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Volume 4, Issue 1 (2025)Read More

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Journal Article
10 November 2025

The Art Critic as Learner: A Review of Erica Cardwell’s Wrong is Not My Name

Bronte Cronsberry
Erica Cardwell’s debut book Wrong is Not My Name: Notes on (Black) Art is about art, race, family and perhaps most prominently, about grief. Through her personal experiences with these themes, Cardwell’s voice as art critic is still undeniably present throughout the entirety of the text. Wrong is Not My Name reminds readers of the power of art to push us towards growth, but in the context of this issue on Aesthetic Education, I focus on Cardwell’s approach to art as critic, which she continually grounds in her approach to art as learner. It is this orientation in particular that I think offers those of us who aspire to, or perhaps already practice, art criticism a reflection on the impact of our work and the attitudes we bring to it.
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Articles
10 November 2025

Pedagogical Escapism and Western Performativity: A Psycho-Aesthetic Critique of Belly-Dance Adaption Symbolics

Maryam Farahani
This paper addresses positionality misreading in Western pedagogical adaptions of belly dancing. Raqs Sharqi, known in the West as belly dancing, is a predominantly West Asian and North African discipline and performance art with multimodal varieties, globally taught and practiced while crossing sport, narratology, and story-telling boundaries. As a unique performance activity, it portrays a dynamic entertainment space to connect one’s multiple identities. I argue that Raqs Sharqi, not only as an aesthetic-educational art form but also, perhaps unwittingly, reiterated as an Orientalist communication trope in belly dancing, has forged East-West performativity models. However, the historical education-literature for Western women and modern adaptions of Raqs Sharqi are socio-culturally disconnected. In want of aesthetic meaning-making for contemporary cultural identity elaborations, Western pedagogical and adaption processes overlook elemental aspects including cultural perspectives, the process of cognitive development, individual authenticity, and group politics of belonging and autonomy. Challenging Eurocentric and English-speaking narratives about Middle Eastern identities, Raqs Sharqi, in its intersectional positionality, is the loci of continued West Asian and North African identity heterogeneities. The narrative fluidity afforded to this historical and religious conceptualization, I contend, is somewhat lost in conceptions of Western dance homogeneity in entertainment. Reasons are multidimensional, illustrative of patriarchal histories of women’s education, Western literary and art erotic-exotic rhetoric traps, and the influence of contemporary media and digitalization. Drawing on philosophical foregrounding, Dialogical Self Theory (DST), and symbolic interactionism, this study elucidates the progress of escapism and performativity enforced by positionality misreadings in Raqs Sharqi. In so doing, I expand on the colonial continuity of dance pedagogy, delineating the socio-positionalities of pedagogic framing and empowerment double standards.
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Current Articles

Articles10 November 2025

From Sensibility to Critical Engagement: Sympathy, Animality, and Subjecthood in Wollstonecraft’s Maria and Vindication

Yingnan Shang
This paper examines Mary Wollstonecraft’s strategic use of sentimental animal tropes alongside rationalist critique in Maria, or The Wrongs of Woman (1798) and A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792), arguing that she mobilizes sensibility not as an end in itself, but as a pedagogical instrument within a broader project of aesthetic education—one intended to move readers from affective sympathy toward political and philosophical judgment. Focusing in particular on animal metaphors—especially in the character of Jemima, who repeatedly figures herself as a domesticated and brutalized creature—I trace how Wollstonecraft employs tropes of animality to illuminate the processes by which women are rendered less than human. At the same time, she insists that the very faculty denied to women by patriarchal society—rational reflection—is what marks the boundary between the human and the nonhuman. In this light, animal metaphors function paradoxically: they expose women’s dehumanization while simultaneously staging the reassertion of their moral and intellectual agency. Wollstonecraft’s appeal to sympathy, therefore, is intentionally unstable. It elicits emotional identification with suffering women only to disrupt that identification, urging readers to critique the social and epistemological structures that produce such suffering in the first place.
Articles10 November 2025

Pedagogical Escapism and Western Performativity: A Psycho-Aesthetic Critique of Belly-Dance Adaption Symbolics

