poem or song lyrics orÉ   Kate  Yeah.   Donovan I can see The Fray singing thatÉ(everyone laughing)   Sylvia  (overlapping; singing) ÉI remember who painted these wallsÉ   (everyone laughing) Kate And on that note, this is going to make it sound like IÕm trying to be so emo about my old room but I putÉ   Donovan This is pretty emoÉ   Sylvia IÕm the expert.  EmoGirl123 on Snapchat, thatÕs me.  I would give this 8 out of 10 emo points Kate  Emo points (laughing)É  Amanda ThatÕs good though!  ThereÕs nothing wrong with that! Sylvia  I already broke my iPhone screen already. Kate  You did not. Sylvia  Yeah, I did. Kate And so it felt like I put the remember on here again because this one really resonated with the themeÉ This conversation seemed to serve as a way to create some relief from the affective intensities and strong feelings produced through KateÕs story about the paint.  It is Kate herself that makes the first move away from the seriousness of the conversation by preemptively hedging about the   124 ÒemoÓ nature of her next comment.  This break opens up a space for some joking that metabolizes some of the energy produced through the intensity while also avoiding talk of real feelings.  When I suggest that there is nothing wrong with real feelings, Sylvia shifts the conversation completely to a totally new subject without skipping a beat by talking about breaking her new phone.  Perhaps because she was able to have some respite from the intensity, Kate launched back into the comments that she thought might make her sound Òso emoÓ about her old room with the ÒAnd soÉÓ.  She shared with us about the second slide and what she had painted: And, just because there are so many weird or negative or nostalgic things, I put gray paint whichÉ  And so, I putÉtheyÕre up here to make it look like the sky.  And, more emo lyrics that arenÕt lyrics, I put I felt like the dark clouds were following and I was going to put me but I didnÕt have room.  Because every time I look at this room or I remember the feeling of being in this room, it just felt likeÉlike, I feel like when I moved rooms it was a new chapter or something.  So, it was weird that I associate this room with my weird eighth grade, early high school whatever.  So, it just feels like there are dark clouds in this room.  So, I put them there. The painting of the clouds, then, was KateÕs attempt to materialize the affective intensity that she herself experienced when she was in her old room.  Language failed to capture the essence of what Kate hoped to communicate as she invoked her memory and her feelings in the annotations.  As she was talking about the piece, the best she could do with her language was to use the word weird which she did quite often.  Weird could not quite contain all the sense and affective intensities that Kate was trying to convey and so she painted the clouds as a way to try to better demonstrate what weird was actually like for her.  Kate hoped that the clouds could help viewers   125 of the work more fully understand how the objects in her room are loaded with affective intensity and produce for her feelings of frustration, love, nostalgia, melancholy, sadness, confusion, and loss.  So much so that she said, Òthe clouds I felt like they had to be touching something because itÕs like clouds all over everythingÓ. Mia Like Kate, Mia completed her art pieces independently so her presentation of them to the research group was the first opportunity that any of us had to see them and engage with them.  Both photographs discussed here are similarly framed and very technically proficient portraits.  Mia selected portraits of Òpeople that are importantÓ to her and used art-making as a way to enhance the aesthetics of the photographs and to explore her own process of seeing.  It also seemed that through the art-making process, Mia was working through an exploration of her relationship to/with the subjects of the photograph.  She made no comments to this effect, however, some of her artistic choices certainly provoked questions about her intentions for the work.   126  Figure 21: MiaÕs Rosie art piece with the slides on top of the photo (left) and above the photo (right).  Rosie. ÒSo, this is my child,Ó Mia said by way of introduction to her first piece.  She told us that she views the dog, Rosie, as her baby which is why she said that she chose photos of ÒpeopleÓ who were important to her.  Mia also shared with us the story of how Rosie got her name: Mia I had this stuffed dog since I was four and I named her Rosie because my sister got her from her ex-boyfriend on ValentineÕs DayÉso now itÕs her ex but then it was her boyfriend.  The next day they had an argument so I took this stuffed dog and it smelled like roses so I wanted to call her Rosie  Sylvia  ThatÕs adorable.   127 Mia And I still have that stuffed animal in my room.  So three years agoÑno, it was two years agoÑfor my 16th birthday, my parents surprised me with her because my other dog passed away.  Sylvia  Does it look like the stuffed animal?  Mia  It did when her ears were flipped like puppy ears.  Amanda Puppy ears? Mia I was like, ÒWhat should we name it?Ó and they were like, ÒRosieÓ and I (group laughter) because they rememberedÉbut then my mom was like, ÒIt just came to me.  I donÕt know why I thought of Rosie.Ó  And I said, Òmy stuffed animal.Ó  And she was like, ÒRight!Ó  Amanda Interesting that it was in thereÉ  Mia  Ébut she couldnÕt remember why. When Mia looked at this portrait of Rosie, she saw not only her ÒbabyÓ but also all the accumulated memories connected with her dogÑan old stuffed animal, an old love of her sisterÕs, and the distinct smell of roses.  These reverberations across time were powerful not only for Mia, but also for MiaÕs mother who, without conscious awareness, connected the new puppy to the 12-year-old stuffed animal and suggested the same name.  In the piece Mia created, both her story and her motherÕs story were layered together to provide the group with what Mia called Òthe backgroundÓ.  She thought that RosieÕs origin story was significant for our viewing of the piece.  It helped to set up the ways in which Rosie was ÒimportantÓ to Mia and also demonstrated how, in this piece, the meaning that Mia made with/in the piece was fractured across different   128 timescales and dispersed through both her and her motherÕs memory as well as various objects like her sisterÕs 2001 ValentineÕs roses and stuffed animal.   Mia created two slides for her study of Rosie.  The first was a line drawing of the dog which Sylvia complemented by saying, ÒI feel like youÕre the first one to do the outline successfully on the dog picture.Ó  As was the case with all of the artists, Mia used the line drawing as a way of highlighting the subject of the photo.  Interestingly, since MiaÕs photographs were rather close-up portraits, the subject of the photo was fairly obvious.  Yet, she still completed a line drawing.  The second slide was used to highlight and balance the colors that were present in the photograph as well as to add some texture.  The first color to come up was the gold which ended up being in every artistsÕ work:   Sylvia  Why did you pick gold?   Kate  Why did any of us pick gold? Mia For the grass lit upÉI didnÕt want to pick yellow because I think yellow is a really ugly color.   Amanda YeahÉit wouldnÕt come out good. Mia And I think gold kind of works because it makes her stand out more in the picture.   Amanda The way the lighting isÉ   Sylvia  ÉIt looks like sunlightÉ Kate She looks very, ÒWhen will my husband return from war?Ó  I love it. Mia And sheÕs normally not like this.  So many peopleÑI posted this picture on Facebook and so many people are like, ÒThatÕs not her,Ó   129 because in any other picturesÑif I showed you guys the bloopers, sheÕs like dying on the floorÉ   Kate  She looks very majestic.   [brief conversation about dogs sneezing] Mia So I used gold just because it reminded me how she looks like a queen. Mia described using the gold to draw attention to the original lighting of the photo, with the sun illuminating the grass behind Rosie, as well as to make a statement about the way Rosie looked regal.  This ÒmajesticÓ look, for Mia, was a complete anomaly to typical Rosie and stood in sharp juxtaposition to the usual Òdying on the floorÓ look of Rosie.  Using the gold paint was a way for Mia to materialize RosieÕs queenly aura while working with the palette provided by the original photograph.  