The Powers of the Quilt: Fostering HIV-AIDS Literacy in and through the Arts

Presenter Information

Tahirih A. Pleasant, GSU Curriculum, Foundations and ReadingFollow

Abstract

There are “powers in the quilt". This presentation is intended to promote the value of discourse and practice in teaching and learning in and through the arts for HIV-AIDS literacy. Participants will view a model of a practice-led, arts-based literacy project to gain insight into the value of curriculum as aesthetic text for HIV-AIDS literacy initiatives.

Proposal Summary

Objective: To use the Powers of the Quilt as an alternative venue to facilitate HIV-AIDS literacy. Current research for this region has identified a disproportionate increase in HIV-AIDS in the Deep South in relation to other regions with similar causative factors (Reif, Geonnotti & Whetton, 2006; Sutton, Anthony, Vila, McLellan-Lemal & Weidle, 2010; CDC, 2013). These findings demonstrate that the HIV-AIDS epidemic possesses idiosyncrasies that visibly distinguish it from its behavior in other regions. In fact, Reif et al., (2006) suggest that a possible inquiry into Deep South as place (with its historically atypical intersections of race, class, and gender, etc.) could yield invaluable information pertaining to this inimitability. Similarly, Sutton et al., (2010) cite that their data suggests a “compelling need for better characterization of the HIV/AIDS epidemic…in the rural South” (p. 240). However, while the literature has cited no single justification for this phenomenon, HIV-AIDS literacy is, at the least, a highly significant dynamic. Literacy leads to HIV-AIDS literacy, and HIV-AIDS literacy leads to health literacy (Schenker, 2005). According to Moosa, Brock-Getz, Ladner & Tiano (2013) health literacy impacts health, treatment, and beliefs pertaining to transmission for persons living with HIV-AIDS. The implications for these connections are that inadequate, faulty or absent literacy at any level in this process leads to greater possibilities for infection and death vis-à-vis the disease. Rural people possess significant barriers to literacy, and, thus, in turn, to health literacy (Kirsch, Jungebent, Jenkins & Kilstad, 1993). Therefore, conventional HIV-AIDS literacy initiatives relying on non-aesthetic based literacy curriculum can be augmented by modifying/adapting instruction-learning to include aesthetic-based literacy curriculum. By differentiating the curriculum and instruction (e.g. instead of using alphabetic print literature to address HIV-AIDS literacy), aesthetic text can be employed as a venue to “tell the story” of HIV-AIDS. Employing a practice-led, arts-based approach in which both HIV-AIDS service providerseducators and persons living with HIV-AIDS move through the process of articulating the what, when, where, how and why of HIV-AIDS together achieves greater clarity about the disease and how it is spread for both stakeholders. In this context, the “language” and “text” of the quilt can be employed to “tell the story” of HIV-AIDS in the rural Deep South (Witzling, 2009). This kind of approach to HIV-AIDS literacy benefits both stakeholders: 1) Providing a venue for expression of the narratives, “critical aesthetic text”, of the persons most impacted by the epidemic can be empowering for them both personally and practically; 2) It can contain vital information, otherwise not articulated in a purely clinical, non-arts based context, but, which could serve the invaluable purpose of articulating a counternarrative (Pleasant, 2013). In this context, where the Deep South is place and has contributed to the uniqueness of the character of the disease for this region, a counternarrative can assist in informing practitioners which subsequent directions they should pursue in their continued effort to halt the HIV-AIDS epidemic in this specific socio-geographic context. Therefore, using an arts-based methodology to adapt and modify HIV-AIDS literacy curriculum to function as HIV-AIDS literacy curriculum as aesthetic text “throws off the covers that hide the expressiveness of experienced things” (Dewey, 1934). It can allow for a deeper articulation of “the story” of HIV-AIDS in the rural Deep South. Concurrently, the “telling of this story” can, be the information needed to solve the puzzle of why, specifically, HIV-AIDS is spreading disproportionately in this region. de Lange, Mitchell, Moletsane, Stuart and Buthelezi (2006) used visual and arts-based methodologies to explore issues pertaining to HIV-AIDS in an effort to deconstruct experiences and understandings of the disease to encourage participants in the project to create a context of action and social change. Similarly, an arts-based project model such as the one proposed can potentially facilitate an active stance and changes in approach for both practitioners and persons with HIV-AIDS so that they may come closer to identifying and addressing the specifics of the heightened epidemic for this region. Innovative Strategies and Practices: Using an arts-based methodology to offer alternative formats for HIV/AIDS literacy initiatives, this presentation will demonstrate the value of practice-based engagement for service providers-educators. It will illuminate the invaluable exercise of service practitioners interacting in participatory, creative spaces to re-fashion literacy curriculum as aesthetic text.

Relevance And Significance

Advocacy Track--Education initiatives (e.g., literacy) Relevance and Significance: The primary significance of this proposal topic rests within its ability to foster discourse and encourage arts-based practice that can potentially address the HIV-AIDS epidemic in rural communities in the Deep South through alternative approaches to HIV-AIDS literacy. Its secondary significance is to create consideration for establishing a formal venue, within the context of the clinical setting, for people living with AIDS-HIV to “tell their stories”, validate their voices and actualize a transformative, participatory, interdisciplinary research agenda in which both the participants and researchers converge in trust and equity to halt the HIV-AIDS epidemic for this region. Thirdly, it is to create awareness of the rich description of HIV-AIDS in the rural South that can be derived from alternative forms of qualitative data solicitation and presentation to facilitate further research, social change and policy making to end the HIV-AIDS crisis.

Session Format

Workshop

Keywords

HIV-AIDS, Literacy, Teaching and learning in and through the arts, Aesthetic text, Quilt, Critical aesthetic text

Location

Room 210

Publication Type and Release Option

Presentation (Open Access)

Recommended Citation

Pleasant, Tahirih A., "The Powers of the Quilt: Fostering HIV-AIDS Literacy in and through the Arts" (2016). 9th Annual Rural HIV Research and Training Conference (2014-2019). 14.
https://digitalcommons.georgiasouthern.edu/ruralhiv/2016/2016/14