Artful Approaches for the Study of Multiracial Student Experiences: Not Artifact,But Aperture

Abstract

Within higher education, various methodologies are used to collect data on student experiences, including both quantitative and qualitative approaches. This paper highlights the importance of attending to artful methodologies particularly when learning with/from mixed and multiracial postsecondary students. We share three artful productions generated by multiracial undergraduate and graduate students from three separate studies, conducted over a range of time from 2017 to 2020. We argue that in each case, the art itself goes far beyond an artifact or “thick description” and instead serves as an aperture to new possibilities for inquiry and analysis. Not only are artful methods a generative form of inquiry with/on multiracial postsecondary students, but also the artful productions of these students can guide and shape continued, future scholarship in this area. Implications are discussed for research and postsecondary students in institutions of higher education.

Art is one of the first mediums children around the world learn and employ, a tool for expression, interpretation, and development (Kinder, 2010; Theodotou, 2019). During early adolescence, however, the majority of Western-educated youth generally seem to take a step away from artful inquiry (Graham, 2003). But artmaking and artful exploration can take center stage again during the years of postsecondary schooling (Clark/Keefe, 2014; Hoffman Davis, 2008; Riley, 2001). College students are encouraged to take art classes as part of their general education requirements, and often they experiment with formats that are new to them, such as ceramics, jewelry-making, theater, and creative writing. It can be stated that there is a return to artful inquiry as part of the psychosocial exploration and development of emerging adults during the college years (Aaron et al., 2011; Hensel et al., 2012; Leavy, 2020; Price & Swan, 2020). Art helps crystallize, contain, and process both pain and joy, both struggle and growth, and can serve as a platform for the integration of new understandings (Leavy, 2020; Lou, 2018).

College students who identify as mixed ¹ and/or multiracial also use artful methods in their psychosocial exploration and development journeys (Mohajeri & Lou, 2021; Reid et al., 2018; Shaffer, 2024). Multiracial young adults are often engaged in profound processes of identity exploration and development during their postsecondary years (Johnston, 2014; Johnston-Guerrero & Chaudhari, 2016; Renn, 2004). In spaces across the curriculum, multiracial young adults use the arts to articulate their grappling with U.S. schemas of racial difference and these are captured in poetry, painting, theater, dance, and other forms (e.g., Lou, 2018; Shaffer, 2024; Wilson, 2018, 2020). Artful methods might be particularly suited toward the study of multiracial student experiences because they allow for different forms of communication and expression. Artful methods of inquiry offer formats beside survey data collection or interview conversations by which students can trouble, connect, and integrate many of the deep questions and themes they are engaged with. Looking specifically at scholarship on mixed and multiracial students in postsecondary settings, a few scholars have published studies specifically incorporating artful approaches (e.g., Jackson, 2012; Malaney-Brown, 2021; Mohajeri & Lou, 2021; Shaffer, 2024). Jackson (2012) used participatory diagramming and proposed that image-based research with multiracial people holds “analytic potential” (p. 414). She explained that “current quantitative and qualitative designs fail to capture the complexity of the multiracial experience, including how social context, interpersonal relationships, and major life transitions influence the identity experiences and development of multiracial people” (Jackson, 2012, p. 418).

In alignment with Jackson’s (2012) assertion, this paper presents three cases of artful productions ² from three separate studies conducted with mixed and multiracial college and graduate students from 2017 to 2020. We observe that not only are artful methods useful in obtaining rich data, particularly about multiracial student experiences (Jackson, 2012; Mohajeri & Lou, 2021), but that in the best cases, a transformation occurs. That is, the art itself serves as an analytical framework (Leavy, 2020), opening up an aperture for understanding; sometimes, the art itself lays bare and enables possibilities of analysis for scholars, participants, and readers.

This study centers understandings about mixed and multiracial students that can emerge from artful methodologies. More specifically, we ask: (1) What insights do artful methodologies help uncover when it comes to mixed and multiracial students? And (2) How do artful methodologies elicit new insights and new information about mixed race postsecondary student experiences? We share three separate artful pieces created by participants. The first is an eco map created by a mixed race student, Elizabeth, who identified as Vietnamese and white. The eco map illustrates how family members both prepared and underprepared her to navigate racism as a mixed race person in college. The second case constitutes a timeline of understandings of race created by Al-Shabazz, a multiracial, multiethnic graduate student. Al-Shabazz’s artful graphing helps unearth critical questions about illusions of objectivity, development, and choice in racial identity development. The third case comprises a drawing of social identities created by Lyra, a multiracial, multiethnic undergraduate student. Lyra’s image serves as a catalyst for more nuanced exploration of both the gifts and constraints of mixedness under white supremacy.