Similarly, Mia also painted the sky blue, the trees green, and the remainder of the grass green.  She also used a green, textured powder to add dimension to the grass.  She noted that Ògrass is a part of my lifeÓ and Òin every single picture thereÕs grassÓ, so she used various methods in her art pieces for bringing dimensionality to the grass.  In each art piece, she studied the grass with different mediumsÑthe green powder, green paint, green Sharpie outlines, and, in one of her pieces, blades of real grass.  This exploration of the textures of landscapes, particularly in the Rosie piece, evoked van Gogh to me.  He used an earthy palette and used brushstroke techniques to study the textural qualities of landscapes (see Figure 22 for an   130 example) which was similar to the painted slide in MiaÕs study of Rosie.  Figure 22: Vincent van GoghÕs Evening Landscape with Rising Moon, 1889.    Mia also highlighted the white circle she painted and added white powder to (the same as the aforementioned ÒsnowÓ that was used by Sylvia) over RosieÕs eye.  As she described her choice to create this textured, opaque eye on the slide, Mia talked about one of the key concepts in art, balance, and also gestured toward the notion that aesthetics is separate from cognitionÑan idea that circulated throughout the artistsÕ sharing of their work.   Sylvia  Where does the white part go?   Mia  Over her eye.  Why?  I donÕt know.  I felt like it.   Donovan I just felt like it.   131   Sylvia  Spot on.  Leave it.  (helping Mia get the slide placed correctly) Mia It goes over her eye, I swear (getting the slide into place).  So, I was really going to put the black (in the middle for an iris) but I started to but all the white just started going down (the black paint made the texture run off) so I was like, ÒNevermind.Ó   Donovan Nevermind!  WhateverÉ(laughing) Mia ItÕs fine.  People will get it.  ItÕs her eye.  So why I did itÑI felt like it.  I felt like there was not enough white.  I know she has a lot of white here (on her chest) but not up here (on her face); I donÕt know.  I just felt like it needed it.  Mia was seeking to create balance between the amount of white on Rosie by adding white to the painted slideÉyet she wasnÕt convinced.  ÒI donÕt know.  I just felt like it,Ó she said to end the discussion.  She was seeking to enhance the aesthetics of the photograph and, in the end, didnÕt know if there was an explanation for the choice beyond the movement of her own desires.  Looking at the photograph, it actually had lovely balance, as the white on RosieÕs chest was balanced by the light color of the over-exposed house that was unfocused in the background.  However, Mia still sought to draw attention to RosieÕs eyeÉeven if she didnÕt exactly know why.  She felt it, so she did it.  This is another example of the artists setting up aesthetic choices as distinct from cognitive or rational decision-making.    132  Figure 23: MiaÕs Anton art piece with the slides on top of the photo (left) and above the photo (right).  Anton. Another of MiaÕs art pieces was a photo strikingly similar to the one of Rosie.  It was a portrait of her friend Anton.  Mia created three slides for her photograph of Anton.  The first slide was a line drawing, including intensive detail on his hair.  Mia painted the second slide, painting the grass, AntonÕs shirt, and AntonÕs lips.  The third slide added texture to the grass with the green grass powder used previously. Kate also knew Anton and there was some debate over what this photo of Anton actually showed:  Kate  ThatÕs not Anton either.  Sylvia  Is that your boyfriend or just your friend?  Mia  My best guy friend.   133  Kate  ThatÕs so not Anton, either.  Mia  What do you mean?  Kate  Because heÕs neverÑhe looks very deep andÉ Mia But this is how I view him.  This is how he really is with me.  Then, thatÕs another thingÑso many people are like, ÒThatÕs so not her (Rosie, in the previous piece),Ó and IÕm like, ÒIt is,Ó just like how you just said that about him like itÕs so not himÉ  Kate  I picture him like a dingus.  HeÕs soÉ  Mia  Éwhat?...  Kate  Édingus is not a bad thing. Mia and Kate could not agree on whether or not this photo showed Anton as Òhe really isÓ or if it showed something very different than AntonÕs normal state of being a ÒdingusÓ.  Though Kate never got a chance to explain what a dingus was, it was easy to infer that this photo that showed Anton as being deep in thought was the opposite of how she viewed him.  To Mia, Anton was thoughtful.  To Kate, Anton was goofy.  Mia saw this portrait as a representation of Anton, while Kate saw this photo as a funny, antithetical portrait of Anton.  This suggested that Anton, as a person, and MiaÕs representation of Anton were both unstable.  Neither Anton nor his photograph were static but, rather, were performed and interpreted differently depending on the vantage point of the audience.  Mia affirmed this by saying, Òthis is how he really is with meÓ suggesting that she was aware that there was no singular version of Anton.  Something about her relationship with him gave her access to an Anton that could be serious and contemplative, rather than an Anton that is just a ÒdingusÓÉwhatever that might be.  When Mia shared this, there was   134 a tone in her voice that intimated that she was aware that her relationship with Anton was different than othersÕ relationship with him and that she was happy with that situation.  Mia used art-making as a way to study that relationship and to study Anton as she knew him.  Unlike the other artists before her, Mia described her interaction with Anton at the time she took the photograph.  In fact, Mia used the photo to instigate a conversation with Anton in that moment: I just always take pictures of people.  TheyÕll be looking one way and IÕll be like Òch, ch, chÓ (picture-taking sound) and always in their face.  So, with this one, I canÕt remember what he was thinking about but I know that he was just looking down.  The way I was feelingÑin my head I was just staring at him and ÒI wonder what he was thinking,Ó and I just pulled out the little camera in my sleeve (laughter) and then I took a picture. É  So after I took it, I was like, ÒHey.Ó  And he was like, ÒWhat, what?Ó  And I was like, ÒLook at this.Ó  And he was like, ÒWow.  I look so depressed.Ó  And I was like, ÒYeah.  Why?  Explain.Ó  I zoom into his face and I was like, ÒWhy are your lips red and what were you thinking?Ó  I analyzed the picture right in front of him.    Mia was studying Anton as a text, both at the time of taking the photograph as well as in/through her art-making.  Interestingly, she invited Anton into the process of her study of him, inquiring what he was thinking about and why his lips were red.  This exchange revealed much about the ways that Mia was studying her relationship with Anton and the relative intimacy involved in it.    The research group took note of AntonÕs red lips.  When Mia put the painted slide over the photograph, it was the first thing that was discussed:   Sylvia  You put lipstick on him?   135 Mia See.  ThatÕs why I didnÕt want it to look like lipstick but his lips always look red.   Sylvia  You could be like also making a gender role statement.   Donovan ThatÕs true.   Sylvia  IÕm not kidding.   Amanda Look when the slides are stacked itÕs not asÑ   Sylvia  No, now it doesnÕt.   Donovan Yeah, yeah, yeah. [Another topic sprouts up in the midst of this discussion, but we returned to it in a minute.] Amanda IÕm interested in those red lips.  I wonder if thereÕs a subconscious thing going on there.   Donovan Freud. Mia They are the first thing I see when I see him is his eyes and then his lips.  Of course no one ever believes me but itÕs really hard to capture his eyes in pictures because his eyes are actuallyÑhow do I say itÑit has gray, blue, greenÉ The group was all trying to figure out the meaning of the red lips.  Sylvia explored the idea that Mia was trying to challenge gender norms, but Mia was clear that she didnÕt intend for the red paint on AntonÕs lips to be read as lipstick.  When Mia rearranged the slides and stacked them all together, the redness of the lips became less pronounced which underscored her intention.  With SylviaÕs idea ruled out, I decided to pursue an answer from Mia about why she had painted AntonÕs lips red by thinking out loud, ÒIÕm interested in those red lips.  