Channelling discomfort through the arts: A Covid-19 case study through an intercultural telecollaboration project

Abstract

In this article we argue, in the context of the current dominance of the performative and instrumental drives characterizing the accountable university, that language and intercultural communication education in universities should also be humanistic, addressing ‘discomforting themes’ to sensitize students to issues of human suffering and engage them in constructive and creative responses to that suffering. We suggest that arts-based methods can be used and illustrate this with an intercultural telecollaboration project created in response to the Covid-19 pandemic of 2020. In this way language and intercultural communication education can become a site of personal and social transformation albeit modest and piecemeal as part of a longer process. Through arts-based methodologies and pedagogies of discomfort, Argentinian and US undergraduates explored how the theme of the Covid-19 crisis has been expressed artistically in their countries, and then communicated online, using English as their lingua franca, to design in mixed international groups artistic multimodal creations collaboratively to channel their suffering and trauma associated with the pandemic. This article analyses and evaluates the project. Data comprise the students’ artistic multimodal creations, their written statements describing their creations, and pre and post online surveys. Our findings indicate that students began a process of transformation of disturbing affective responses by creating artwork and engaging in therapeutic social and civic participation transnationally, sharing their artistic creations using social media. We highlight the powerful humanistic role of education involving artistic expression, movement, performativity, and community engagement in order to channel discomforting feelings productively at personal and social levels.

Teaching and learning languages online: Challenges and responses

“…Another major line of research has focused on the design and implementation of pedagogical activities to facilitate peer interaction and/or teacher-student communication in online teaching. These studies discuss the value of telecollaboration among students through the building of virtual literature circles ( Ferdiansyah, Ridho, Sembilan, Sembilan, & Zahro, 2020 ) and the creation of intercultural projects ( Porto, Golubeva, & Byram, in press ). The notion of telecollaboration-oriented pedagogy has also been integrated into pre-service language teacher education for pedagogical task design ( Ekin, Balaman & Bademkorkmaz, in press ).…”

Life-Writing and Virtual Exchange

“…Newer developments have addressed important societal change and the beneficial role that VE can play; O'Dowd (2020) found that VE can be a vehicle for promoting global citizenship's core values, such as respect for diversity and solidarity for humanity. It has also been employed as a medium for students to process trauma arising from the Covid-19 crisis (González-Ceballos et al, 2021;Porto et al, 2021), and for working through international conflicts and controversies (Watanabe, 2020).…”

Introduction: Arts integration and community engagement for intercultural dialogue through language education

“…As I was promoted to teaching positions with increased decision-making responsibilities in that course over these 25 years, I introduced changes at different times such as the move from product to process writing and the use of genre-based pedagogies, intercultural perspectives in language education with a multiliteracies, multimodal, arts-based and translingual approach, a content and language integrated learning (CLIL) orientation using literature as a basis to address citizenship and human rights concerns, and an intercultural citizenship perspective connecting language learning and students' engagement in social and civic action in the community during their college education (Byram, 2014;Byram et al, 2017). My co-authored article in this special issue (Porto, Golubeva & Byram, 2021, this issue) illustrates these orientations.…”