Mess and Making Matters in Feminist Teaching

Abstract

How do materials and making come to matter in the messy practices of feminist teaching? This Lab Meeting shares examples of interdisciplinary work in feminist making and teaching across a range of contexts (AI portraiture, printmaking, quilting, musical performance, game design, theater, storytelling, and more) to extend the discussion of materials in feminist thought, a topic of long-standing importance in the field. As a group of theorist-practitioners, the contributors to the Lab Meeting share an interest in bridging the conceptual and material via a scrappy mode of making and inquiry that does not seek to remediate chaos but rather engage it, in all its complexities. Each contributor captures multiple interpretations of mess, making, storytelling, and education from a feminist perspective. Together, they offer insights into the liberatory promise of material engagements.