I wonder if thereÕs a subconscious thing going on there.Ó  Donovan caught on to the image that I had and said, simply,   136 ÒFreudÓ as a way to suggest that the red lips communicated desire of one sort or another.  Though Mia did not specifically respond to this prompt, she, whether consciously or not, seemed to affirm this suspicion by saying that whenever she saw Anton, the first thing she saw was his lips.  This was a very compelling and in fact a unique moment in the project as the research group sought to uncover MiaÕs emerging, yet seemingly unconscious, sense-making of her relationship with Anton through her artwork.  It felt, at the time, as if we were seeing something in her work that she did not fully see herself.  Taken one way, Mia could read Anton but was not yet to a place where she could fully read the relationship between Mia and Anton.  Taken another way, as an insider in the relationship, Mia saw clearly and was simply highlighting what she sees as one of AntonÕs dominant features and it was the group that was reading the image incorrectly by bringing Freud or the notion of desire to our experience of the artwork.  Or, perhaps, the red lips and what they might have meant are simply another instance of the instability of representation and both readings are simultaneously true and false.        Just as she had done in her study of Rosie, Mia used the color palette in the original photograph as the basis for her treatment of the photo.  In her painting and in her use of the green grass powder, Mia hoped to add to or elevate the colors already present in the picture.  She specifically talked about her hard work to get the right color blue for AntonÕs shirt: Mia It took me a while to create the blue to match his shirt; a lot of mixing. Amanda Mixing that stuff (the ink used to paint the slides) is a pain in the ass, too. Mia It looked like a potion.  The white was soÑlike I canÕt evenÑlike marble.  It looked like I was making a potion.  I was doing this and   137 my mom walks in and is like, ÒWhat are you doing?  I thought you were painting.Ó  I was like, ÒMaking a potion.Ó MiaÕs story of trying to get the right shade of blue was an opportunity to consider what it was like to mix colors and offered another instance that might be viewed as a literacy experience.  To mix inks or paints required the ability to read the colors, to know the science behind the color wheel, to be able to see the colors clearly, to use gut instinct for knowing how much of each color to use, to know how to fix mistakes, and, sometimes, to know when a ÒpotionÓ is beyond all help and should be scrapped. Conclusion  Discussion. Using art to study the photographs provided opportunities to consider some of the participants in the studentsÕ everyday lived literacy experiences.  Art, as a research method, offered the research team access to elements of their literacy experiences that were otherwise difficult to raise.  Making, through art, allowed Sylvia, Donovan, Kate, and Mia to study sets of relations ÒinÓ the photographs while participating in sets of relations with the photographs.  Though each artistÕs work is compelling to consider individually, it is also worthwhile to consider all of the studentsÕ artwork as a collection.  When viewed in sum, several themes emerge.  Non-cognitive domains of literacies.  Perhaps the most prevalent set of ideas circulating through the artwork are those related to the non-cognitive dimensions of sense-making and the artistsÕ attempts to materialize these affective intensities in a variety of ways.  Students repeatedly used a variety of techniques to highlight relations in their engagement with texts that were not represented or, at least from the perspective of the artists, not represented clearly enough in the photographs alone.  Color offered the artists one method for materializing the   138 affective relations that they experienced in/through the photographs.  Sylvia used textured white snow in an attempt to communicate the loss of her relationship with two of the subjects in her photograph while using gold paint to communicate her continued love for the other subject.  Donovan liberally used the color gold to evoke the influences of Renaissance and religious iconography that he felt strongly streamed through his photograph.  Kate painted clouds in her room in an attempt to materialize the affective intensities produced through her relation to her old bedroom.  In all three of these examples, the artists used color as a metaphorical shorthand to connote a more complex set of relationships.  These relationships were often at the very core of the sense the artists were making of their original photographs and the intensities that they experienced in their everyday engagement with texts.  Yet, much of this intensity was invisible to viewers of the photographs.  While many of the artistsÕ original photographs successfully communicated particular moods through the framing or treatment of the subjects, like MiaÕs Rosie photograph, or through lighting, like KateÕs Bedroom photograph, there were still reservoirs of intensity that were left unexpressed or unexplored.  Art-making provided an opportunity for the artists to layer their literacy experiences in order to materialize the unexpressed or unexplored intensities.  Since literacy experiences have the ability to stretch across fractured timescales, it might be said that the artists are participating in a variety of literacy experiences which occur in both short and long timescales, several of which might be happening concurrently (see Figure 24).  Orienting to the teamÕs engagement with texts through the lens of literacy experience, makes all of these relations thinkable.   139  Figure 24: A selection of possible literacy experiences had by each artist. Each green box is an experience that might connect with another green box and all green boxes might unite to produce the purple box.   As previously noted, another compelling conversation that was woven throughout the artistsÕ presentation of their work focused on the nuances of aesthetic choices.  In one way or another, each artist suggested that aesthetics was somehow non-cognitive or, at the very least, existing at the margins of consciousness.  When asked about why a particular artistic choice was made, the students frequently had responses like, ÒI had no specific thought processÓ; ÒI did it aestheticallyÓ; ÒI just felt itÓ and similar.  For the artists, aesthetic sense was different than making a decision.  The words they chose to describe the process of making art were more closely linked to something more akin to instinct, or, as it was referred to in some of our conversations, an eye.  This artistic eye was able to see the best choices for colors, lines, balance,   140 and other elements of design for the artwork in the space just at the periphery of the studentsÕ conscious awareness.  They did not experience this process as thinking or decision-making.  However, it could be argued that their art education had accrued and accumulated in such a way that these aesthetic choices did not feel like choices at all because they happened quickly and seemingly automatically.   Relations.  Another theme that recurred throughout the conversation was the centrality of relationships between the artists and other youth.  Most of the photographs the team chose to study in their artwork had humans as the main subject matter in the picture.  Moreover, many of the artists selected these portraits in order to study the relationships they had with the subjects.  These relations were not stable but shifted over time as the project evolved.  Sylvia lost friendships and had to find a way to materialize that loss.  Donovan took a picture of his friend that turned into a picture of an imagined Lolita that required a layer of paint to emerge.  MiaÕs portrait of Anton became not just MiaÕs study of Anton and the relationship she had with him, but also provoked Kate to study MiaÕs Anton and compare him to some other Anton that was more familiar.  Even in their attempts to study and make visible the relations between the subjects in the photos, the artists, and the viewers, the students demonstrated that their interpersonal connections were dynamic.  If we recall from Chapter 2, Anderson & Harrison suggested that Òall action is interaction,Ó (2010, p. 7).  The relationships that the artists had with the subjects in their photographs and with each other were in a constant state of change as a result of their ongoing interactions.  