Literature Review

To anchor our inquiry, we start with a review of visual methodologies in higher education research, move on to a more expansive consideration of artful approaches to research (including critical approaches), and finally summarize what artful approaches have been used in the study of mixed and multiracial students in postsecondary institutions. By reviewing both approaches of visual methodologies in education research and what has been previously used with mixed and multiracial students, we delineate the need for creative and innovative ways to allow for multiracial students to express themselves and their lived realities.

Visual Methodologies in Higher Education Research

Though not widespread, there has been some use of artful methods in higher education scholarship over the past 20 years. These methods have been used to study a wide range of topics, from the experiences of Black students surviving whiteness (Okello, 2022), queer student success (Nguyen, 2018), food insecurity (C. A. Kortegast et al., 2021), sexual violence activism (Linder et al., 2016), study abroad (C. Kortegast et al., 2019), racism on campus (Lou, 2018), faculty sense of belonging (Bhattacharya & Payne, 2016), and mixed and multiracial student experiences and organizations (Jackson, 2012; Malaney-Brown, 2021; Mohajeri & Lou, 2021).

Scholars note the relative dearth of artful methods in higher education research and urge the use of these methodologies (Fischman, 2001; Flint & Toledo, 2021; Gourlay, 2010; Guido et al., 2010; C. Kortegast et al., 2019; C. A. Kortegast et al., 2021; Latz, 2017; Norris et al., 2020). The field remains dominated by more traditional modes of inquiry, with quantitative procedures prevailing (Flint & Toledo, 2021; C. Kortegast et al., 2019). What does exist in terms of artful approaches consists mainly of visual methods such as photo elicitation and photovoice studies. For example, Finlay et al. (2013) used photography and digital storytelling to investigate the educational experiences of Scottish youth who had dropped out of education and training programs. Kortegast employed a photovoice approach with students on a short-term study abroad trip to Spain (see Turner Kelly & Kortegast, 2018). Harry and Phelps-Ward used photovoice with graduate students of color at Clemson University to capture their racialized experiences on campus (see C. A. Kortegast et al., 2021).

There are many benefits to using visual methodologies in higher education research. For example, visual methodologies can be used in efforts to advocate for change of higher education systems and policies, specifically by collecting better data. In fact, scholars have used visual methods as part of field notes and “thick description” in anthropological and ethnographic approaches. Visual methods can serve as process work—that is, as labor engaged in by researchers and participants to push the work forward by bringing in the creative arts and intuitive capacities (Atalay et al., 2019). Visual methodologies can help participants better “deconstruct or reconstruct the meaning and structure of [participant] lives, and to convey this meaning and structure to others” (Jackson, 2012, p. 415). And of course, visual methods can help research reach new audiences.

Bagnoli (2009) argued that including visual methods allows for a holistic narration of the self by study participants. Visual methods “can enhance self-reflexivity and awareness about positionality while providing further insights on the field site” (Atalay et al., 2019, p. 771). Visual methods not only tap into the creative abilities of both participants and researchers but also offer therapeutic benefits for participants (Jackson, 2012; Norris et al., 2020). Visual methods can constitute a more ethical, respondent-centered approach to the investigation of phenomenon and topics that intimately concern the daily lives and experiences of students, faculty, and staff in postsecondary settings. Visual methods help democratize knowledge because this approach more clearly positions study participants as the experts of the phenomenon under examination (Atalay et al., 2019; French & Curd, 2022; Jackson, 2012). In fact, visual methods are more commonly found in participatory research, including action research (Finlay et al., 2013; Flint & Toledo, 2021; French & Curd, 2022). Scholars can also use visual methodologies in organizational change efforts, including in postsecondary and other settings.

Atalay et al. (2019) claimed that use of visual methodologies allows for “braiding knowledges” together (see also Atalay, 2012). Individual braids of knowledge, such as researcher experiences, participant insights, the collected data itself, or sensemaking with colleagues can be woven together in meaningful ways, leaving room for the consumer of such research to also braid in their own knowledges, thus presenting a more nuanced and complete understanding of the topics of inquiry.

