rending and mending heARTs: Joy, Aesthetic Expression, Creative Pedagogy, and Collaborative Representation

Abstract A life-threatening health crisis and period of recovery re-ignites folklorist Sandra Mizumoto Posey's creative fire, ultimately infusing art into her scholarly and pedagogical work in ways that are liberating for her and her students. Her personal reflection explores the need for and role of aesthetic expression and creativity in both student learning experiences and academic labor through an overview of a comics-based, collaborative ethnography project and subsequent pedagogical developments that incorporate comics and other creative modalities in teaching, the value of which is attested to by a guide to the methodology by Cricket Malament, one of the original students taking part in the project.