Therefore, there was never a static relationship that was sitting Òout thereÓ and waiting to be studied.  Rather, the artists were always engaged in Òmodification and reciprocityÓ (Anderson & Harrison, 2010, p. 7) of the relations they entered into with the subjects of their   141 photos as they emerged.  It is wholly possible to consider the myriad of relations and the shifting ground upon which people came together and broke apart through the lens of literacy experience.    Places and objects.  Artists also drew particular attention to evocative places and objects in/through their artwork.  Sylvia experiments with the idea of place by creating a piece where a suburban reality is juxtaposed with an imagined cityscape.  And yet, though it is a city of her imagining it also bears striking resemblance to the real city her suburb borders.  Kate contemplates her draw to abandoned buildings by layering imagined pasts over the present in her treatment of AriaÕs photo.  StudentsÕ consideration of place and the many layers of sense made in and through place demonstrate the intensities that can be produced through the relationship between a person and a place.  Perhaps the most compelling example is KateÕs work with the photograph of her room.  In that work, Kate further dissects place by examining all of the individual objects in the room.  This dissection urges the viewer to consider how objects can act as affective conduits32 which produce intensities from all of the meaning that accrues and accumulates on/in them over time.  This demonstrates the ways that things can exert great power when they enter into relationship with humans.  As we learned from Deleuze in Chapter 2, Òsomething in the world forces us to think,Ó (1994, p. 154).  Though humans occupy a privileged place in the photographs, the artwork, and the project in general, it is worth noting how often the artists specifically reference the other things that move them to think or to feel.  Conceptualizing these relations as a part of literacy experience allow these things are able to be seen, considered, and studied as part of the artistsÕ sense-making processes.                                                              32 I owe this notion of affective conduits to Bessie Dernikos who shared her idea of teachers as affective conduits with me at the Affect Working Group at LRA in December 2015.   142  Time.  Finally, the issue of time is frequently raised in the discussion of the artwork.  All of the artists dealt with time in different ways in their work, yet, there was some element of how the past, present, and future somehow exist together within the plane of their pieces.  This harkens back to FendlerÕs idea, introduced in Chapter 2, that Òall things exist on the same epistemological plane,Ó (2013, p. 2) in NRT.  In fact, the way time is experimented with in studentsÕ artwork might serve as an argument that all times similarly exist on the same plane when viewing literacies through a NRT filter.   For instance, timescales were unstable as Donovan talked about his inspiration for the Lolita piece.  His painting was an emergent surprise to him and just Òcame outÓ as he played with his line drawing.  Yet, he realized he saw a painting with similar qualities at an art show many weeks earlier.  In both of her pieces, Kate moves between past and present, memory and imagination as she makes sense of the relationships in two very different spaces.  With the abandoned factory Kate excavates the ruins for clues of the buildingÕs past.  In her bedroom, she documents all the clues found in objects and affects to construct her memories of her past. For Mia, her dog Rosie was named as a result of her motherÕs subconscious connection to a treasured stuffed animal, long forgotten.  Her mom wasnÕt aware of it at the time, but she was bringing the past into the present in her suggestion of Rosie for the new puppyÕs name.  Implications. The studentsÕ artwork demonstrates that there were many participants in their sense-making with texts in their everyday lives.  In every case, without exception, there was some facet of their sense-making that entailed them materializing some idea, affect, force, memory, or relation that would have otherwise been invisible to someone viewing the moment or the representation of the moment captured in a photograph.  These unseen participants in literacies are not easily considered through many of the traditional conceptualizations of sense-  143 making.  There do not seem to be adequate theories in the canon of literacy research to provide the language necessary to describe all of these participants; nor are there adequate methods in systematic use that provide sufficient access to these participants.  The current movement in the field of literacy studies, of which this work is a part, that is thinking about literacies as sets of relations and interactions holds great promise for providing the language and methods required to consider literacies in a more holistic way.    144 CHAPTER 6 Ñ AN ENDING MEDITATION Interlude 3 Ð Art Makes It All Ok  Figure 25:  Sylvia modeling the shirt she designed for LHSÕs ArtsFest 2016. Art makes it all ok.  A bold claim, to be sure, but I suppose no one thinks that all means ALL.  Nevertheless, I think several of the photography students at LHS would affirm the sentiment.  It is the end of the 2015-2016 school year and Mia and Donovan are each finishing up their first year of college.  Mia is studying to be a nurse and Donovan is a double major in photography and advertising.  Sylvia and Kate are graduating from LHS in a few weeks.  Sylvia just won the Heart for Art award and is heading to college in the fall to major in art.  Kate is also on her way to college in the fall and is going to a prestigious art school.  Art makes it all ok.   145 Recap and Refocus  I began this work with a look at the major epochs in literacy studies and teased out the limitations of popular orientations to the field.  I argued that literacy experience offers a more expansive orientation to literacies that accounts for the ways in which sense emerges through complex sets of relations with texts of all kinds in everyday life.  I then shared non-representational theory as a grounding for the concept of literacy experiences, providing a grammar for the ways in which things-bodies-objects come together in sets of relations from which sense and affective intensities might emerge.  Next, I discussed the details of my work with the students of LHS and the methods through which I sought to gain access to their literacy experiences.   After that foundation-building, I presented two chapters that demonstrated literacy experiences in the everyday lives of the Photo B/C/D students at LHS, generally, and Mia, Donovan, Kate, and Sylvia, specifically.  First, in Chapter 4, I presented three vignettes that highlighted how the notion of literacy experiences emerged in the first half of the study.  Observing students working with film, coding the corpus of photographs produced through the photoethnography projects, and talking about meaning made it clear that current orientations to literacies did not provide adequate language to describe the sense-making relations created in/through/with the studentsÕ work.  Then, in Chapter 5, I described the ways that the four focal students above studied and experimented with their own literacy experiences through making art and talking.  This exploration served a dual purpose: it showcased some of the literacy experiences of Sylvia, Donovan, Kate, and Mia; and, it demonstrated that art-making was, at least in this case, a successful method for materializing some of the sense-making relations that emerged as the students studied their photographs.   146 Therefore, with this particular collage of data and argumentation drawing to a close, I start this final chapter with a meditation on what the field of literacy studies might learn with/from this work and the four student researchers and why literacy experience is important.  Then, I discuss some of the challenges and limitations of literacy experience before I end with a brief conclusion. How Literacy Experience Matters   As IÕve demonstrated, literacy emerges through sets of sense-making relations as people read and write the world through their engagement with texts of all kinds in their everyday lives.  