Expanding to Artful Approaches in Higher Education Research

Looking more broadly across social science fields that higher education research draws on, there is an expansion into a wider range of visual methodologies, including diagrams, sketches, outlines, and zines (e.g. Atalay et al., 2019; French & Curd, 2022). Overall, however, visual data are treated like text, meaning that interviews about participant-generated visuals are transcribed, coded, and analyzed. Since visuals rarely get published in manuscripts, images are often reduced to another means for collecting narrative text. This unearths “the deep grammar” of education research (Fischman, 2001)—that is, the primacy of categorical, measurable approaches, since art is reduced to narrative text that is coded, fragmented, organized, “extracted, analyzed, and abstracted” (Flint & Toledo, 2021, p. 257).

In 2021, Flint and Toledo conducted a review of 218 articles published in 41 higher education journals over the immediate past 20-year period. They argued that artful inquiry encompasses many more approaches than what has been published thus far. They advocated for Arts-Based Educational Research (ABER) that expands visual methods into “artful approaches,” both in terms of medium and application. Medium should be expanded far beyond photovoice and could include sound, performance, poetry, drama, dance, podcasts, etc. Application can move far beyond data extraction. Flint and Toledo (2021) found that less than 10% of the articles they reviewed “used artful approaches as a method of analysis, and less than five percent of articles focused on artful methods as a form of representation” (p. 255).

Like Flint and Toledo (2021) and CohenMiller (2016), we advocate for expansion from visual methodologies to artful approaches to inquiry in higher education. As such, we situate our study as contributing to the articulation of an emancipatory method (Guido et al., 2010; Osei-Kofi, 2013) that not only allows for more humanity in researching social justice topics, but also has the potential to trouble power relations between researcher and researched (C. Kortegast et al., 2019).

Critical Orientations to Arts-Based Educational Research

Critical Arts-Based Educational Research (CABER) encapsulates a nascent conversation around critical inquiry and arts-based inquiry (e.g., Bagley & Castro-Salazar, 2012, 2019; Bhattacharya & Keating, 2018; Bhattacharya & Payne, 2016; Kraehe et al., 2018; Norris et al., 2020). Bagley and Castro-Salazar (2012) defined CABER as arts-based research “with an explicit political purpose” (p. 241). CABER aims “to uncover unequal power relations and the disproportionate impact these relations have on certain groups marginalised because of their ethnicity, disability, sexual orientation, gender and class” (Bagley & Castro-Salazar, 2012, p. 241). Beyond this, CABER is able “to politically move subjects, performers, audience and researchers into new cultural spaces of understanding, resistance and hope” (p. 257).

Some of the work that has been published in this arena includes the Palgrave Handbook of Race and the Arts in Education (Kraehe et al., 2018), which posited that “the arts” should be understood as white property, steeped in the project of white supremacy and of “European cultural superiority” (p. 16). Other authors have called for “an ongoing, critical, and confrontational movement in the arts in education scholarship that calls into question the influence of white supremacy in relation to cultural production” (Kraehe et al., 2018, p. 27). A special issue of Cultural Studies, Critical Methodologies (Norris et al., 2020) explored the use of arts-based methodologies to explore “concepts of power and privilege as exerted by and on self” (p. 3). Prichard (2019) considered the role of colorblindness in dance and explicated four tactics for disruption. And Bagley and Castro-Salazar (2019) considered the impact that a performance had on both subject, audience, and performers through a CRT-informed lens. In other words, CABER can dislodge assumptions about power and open up space for new reflection. The work in this area is “clearly incipient” (Kraehe et al., 2018, p. 25) and scholars have identified the need for further development of critical approaches to ABER.

Artful Approaches with Mixed and Multiracial Students

Looking specifically at scholarship on mixed and multiracial students in postsecondary settings, a few scholars have published studies incorporating artful approaches. As mentioned in the introduction, Jackson (2012) used participatory diagramming with 10 students who each spent 20 minutes creating a timeline of their multiracial identity development. Jackson (2012) proposed that image-based research with multiracial people holds “analytic potential” (p. 414). Lou (2018) offered a critical visual arts practice to student affairs practitioners laboring to offer support to college students of all backgrounds, but particularly those from marginalized and minoritized communities. Lou (2018) emphasized that “everyone can be an artist” (p. 201) and that art can serve as both resistance to oppression, as healing, and as resilience. Building on that premise, in Multiracial Experiences in Higher Education, Mohajeri and Lou (2021) provided examples of how visual journaling, collaborative poetry, stand-up comedy, and mapping could be used with multiracial student organizations on college campuses. Crossing over into a European context, Habimana-Jordana and Rodríguez-García (2023) used relief maps to sketch out the experiences of seven mixed-race, Afro-descendant women in Spain. Participants were interviewed and also drew maps of public spaces, marking out psychological, geographic, and social characteristics of their personal experiences. The authors asserted that relief maps “are a representation of intersectionality as lived experience” (p. 5).

