A Layering of Selves: Bias, Subjectivity, and Paper Dolls

This paper examines the ways that artful inquiry affords qualitative research students newly creative and embodied opportunities to understand and engage with subjectivity and bias—important concepts in the field of qualitative inquiry. Moving beyond the inadequacy of traditional teaching practices, such as student-generated written subjectivity statements, we share here an artful methodological approach using paper dolls to disrupt conventional engagements with these concepts. Inspired by Donna Haraway’s emphasis on layer(ing)s of subjectivity and Karen Barad’s discussion of cutting together-apart as a creative process, we draw from collaging in/as research to offer this paper doll activity as a constructive and disruptive way to invite students to consider themselves as complex, messy, and inevitable aspects of the research process.