Studying these engagements, through the unit of literacy experiences, provides the opportunity to attend to a wide variety of things that are not easily countenanced through available units of analysis.  Though the details of literacy experiences have been thoroughly discussed in all that precedes this, there are several features that are particularly useful and worth revisiting. Embodied or emerging sense.  First, literacy experience allows for the study of varying levels of sense-making from that which occurs on the phenomenological periphery, just outside of conscious awareness but perhaps felt or perceived through affective intensities, to more concrete, cognitive understanding.  This move to locating literacy in sense takes seriously the dissolution of the division between mind and body by accepting the ways that body thinks with/through movement. Conceptualizing the body as thinking is of vital import to literacy educators.  Much of learning in school is predicated upon Cartesian dualism with the mind being the focus of attention, developed through instruction in a variety of subjects.  The body, as a potential participant in learning, is largely ignored apart from recess and the occasional gym class when budgets allow.  However, viewing the body as a participant in learning all subjects opens up opportunities for educators to develop more holistic pedagogies and curricula.     147 Being attuned to the ways that bodies know and think allows teachers to create spaces where students can find their ÒmuchnessÓ (Thiel, 2015, p. 41).  Thiel argues that muchness is Òan embodied intellectual fullness that manifests through an internal compulsion to be engaged in an activity that one has a particular affinity for or curiosity about, unstopped by challenges or frustrations,Ó (2015, p. 41).  Thinking bodies can engage, react, respond, and create if given the space to do so.  Sense can sometimes emerge in/through/with the body before or outside of conscious awareness.   The thinking body, pursuing emergent muchness, was seen in previous chapters as students rolled film, navigated their way through the darkroom, and began moving photographs around while coding.  The notion of emergence or pre-conscious sense, importantly, makes room for sense that erupts from relations that are fleeting, ephemeral, or novel as well as relations that are mundane, routine, or habitual, all of which might take place beyond conscious awareness.  Emergent sense was illustrated in previous chapters as students talked their way through the idea of meaning as well as the countless times they offered, ÒI donÕt knowÓ, ÒI just did itÓ, ÒI just felt itÓ as explanations for artistic choices. This construction of emergent sense, embodied sense, or muchness goes beyond the notion of didactic or Ôhands-onÕ learning styles which generally use the body to gain access to the mind.  The thinking body is one and the same as the mind and can demonstrate embodied literacies, or, as ThielÕs theory of muchness terms it, Òembodied intellectual fullnessÓ (2015, p. 41) before or outside of conscious awareness.  If educators are attuned to the thinking body, this sense can be observed, noticed, joined, and responded to in the context of literacy learning.  In Chapter 4, we witnessed Lu, attending to CharlieÕs emerging sense about how long to expose a print, asking her, ÒWhat does your gut tell you?Ó  Lu was observing CharlieÕs ambivalence and   148 prompting her to look to her body, her guts, to access her embodied sense and move towards muchness in her printing. Conversely, by not attending to the thinking body, teachers can unknowingly curtail studentsÕ learning or even do harm.  Stephanie Jones (2013) perfectly illustrates these negative outcomes by reporting on a lesson she does with undergraduate students on round robin reading.  She provides a challenging article for students to read, tells them theyÕll have some questions to answer at the end, and once they start reading she begins to call on them randomly to read paragraphs.  Jones shares the way that this ÒactivatesÓ something old and ÒdormantÓ in the studentsÕ bodies, with may of them Òreport[ing] sweating, feeling hot, noticing their heart rate speed up, shaking legs, and fearing humiliation and being perceived as incompetent,Ó (2013, p. 527).  In short, the students freak out a bit.  Their bodies know and react in observable ways to being asked to perform a task before they are able to process what is going on in the lesson.  WhatÕs more, Jones notes that Òfew reported being able to understand the printed text on which the activity was supposed to be focused,Ó (2013, p. 527).  The sense of stress and anxiety that emerged in studentsÕ bodies overshadowed any other sense that might have been made with the article.  Similarly, when I try to force the students to code the photos based on RoseÕs diagram (2012) in Chapter 4, I unwittingly derail their thinking bodies until they ignore me.  Their bodies move and they start passing photos around in ways that donÕt abide by RoseÕs logic but that, in the end, are meaningful to the students in far more interesting ways.  Thankfully, our relationship allowed them to ignore me and follow the emerging sense they were making, otherwise they (and I) would surely have learned less about their literacies. Things/Bodies/Objects.  Second, literacy experiences provide a way to consider all of the participants in the doing of literacies.  Though literacy experiences are interested in sets of   149 relations that include a human being, that human being is not necessarily privileged as the center from which all sense might emanate.  For this reason, a wide variety of things, bodies, and objects are able to be considered for the roles that they might play in any given set of literate relations.  As students developed their film, we could look at any number of the sets of relations between things: the black bag, reels, film scissor, darkness, fine motor skills, patience, and circulation cut-off-ness; or, Kate and her enlarger; or, Charlie, her counting, her swishing the photo with the tongs, her gut instinct, and her indecision.  There are countless ways that sets of relations might be studied through literacy experiences. There are also countless ways that attending to the wide variety of participants in studentsÕ literacies is useful to educators.  Perhaps Shipka (2016) says it best: Highlighting the various texts, tools, strategies, practices, and participantsÑboth human and nonhumanÑthat play a role in supporting, facilitating, altering, and at times even thwarting or forbidding the production of a focal text, product, or performance allows us to move beyond human-centered or human-centric notions of agency, effect, and collaboration. (p. 253, emphasis in original) Moving beyond the human can provide a more nuanced understanding of how young people are engaging with and creating texts of all kinds in their everyday lives in and out of school.  Objects and things exert force.  They have the ability to promote or inhibit learning.  Opening up literacies to include both the material and immaterial things participating with the human gives access to relations that might otherwise not be observable by educators.  Without a theoretical foundation that allowed the participation of objects in KateÕs literacies, the artwork she created from the photograph of her bedroom would not be pedagogically meaningful in the same ways   150 that it was to me and to Lu.  Put simply, considering the objects and things that participate in literacies  alerts us to the different resources children draw on as they create meanings in classrooms and the things that get in the way.  In doing so, it can help identify possibilities to recognise [sic] the very personal ways in which testsÑand the practices and artefacts [sic] associated with themÑmay be significant to children.  (Burnett, 2015, p. 528) Finally, literacy experiences are able to contain fractured timescales.  For instance, it is possible, through the lens of literacy experiences, to attend to the ways that the past, present, and imagined futures might enter into relationship as texts and/or with texts in a way that produces sense or affect for someone.  Literacy experiences impacted by fractured timescales were most clearly seen in the studentsÕ art-making as they studied photographs of their engagement with texts.  