The Artist, the Activist, the Academic: Building a Critical Pedagogy of Embodied Knowledge

This paper explores the intersection between professional ethics and values, socialchange, artistry, and academe. It suggests that the results of such an endeavormay produce embodied knowledges that have the power to be emancipatory,inspired, and authentic in a manner that challenges Eurocentric, male dominatedways of knowing, being, and doing. Embodied knowledge has its naissance in critical feminist pedagogy andreflects a politic that states knowledge cannot be divorced from the bodiesthat produce it.  The paper provides atheoretical framework for classroom instruction that may be transformationalfor students and provide avenues for understanding and producing qualitativeresearch that traditional methods of classroom instruction do not produce.  This critical framework was developed as aresult of social work classroom instruction that occurred from 1998 to 2003 ata small, Midwestern liberal art college.