Maryam Farahani
This paper addresses positionality misreading in Western pedagogical adaptions of belly dancing. Raqs Sharqi, known in the West as belly dancing, is a predominantly West Asian and North African discipline and performance art with multimodal varieties, globally taught and practiced while crossing sport, narratology, and story-telling boundaries. As a unique performance activity, it portrays a dynamic entertainment space to connect one’s multiple identities. I argue that Raqs Sharqi, not only as an aesthetic-educational art form but also, perhaps unwittingly, reiterated as an Orientalist communication trope in belly dancing, has forged East-West performativity models. However, the historical education-literature for Western women and modern adaptions of Raqs Sharqi are socio-culturally disconnected. In want of aesthetic meaning-making for contemporary cultural identity elaborations, Western pedagogical and adaption processes overlook elemental aspects including cultural perspectives, the process of cognitive development, individual authenticity, and group politics of belonging and autonomy. Challenging Eurocentric and English-speaking narratives about Middle Eastern identities, Raqs Sharqi, in its intersectional positionality, is the loci of continued West Asian and North African identity heterogeneities. The narrative fluidity afforded to this historical and religious conceptualization, I contend, is somewhat lost in conceptions of Western dance homogeneity in entertainment. Reasons are multidimensional, illustrative of patriarchal histories of women’s education, Western literary and art erotic-exotic rhetoric traps, and the influence of contemporary media and digitalization. Drawing on philosophical foregrounding, Dialogical Self Theory (DST), and symbolic interactionism, this study elucidates the progress of escapism and performativity enforced by positionality misreadings in Raqs Sharqi. In so doing, I expand on the colonial continuity of dance pedagogy, delineating the socio-positionalities of pedagogic framing and empowerment double standards.
Articles10 November 2025

Beyond the Madrasah: Digital Pedagogies and Nigerian Yoruba Muslim Women's Engagement with Islamic Knowledge

AbdulGafar Fahm
This paper explores how digital pedagogies are reshaping the landscape of Islamic education among Nigerian Muslim women, with a primary focus on Yoruba communities in Southern Nigeria. Historically, Islamic learning in Nigeria has been rooted in traditional institutions, notably the madrasa, characterized by face-to-face instruction and rigid gender norms. However, the proliferation of digital technologies - particularly online madrasas, WhatsApp study groups, Zoom-based Qur’anic classes, and Islamic mobile applications - has significantly altered women’s access to religious knowledge. Utilizing ethnographic evidence and qualitative interviews, this interdisciplinary study examines how digital platforms enhance accessibility, overcome sociocultural barriers, and enable Nigerian Yoruba Muslim women to engage with a global Islamic discourse. The analysis underscores the benefits of digital transformation, including increased autonomy in learning, flexibility, and expanded religious authority, while critically addressing challenges such as digital literacy gaps, infrastructural disparities, and concerns about content authenticity. By applying perspectives from digital pedagogy, Islamic educational traditions, and gender studies, this research highlights how technological innovations facilitate a dynamic, responsive form of Islamic scholarship that meets contemporary educational needs. Finally, the study outlines avenues for future research, emphasizing the need for deeper investigations into equitable access and sustained integration of digital and traditional Islamic learning frameworks.

Most Popular Articles

Articles
1 January 2023

Magpies, Bridge and Goddess: Unearthing the Hidden Symbols and Rediscovering the Lost Goddess in Chinese Qiqiao Festival

Juan Wu
The Qiqiao Festival, also known as the Qixi Festival, or Chinese valentine’s day, is a festival celebrating the annual meeting of the Cowherd and Weaver Maid in mythology. The most influential version focuses on the romance or love theme; however, it ignores its underlying historical context, gender tension and mythical belief. This paper takes the texts, rituals and materials related to the Qiqiao festival to investigate its origin and evolution. First, it takes the anthological case of the Qiqiao festival in Xihe county to explore its core image of the holy bridge and Goddess Qiao. Second, it traces the bridge image in the Qiqiao festival to the archeological evidence of the oracle Hong and Jade Huang to explore the interaction of the rainbow bridge and goddess in the Qiqiao festival. Third, it presents multiple textual evidence to explore the mythic image of the magpie bridge in the Qiqiao festival to reveal the connection between bird worship and Goddess Worship. It proposes a possible mode of evolution of the Qiqiao festival: first originated from the initial sacrifices to Goddess Qiao, to pray for the holy bridge or pray to Goddess for the craft, then to the romance of the Cowherd and Weaver Maid. This paper extends from the aesthetic narrative of the Qiqiao Festival to its mythological context, highlighting its underlying ideology and gender tension. The Qiqiao festival is not only about romance; it reveals the profound tradition of the Goddess, bridge and bird mythology before the patriarchal society. The evolution of the Qiqiao festival demonstrates the tension between man and woman, fictional imagination and mythical worship, aesthetic autonomy and embedded ideology.
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Articles
30 December 2018

THE QUEST FOR SELF: USING MANDALA ART IN REFLECTIVE PRACTICE JOURNALING

kathleen quinn
This article is a nexus of research, personal journaling reflections, and mandala creation from the authors own journals and focuses on the use of Mandalas as part of a reflective practice journaling process. Attention to mandala usage within reflective practice considering depth interiority, engaging and sharing with others. The authors approach to mandala construction is included followed by an exercise for observation and assessment of mandalas. The structure for reflective practice helps shape transformational leaders, using expressive arts, narratives in journaling. This transformational Discovery pathway and narrative exercises can be used for creating professional learning communities. This form of reflective practice has possibilities for increased self-awareness and self-care by creating a permanent record of thoughts and anchors.
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Articles
1 January 2024