For instance, as Sylvia studied the relations among herself and the subjects in her Three Kids photo, she had to contend with differences between the past and the present.  Similarly, Donovan wrestled with various timescales in his Jesus piece as he studied his relationship to friends in the past and present Golden Age of his life, while simultaneously imagining a future that might be similarly golden, or, perhaps, even more golden. As Kate Pahl notes, Ò[p]ossible futures exist within the present.  These imagined futures are guided by how that present is framed and understood,Ó (2016, p. 155).  Teachers can play a central role in helping students to frame and understand their pasts, presents, and futures as they interact in/through/with literacy experiences.  Teachers can attend to the way that texts students are engaging/creating evoke various constructions of past/present/future worlds and past/present/future selves for the students and join them in the ways that they are framing and   151 imagining the world.  Further, understanding the ways that the past, present, and future are present in all moments helps to underscore the notion that Òcurriculum is not a static thing, but rather a dynamic event that happens.  Curriculum is a constant becoming,Ó (Masny & Waterhouse, 2011, p. 287, emphasis in original).  If teachers embrace how timescales are unstable and fracture in the midst of dynamic sense-making relations, then curriculum itself might become dynamic as well, attuned to the various ways that students are engaging texts.     Though there are certainly more ways that the concept of literacy experiences is different from other units of analysis in literacy studies, it is these three features that are most obviously borne out in the data of this study.  It also seems that these three features best account for the gaps in previous units of analysis used to study literacy as a participant in social worlds.  In this way, it is these three key features that demonstrate how literacy experience matters.   Why Literacy Experience Matters   Perhaps the most important result of conceptualizing literacy experience as an emergence of sense when people read and write the world through sets of relationships is that it moves the field towards an ontological view of literacy which views literacy as an inherent part of being.  By locating literacy in sense-making, everyone can be understood as in the process of being and becoming literate.  Therefore, a person who tells a story orally or another person who tells a story with illustrations might be considered no less literate than a person who writes a story with words on a page.  Similarly, it may be the case that another person is resistant to telling a story and refuses to do so.  This person would also be able to be seen as literate, with the sense-making product of her/his relations being resistance.  Each of these people used different skills in the set of relations that produced their stories or, their resistance to storytelling, but each of these people can still be considered literate.  This opening move seeks to reclaim the word   152 literacy from the racist, sexist, imperialists who use(d) it as a tool of exclusion and subjugation.  Rather, it focuses attention on the ways that people are already being and becoming literate and suggests that literacy is a part of being.33  As such, an ontological view of literacy mitigates the creation of binary subject positions that might be an unfortunate product of approaching literacy events and literacy practicesÑone either participates in the event or not and either uses practices or notÑby offering a spectrum of being literate through everyday literacy experiences.  This difference is a tremendously important reorientation that moves the field towards studying the sets of relations students are a part of rather than discrete sets of skills students can or cannot do.  Challenges and Limitations of Literacy Experience There are ways in which the concept of literacy experience presents challenges for literacy studies.  Literacy experience, in its very nature, lives in the constantly shifting sands of everyday moments.  Things come into relationship with one another and then break apart in ways that are often unexpected, unpredictable, and idiosyncratic.  For this reason, the Common Core State Standards and other similar technologies of standardization cannot peacefully coexist with the notion of literacy experience.  Public schools increasingly operate almost solely on ideals like predictability, determinism, and scalability which are incommensurate with ideas like emerging sense and studying relations. As such, with the current systems and structures that undergird the teaching and learning of literacy, any move away from standardization is counter-cultural. Considering the ways in which an expansive theoretical move like the one IÕve argued for here, towards an ontological view of literacies and the concept of literacy experience, might relate with or against standardization is a generative opportunity for further research.  Additionally, many may find it confounding to consider an approach to literacy which, in any way, de-centers the human subject and re-locates meaning to the flow of life and the expanse                                                              33 A tip of the hat, here, to Robert Yagelski (2009) and his notion of writing as a way of being (pp. 7-8).   153 of things in the world. Surely much is gained by positioning the human participants in literacies as being powerful decision-makers. The myriad benefits of this approach are easily seen in the prolific and foundational research that has been produced as a result of the shift to viewing literacies as situated social practices due to the essential work of scholars discussed in Chapter 1. These benefits have been seen both politically and socially, with positive impacts on curriculum and instruction that has improved the lives of countless teachers and children. For this reason, and, IÕm certain others, de-centering the human in research might seem counterproductive and, perhaps, slightly dangerous. However, taking up a literacy experiences approach to the study of literacies does not strip humans of their power in sense-making relations. Rather, it provides a way to see what else might be participating in and exerting power on the same moment. It gives researchers the ability to consider the non-cognitive and (im)material things that are participating in literacies with the human. In this way, it tells a different research story than one that centers the human. Insofar as selecting methods and theories determine the type of story a researcher hopes to tell, using literacy experience as the unit of analysis in the study of literacies potentially offers another genre in which we might write and think about literacies. Finally, I have been personally challenged through my attempts to find a suitable word or phrase to describe the phenomenon that I term here as literacy experience.  From the moment that I discovered the idea emerging from the data, I have used literacy experience as a placeholder term.  Experience is, in many ways, an ideal descriptor as it is able to contain emergent sense, powerful things, and fractured timescales.  It is also, in other ways, a terrible term due to the historical uses of experience in educational research.  Experience, for many, evokes either Dewey and his work in progressive schooling as well as aesthetics; or, the methodological tradition of phenomenology.  These connotations of experience are powerful and   154 abundant among educational researchers which make using the term in such a different way, as I do in this work, fairly problematic.  For this reason, I have been experimenting with different terms but, as yet, have not found a satisfactory replacement for the placeholder of literacy experience.  Therefore, in this work, the term remains even as I am actively seeking to replace it.  Conclusion  One thing that stuck with me throughout the study was how lucky they all were to have the opportunity to have a thriving art department at LHS.  Though Lakeside was not a particularly affluent suburb, the district has continued to see the value of the arts at a moment in time when few districts do.  Similarly, the big city school district has a middle and high school that is dedicated to the study of the arts with programs in visual arts, theatre, music, and writing.  