Open Access"Look at Me:" Portraiture and Agency
Author(s) -
Janet Sauer
Publication year - 2012
Publication title -
disability studies quarterly
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
eISSN - 2159-8371
pISSN - 1041-5718
DOI - 10.18061/dsq.v32i4.1736
Subject(s) - portrait , agency (philosophy) , disability studies , narrative , transformative learning , construct (python library) , social justice , sociology , qualitative research , psychology , structure and agency , aesthetics , gender studies , pedagogy , social science , visual arts , art , literature , computer science , programming language
Keywords: disability, methodology, portraiture, social justice, special education Historically, the dominant research paradigms involving the study of people with disabilities involved experimentally designed studies or other medically orientated approaches. This paper examines portraiture as a form of qualitative inquiry offering emancipatory possibilities for children with significant disabilities and transformative positive reinterpretations of disability as a social construct for their teachers and other people in their lives. Three narrative portraits of young people with disabilities were created based on a year-long portraiture study involving the collection of observational data, informal interviews, artifacts, and discourse analysis to capture the “essence” of their humanness. Through an examination of this portrait study and others from across the humanities, this paper provides examples where the “subjects” asserted themselves in ways akin to Giroux’s agency (1987) suggesting portraiture might provide a unique and credible avenue to respectfully study and learn more about people with disabilities too often left on the fringe of society.