Sheese, K. (2022). How Research Can Support a More Embodied Pedagogy in Psychology. In M. Watzlawik, & S. Salden (Eds.), Courageous Methods in Cultural Psychology. Theory and History in
the Human and Social Sciences (pp. 191-212). Cham: Springer. doi: 10.1007/978-3-030-93535-1_10
https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-030-93535-1_10
In this chapter I explore the question of what kind of methods can support a more embodied pedagogy. I draw on interviews with students from a psychology of women course to understand how a class assignment to draw a vulva, as a visual and experience-based method, elicited an embodied, affective, and relational engagement and surfaced diverse forms of knowledge not traditionally legitimated in the classroom. I begin by situating silence and shame, reviewing the literature on women’s embodiment and exploring how the vulva assignment initiated the coproduction of an ‘epistemology of ignorance.’ I then trace the sociorelational circuits of embodied knowledges that appeared in the narratives of the women I interviewed, as they completed the assignment, in their relational histories of learning about vulvas, and in the ways women spoke about discovering new relational selves. I examine the ways in which the assignment opened