I have continually wondered what has sustained the commitment to the arts in this area and if there is any way that it might be replicated in other cities.  Why have we allowed the arts to be decimated in our schools? While I may not be able to whole-heartedly agree with Sylvia that Art Makes It All Ok, I have seen firsthand that art helps.  It helps a lot of things.  Lu McCurry, the Fall 2014 students of Photo B/C/D, and, most of all, Donovan, Kate, Mia, and Sylvia taught me about many of the ways that art helps.  Art creates so many opportunities for students to participate in complex literacy experiences.  Art taps into the subconscious, the non-cognitive, feelings, and affects in ways that other school subjects do not.  Art also prompts the thinking body and diffuses sense into the senses rather than relegate thinking uniquely in the consciously available 10% of the brain.  Art also helps students develop sensitivities and intuitions that are more open to emerging sense than many of the other ways that school trains students to think and to know.      155 CHAPTER 7 Ñ POSTSCRIPT: AN ENGAGEMENT WITH LITERACY EXPERIENCES THROUGH RESEARCHER ART-MAKING   After I completed a draft of this manuscript, I set about on an artistic response to the project and my writing about the project.  I decided that I wanted to discomfort and disorient myself in a way similar to studentsÕ feelings at the beginning of our work together.  As I am very comfortable with the type of photography project the students conducted, I chose to undertake an artistic task I havenÕt done since I was in middle schoolÑa painting.  I decided to paint a portrait of Sylvia, Donovan, Mia, and Kate using the mash-up of their self-portraits from Chapter 3 (see Figure 26) as a reference.     Figure 26:  Reference image for painting.   In keeping with the theme of this study, I decided that my portrait should make an attempt to experiment with the idea of representation.  I knew that I did not want to paint a traditional portrait of the students and, to be frank, I did not have the skills to do so with any   156 amount of success.  I did a bit of research on abstract art and the techniques used by foundational artists in the movement such as Jackson Pollack, Piet Mondrian, Wassily Kandinsky, and Jean-Michel Basquiat as well as current abstract artists like Fiona Rae and Matthew Collings and his partner Emma Biggs.  This work led me to think about the representational work that color and the relationships between colors might do in portraiture: through arranging colors and shapes in specific relations, portraits emerge.  I wondered what might be produced if I intentionally used color and shape to reimagine the portrait.  What would happen if I sought to represent the colors of the reference photo without representing the various shapes and contours of the studentsÕ faces?  To answer this question, I decided to use PhotoShop to dramatically pixelate the reference photo, reducing it to simple blocks of color (see Figure 27).  Figure 27:  The studentsÕ selfies after being pixelated in PhotoShop.  As I pixelated the portrait, when this iteration emerged, I gasped.  This was exactly what I was hoping to achieve as I found it simple, beautiful, and squarely in the realm of a portrait.  I   157 could pick out SylviaÕs jeans, DonovanÕs eye, MiaÕs tank top, and KateÕs lipstick.  And yet, it was also an interesting study of color and the relationships of colors to one another.  It was a portrait and also not a portrait.  In short, I loved it.  I set about preparing the canvas.  This was a fairly detailed job of calculating the size of the squares of the grid and then measuring and drawing the guidelines.  I decided to use acrylic paints as they tend to be a bit more forgiving than oils for novice painters.  I wanted to further challenge myself so I decided to mix all of the colors from primaries (red, blue, and yellow), black, and white.  This proved to be an incredibly painstaking and time-consuming process.  However difficult, mixing colors was an amazing way to study color.  I had to repeatedly study individual squares in the reference image to figure out what I was really seeing in each color.  For instance, for each shade of gray I had to determine how light or dark it was and then if it was a warm gray or cool gray.  If warm, were the undertones more red, orange, or yellow?  If it was cool, was it more blue, green, or purple?  Another difficulty was trying to imagine what the color would look like when it was dry, as acrylic paints typically dry a shade or two darker than they appear when first applied.  It took hours to just paint a few squares.  Sometimes IÕd nail the color and think it was perfect.  Other times I mixed and mixed yet remained unsatisfied with the result and frustrated by the amount of painted I wasted on a color that was all wrong.  In the end, I decided that I would deviate from my original plan to mix only from primary colors and purchased a few different shades of blue, purple, and yellow to make things a bit easier.  This helped me to more quickly mix a wider variety of shades.  As I painted, I continually checked the reference imagesÑboth the original selfies photograph and the pixelated image.  I had a strong desire to get the representation ÒrightÓ, even while intentionally obscuring the representation.  As I was painting, I wondered if getting the   158 portrait ÒrightÓ was a possibility with this pixelated approach.  Was it possible for me to paint more or less accurately?  Though IÕm not certain I arrived at any decisive conclusion, I did finish the painting feeling as if I created an accurate portrait of the students (see Figure 28).  Yet, it seemed to me that the portrait seemed accurate only if it was viewed in relationship to the original reference photo of the studentsÕ selfies.  As such, colors alone were able to gesture towards representation of the studentsÕ portraits when in relationship with a strong point of reference.  If the painting was viewed without a reference photo, I am not certain if the viewer would know that it was intended to be a portrait, nor would they necessarily be able to pick out specific features of the students.  Perhaps the viewer would consider the painting to be a study of color with no aims at all towards representation.  Creating this painting was an incredibly valuable part of the research process.  Painting allowed me to study the ideas in this work through a vastly different mode.  It also positioned me as a novice which provided a different point of access to the ideas than I had through the traditional research methods used earlier in the study.   159  Figure 28: Sylvia, Donovan, Mia, & Kate Selfie Pixel Portrait by Amanda Smith. 24Óx36Ó acrylic on canvas                        160  EPILOGUE Ñ A GRIEF OBSERVED34 And grief still feels like fear.  Perhaps, more strictly, like suspense.  Or like waiting; just hanging about waiting for something to happen.  It gives life a permanently provisional feeling.  Ñ C.S. Lewis  It was a Saturday night in July when I got the text from Lu.  I had just hung out with her the day before and was meeting up with Kate, Donovan, and Mia the next day.  It was my weekend of saying, once again, thank you and, for the first time, goodbye.  My dissertation was successfully defended and I was moving thousands of miles away to start a new job.  The kids and I were meeting at our Starbucks.  We were sad Sylvia was on vacation and couldnÕt join us.  But, we were excited to see each other, catch up, and for the students to get their artwork back.  I was nervous.  IÕm not great at goodbyes.  I didnÕt know if IÕd be able to tell them all how important they are to me.  If I could say how grateful I was for their presence in my life.  If I could adequately describe how life-giving working with them had been for me during a personally tumultuous time.  If I could invent the words to say that they were like my children, my siblings, my students, and my teachersÑand that I loved them.  LuÕs text was the kind of text that no one ever wants to get.  It said something like, Òcall me when you get this.  i have tragic news.Ó  I got that strange, indescribable feeling that accompanies fearÉlike my body was suddenly hollow and my stomach was replaced with a vice.  I called Lu and she told me that our beloved Kate died on Friday night.  We were shocked and sad and angry together.  The next day I had to tell Donovan, Mia, and Sylvia.  We were shocked and sad and angry together.  