Demonstrates poetry's self-explanatory and self-expressive powers in a series of brief narratives. Includes experiences with emotionally disturbed preschoolers, hospitalized schizophrenic children, brain injured and autistic preadolescents, adult schizophrenics, and withdrawn elderly. Notes that the examples of their creative work underscore the…

Student-assembled collages can be used to trigger reflective questioning and enable students to view situations from multiple perspectives. When used in clinical supervision of nursing students, they help clarify issues and develop awareness of personal values and meanings related to nursing practice. (SK)

Stories of adults participating in an art-making group designed to increase self-understanding show that art making, play, and experimentation in a place apart from everyday life enabled them to reclaim neglected aspects of the self and to explore and change their metaphorical self-portraits. (SK)

Reports on medical evaluation processes and art-based assessments used in identifying psychosocial health of children in orphanages in Kiev, Ukraine. Because American health professionals, including an art therapist/psychologist, had actually come to treat orphans, they were invited to state shelters never before open to foreigners. Includes…

A focus was made on puzzling children with the help of few examples, the times when they said unexpected or surprising things or made remarks that shouldn't have been made. The way these children present their meaning in different cases and the resources they draw upon for thinking and for expression is explored.

The compulsion and capacity for self-expression in penal institutions can be witnessed through the endless production of such creations as wall murals, graffiti, effigies, adornments, decorative envelopes, and tattoos. The intent of this paper is to examine the self-directed expressive endeavors of male residents at a county jail. The examples…

This brief article describes the historical, cultural, and artistic elements of Vincent van Gogh's oil on canvas "Undergrowth with Two Figures" of 1980. The article concludes with questions for students to consider in relation to these aspects of the painting.

As a Certified Laban Movement Analyst and a classically trained ballet dancer, I consistently weave the Laban Movement Analysis/Bartenieff Fundamentals (LMA/BF) theories and philosophies into the ballet class. This integration assists in: (1) Identifying the qualitative movement elements both in the art of ballet and in the students' dancing…

This article provides a practical framework for infusing a body-listening or somatic approach into the dance class. Although the concept of body listening is not revolutionary or ground breaking, it has been underemphasized in the dance technique class and needs revisiting. From reflection on current research, as well as from several years of…

Using Critical Discourse Analysis, this article explores the writer-identity of a college ESL student in order to understand how embedded ideologies and power relations shape understanding of writer identity. Using a poststructural and sociocultural perspective, the author takes a stand regarding the politics of language and the teaching of…

Literary scholars like Lynn Bloom consider truly private diaries as "bare-boned" works which are "written with neither art nor artifice." In 1995, a "pile of bones" arrived at one person's door delivered by Federal Express. They were the bones of her great aunt Annie Ray--fragments of the diary she kept from 1881 to…

By adopting some of the methods used by ethnographic researchers, performance artists/researchers can "step out of" their own culture, providing the necessary distance for the reporting of the event under investigation. Dwight Conquergood uses ethnographic research to be able to "step into" the culture under investigation and…

Advice for students preparing for job interviews is provided in this guide. First, preliminary steps are reviewed, including ascertaining the type of job wanted, securing an appointment for an interview, researching the firm, dressing appropriately, writing a resume, being prepared to fill out job applications and to give reasons for leaving…

This curriculum is designed to provide students with specific techniques for communicating more assertively and dealing with manipulative behavior more effectively. The curriculum outlines five 40-minute sessions, each including appropriate student worksheets and transparency masters. The first session focuses on distinguishing among assertive,…

This paper argues that multimedia technology can be used by ordinary individuals casually and frequently for very commonplace purposes, which will result in multimedia technology joining the basic repertoire of techniques for individual self expression, along with speech, gesture, and writing. This argument is examined from three perspectives: (1)…