Feminist Phenomenology and First-Person Narrative: Understanding Gender and Social Conflict in Anna Burns’ Milkman

SUSHREE ROUTRAY, Rashmi Gaur
In her magnum opus Milkman (2018), Anna Burns employs a subversive and artfully crafted first-person narrative, deftly exposing the arduous and tumultuous struggles encountered by individuals who dare to defy the confines of traditional gender roles. Through a relentless and unflinching narrative, the novel fearlessly confronts the harrowing manifestations of psychological torment, the insidious spectre of relentless stalking, and the manipulative machinations of gaslighting, all the while fervently interrogating the notion of a fixed and immutable gender identity. In a relentless odyssey toward self-realization, the protagonist's journey unfurls against a backdrop of traumatic events and the unyielding pressures imposed by society. The protagonist's plight is a reflection of wider societal injustices as well as the community's refusal to acknowledge stalking as a form of sexual harassment and its lasting impact on individuals. Exploring the themes of sexual harassment, victim-blaming, and himpathy through the lens of Feminist Phenomenology, the paper also examines the novel's portrayal of surveillance, biopower, and the deeply ingrained binary divisions that shape and constrain our societal fabric. By disentangling these themes, the narrative emerges as a critique of conformity, injustice, and the erasure of individual identity. The paper concludes that the first-person narrative in Milkman serves as a powerful conduit for revealing subjective experiences, challenging societal norms, and promoting a deeper understanding of gendered lived experiences.
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Articles
30 December 2018

IN BETWEEN REALMS: THE SEARCH FOR FEMININE SELFHOOD IN THE ESSAIS OF MONTAIGNE

Anna Suarez
My purpose is to explore factors of the Renaissance that determined women’s selfhood in Montaigne’s Essais. I argue that the shift into modernity is responsible for the loss of women’s autonomy as well as the anxiety experienced by men regarding their power as well as their potential. Montaigne and Renaissance discourse defines women only by their bodies (sexual organs) and I explore the elements that established biological essentialism. This paper exemplifies comparative literature in the sense that it combines literature, theory, and art for the purpose of creating a well-researched examination of the root causes for why women were villainized and oppressed in the Renaissance era. I utilize feminist theory to discuss embodiment, which my argument defines as women being inseparable to their biological roles and the loss of their economic autonomy by way of them losing their property rights. Another aspect of embodiment in which I use is the loss of women midwives to male physicians, which calls for men to establish women’s reproductive rights, furthermore, trap them inside the narrow male definition of woman. Paradoxically, women are embodied due to sexist power dynamics, but feared for their possible demonic powers. The fear of witchcraft in women is due to men’s fear of castration and the tension that women will take away men’s power. Art theory from the Renaissance integrates cultural attitudes towards women’s bodies on a vast scale. This research paper is an exercise to examine the history of women’s selfhood.
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Articles
31 January 2024

Against Conflict, Against Occupation: Protest Songs in India and Kashmir

Mridula Sharma
The establishment of All India Progressive Writers’ Association in colonial India encouraged artists to articulate and examine social realities. Literary-cultural productions, particularly popular songs in Hindi films, in independent India continued to remain preoccupied with social conflicts such as religious bigotry and communalism. Sahir Ludhianvi’s “Yeh Duniya Agar Mil Bhi Jaye” (trans. “What can one gain, even if one gains this world?,” 1958 ) and “Yeh Kiska Lahu Hai, Kaun Mara” (trans. “Whose Blood Has Spilled? Who Died?,” 1961) are early examples of a lasting tide of pessimism owing to communal violence during the 1947 India-Pakistan partition. Narendra Modi’s victory in the 2014 and 2019 elections seems to have reignited the rhetoric of pessimistic social protest in popular music, with the production of songs such as “Azadi” (trans. “Freedom”) and “Jingostan” (trans. allusion to a jingoistic country) in Gully Boy (2018). However, institutionalised investment in idioms of hopelessness has now diluted the revolutionary scope of pessimism and transformed it into a cultural currency: the dexterous weaponisation of relatability has simply become a means to secure commercial popularity. The formal structure and lyrics of popular songs in occupied Kashmir provide a contrast: Srinagar-based rapper MC Kash’s “I Protest (Remembrance)” (2011) and feminist collective Zanaan Wanaan’s “Kashmir: Bella Ciao” (2020) are shaped by metaphors of hope for radical change, evincing an undying belief in the possibility of freedom from Indian occupation. Both “I Protest (Remembrance)” and “Kashmir: Bella Ciao” combine indictment and memorialisation, only to culminate in a pledge to materialise the vision for Kashmir’s independence. My presentation will trace the legacy and scope of pessimism in popular music in independent India and examine optimism as a survival strategy in popular music in occupied Kashmir to assess varying strategies of postcolonial (and) social protest.
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