We are all still trying to process our grief and figure out                                                              34!I take this title from the book by C.S. Lewis, from which the epigraph is taken.   161 how to make sense of a world not only without Kate in it, but deprived of all of her wisdom, art, beauty, and humor.   I hope that this work, insofar as it is able to capture a fraction of the woman Kate was, stands as a wholly inadequate tribute to her and her brilliance.  The world, whether it knows it or not, is not quite as bright without Kate in it.  Rest easy, sweet girl.   162  Figure 29: Kate.       163            APPENDICES      164 APPENDIX A: TEXTS & LIVES ASSIGNMENT SHEET    texts & lives photographic self-study project  photo b/c/d  Lu McCurry, Lakeview High School Amanda Smith, Michigan State University October 2014 LAKEVIEW HIGH SCHOOL  165   TEXTS & LIVES PHOTOGRAPHIC SELF-STUDY PROJECT introduction The intention for this project is to provide you with an opportunity to create a photo-essay that documents your interaction with and creation of a wide variety of texts in your everyday lives.  Too often, adults make assumptions about what the life of young people is like...what they can/cannot do, what they spend their time thinking about, and what kinds of things they do/do not care about.  With the ever-expanding Þeld of possibilities created by new technologies, young people are encountering and creating texts in ways that are both inventive and, sometimes, rebellious.  And though it may be done in ways that adults don't always see or value, young people are reading and writing more than ever before.  This project creates a space for you to do a photographic self-study, to explore and document the textual engagement in your life as you experience it.  It also serves as a vehicle for you to consider the role of documentary photography in the arts and in our culture both socially and politically. product Students will produce a photo-essay that will be a "week in the life" where you document the moments in your everyday life when you are reading or writing a text.   ¥Your essay will take the form of a PowerPoint photo essay with 30-50 digital photos and 3 printed Þlm images. ¥To create your digital essay, you should take between 120 & 200 pictures.   ¥To create your Þlm images, you should take 1 roll of Þlm.   ¥You should be sure to create a notes Þle in your phone or have a notebook handy while you shoot because for each photo you need to write down the date, time, location of photo, and your mood/feeling at that time (which can be one word or a little drawing).   ¥Each photo should have a short caption and the date/time/location/mood noted.   ¥Each photo essay will also be accompanied by an artist's statement of approximately 300 words  national core arts standards addressed ¥Connecting - VA:Cn10.1.HSIII:  Synthesize knowledge of social, cultural, historical, and personal life with art-making approaches to create meaningful works of art or design. ¥Creating - VA:Cr1.2.HSI:  Shape an artistic investigation of an aspect of present-day life using a contemporary practice of art or design. ¥Presenting - VA:Pr4.1.HSII:  Analyze, seclect, and critique personal artwork for a collection or portfolio presentation. LAKEVIEW HIGH SCHOOL  166    ¥Responding - VA:Re8.1.HSI:  Interpret an artwork or collection of works, supported by relevant and sufÞcient evidence found in the work and its various contexts project outline 1.Students explore samples of documentary photography, photo-essays, photographic self-studies ¥Lewis Hine: http://www.archives.gov/education/lessons/hine-photos/#documents ¥Kurt Simonson: http://www.kurtsimonson.com/northwoods-journals#/i/0 ¥Amanda's study of texts in a K-8 progressive school 2.Students shoot for approximately a week in school & out of school, making sure to closely document the date, time, & location of each photograph they take and their mood/feelings at that time. 3.Students review & analyze their photographs in order to select those to include in their photo-essay. 4.Students develop Þlm and print 3 images 5.Students write captions for all photos included in the photo-essay. 6.Students write their artist statements. 7.Gallery walk so that students can view the work of their classmates. ¥Students are paired up to more closely study one person's work.  Partner feedback sessions with evaluation form 8.Whole class conversation about the essays. ¥Themes? ¥Patterns? ¥Differences? ¥What did you learn about yourself? ¥What did you learn about classmates? ¥What might your teachers learn? ¥What might your parents learn? ¥...?   9.Follow-up: interviews with Amanda & Amanda mapping the class' photos continuing on... After the whole-class project, Amanda is hoping that a handful of students might agree to carry on their work with her.  We will be using your initial photo-essay as a springboard into a more in-depth examination of their everyday lives using documentary photography.     167 APPENDIX B: POST-PROJECT INTERVIEW PROTOCOL FOR FOCAL STUDENTS Interview Questions for Students Post-Project: ¥ Tell me about your approach to the project. ¥ How were thinking about "text" as you began the project and as you were taking photos? ¥ Walk me through your process of taking this photo from before taking it through photoshop/processing. ¥ What patterns do you notice in your photo series? ¥ Talk to me about the places you took your photos.  Why did you choose these places?  What other places might you have chosen? ¥ What things did you find yourself drawn to taking pictures of? ¥ Did you find that you encountered particular kinds of texts more than others? Why do you think that is? ¥ Did you notice any connections between the kinds of texts and your emotion/mood/reaction to them? ¥ Did anything surprise you or was anything unexpected? ¥ If your best friend saw your photo series, what would s/he notice?  Your parents? ¥ Imagine your series is shown at a gallery, what do you think people could learn about you  ¥ through your photos?  What could they learn about texts?  Young people in general? ¥ What is the name of your English teacher?  What would s/he learn from this photo series? ***If you were to continue this project, what would you be interested in investigating further?      168 APPENDIX C: PHOTOLAB POST-CODING DISCUSSION PROTOCOL Reading Social Texts (adapted from Jody Shipka, 2011, p. 154-155) ¥ What do you think is the story of these groups of texts? ¥ What might a stranger learn about the texts young people encounter in their everyday lives through looking at these groups of photos? ¥ Is anything missing?  Are there texts that you think ÒshouldÓ be represented here that you encounter in your everyday life that donÕt appear in these photos?  Why do you think they are missing? ¥ What is the text? Could the text be other than it is? In other words, could it be made out of other materials and have the same impact? ¥ What ÒworkÓ does the text do? What needs does the text fulfill? How is the text ÒsupposedÓ to be (or ÒnormallyÓ) used? Consider design. ¥ What aspects of the text helped you identify it as a certain type of text? If there is any variation between ÒlikeÓ texts, what does each text have to have in common in order for us to group it as a ÒtypeÓ?  ¥ Who, specifically, might have access to the text? In other words, what does one have to have, own or use in order to even come in contact with the text? ¥ Is the text necessary or can we live without it? How would life be different if the text did not exist? If the text is not necessary, what needs/wants does it capitalize on to create a space for itself? ¥ How does one read the text?  ¥ Who/what produces the text? Does it have co-authors or co-producers? How many people might be involved in the production, distribution, and reception of the text?   169 ¥ Does the text expect a response from readers? If so, how would you classify that response: emotional, intellectual, behavioral, other? Does one write on the text, save/collect the text? Pay extra for the text? Is the text socially valued? Seen as a nuisance? Saved or disposed of? ¥ What does the existence of the text say about the values of the culture that produces it? What are the conditions (economic, historical, cultural, technological) that make this text possible? Is the text expressly associated with the US? With this moment in history? 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