Paper Short Abstract:

This paper draws on my ethnographic work with formerly incarcerated women in Lebanon. I start by introducing the collaborative storytelling project co-developed with my interlocutors before reflecting on how art can invite profound realms of expression and alternative modes of knowledge in research.

Paper Abstract:

In this paper, I draw on my ethnographic project with formerly incarcerated women in Lebanon to consider the implications of employing artistic methods in research.

Soon after I began conducting in-depth interviews with formerly incarcerated women in Lebanon, I realized that words would not be enough to encapsulate their experiences. Indeed, they often struggled to verbalize their thoughts, memories, and feelings about imprisonment. Instead, many of them tended towards artistic means such as drawing, painting, songwriting, etc. to better express themselves. Together, we initiated an artistic and collaborative storytelling project with the aim of chronicling and comprehending their individual and collective experiences.

My paper will discuss how the incorporation of such artistic participatory methods provided my interlocutors the means to share their otherwise-indescribable memories of prison life – the “thoughts that can’t be put into words,” as one woman put it. These methods also enabled us to fulfill our collective goal of moving the project beyond the academy: we aspire towards publishing a comic book based on our work together.

In sum, arts-based participatory methods opened possibilities for me and my interlocutors: it enabled us to explore alternative realms of expression and experience while allowing us to escape the strict discursive boundaries and limited audiences of academia. Yet more than that, these methods also invited questions about what kind of knowledge is valuable. My paper concludes by reflecting on these questions, suggesting that artistic research methods compel us to make peace with uncertainty in knowledge-making.