Additional forms of artful approaches to the study of multiraciality include theater and dance (e.g., Shaffer, 2024; Storti, 2020a, 2020b). Wong-Campbell’s (2025) study took up a phenomenological consideration of 12 multiracial undergraduate students’ “embodied experiences of monoracism within dance-based contexts” on a university campus (p. 50). This work explored “how mixed-race college students move through and make sense of multiraciality and racial rigidity” in dance spaces and through dance as an embodied way of knowing. More art has been produced and performed, as attested by the depth of artful contributions to gatherings for mixed race scholarship and affinity spaces such as Critical Mixed Race Studies (CMRS) and Midwest Mosaic (formerly Midwest Mixed), but often this is not captured in the format of published academic articles. Nonetheless, it is clear that using art in the study of mixed and multiracial college students allows for a generative exploration of “the contextually rich and dynamic processes comprising the multiracial experience” (Jackson, 2012, p. 414).

Conceptual Framework

This study is grounded in two frameworks: MultiCrit (Harris, 2016) and the capacity of artful methods to generate an iconography for liberation (Atalay et al., 2019). The first, MultiCrit (Harris, 2016), builds off Critical Race Theory to include the lived realities and complexities of the multiracial experience, which is not neutral nor free of racism. MultiCrit is defined as a “critique of the role that white supremacist structures play in the (re)construction of multiraciality, thus uncovering far more profound effects of racism for multiracial and monoracial people of color than ‘a lack of place’” (Harris, 2016, p. 797). MultiCrit beckons a better understanding of the historical context for multiracial college students’ present-day experiences by centering a systemic understanding of how monoracism directly impacts the lives of students who claim a multiracial identity (Harris, 2016). The framework comprises eight tenets: challenge to ahistoricism; interest convergence; experiential knowledge; challenge to dominant ideology; racism, monoracism, and colorism; a monoracial paradigm of race; differential micro-racialization; and intersections of multiple racial identities. All of these tenets guide our inquiry and analysis, but we particularly focus on the tenets of experiential knowledge and challenges to dominant ideology. Harris (2016) defined experiential knowledge as “exploring the experiential knowledge of multiracial students [in a way that] centers their voices as well as challenges dominant ideologies concerning race and multiraciality” (p. 800). In other words, experiential knowledge should include the experiences of those who are located outside of monoracial conceptualizations of racial differences. Harris defined challenges to dominant ideology as occurring “when narrative voice is utilized and the experiences of multiracial students are foregrounded in research” (p. 800). These tenets together provide the rationale for centering multiracial student voices in the artful productions of these postsecondary students as well as our analysis of the structures of racism and multiraciality in our three cases below.

The second element of our framework is Pirie’s (aka Campbell Galman) argument that artful methodologies generate “an iconography for interpreting, complicating, and transforming stories for liberation” (Atalay et al., 2019, p. 770). That is, art can be centered as a portal for analysis (Leavy, 2017, 2018, 2020; McNiff, 2018). McNiff (2018) asserted that “artistic expressions and processes are larger than the idea of [merely a different form of] data”:

The appeal and relevance of artistic expressions are generally determined by their ability to continually evoke new and different responses over time. Our interactions with them change. They are never fixed like numerical data tied to a particular context. Artistic expressions are alive and active participants in our relationships with them that invite ongoing interpretations. They tend to be a few steps ahead of the reflecting mind. . . (McNiff, 2018, p. 29).

Campbell Galman explained that “[a]rt should make things more complex, not less” (Atalay et al., 2019). Thus, art becomes “not a mirror but an icon” (p. 669). That is, using artful methodologies allows systematic inquiry to approach insights and data in ways that lie beyond categorization into lists and codes. We similarly maintain that art can generate an iconography for analysis and attempt to explore this for each of the three cases.

Methodology

In art and in other forms of inquiry, lived experience and personal values are often acknowledged as playing a central role. As such, we share our positionalities before delving into the case study approach that guided this work. Orkideh identifies as a cisgender woman MotherScholar who is sometimes classified as white (by the Census, by Iranian discourses of race and ethnicity) and sometimes as non-white (especially through mechanisms of ascribed race in U.S. settings). In her research, she has been struck by the power of the artful productions of participants. She has noted the centrality of art in Midwest Mosaic and CMRS conferences over the years, including painting, music, theater, and dance. She continues to use artful methods in both research, teaching, and her own personal development. Victoria identifies as a multiracial cisgender woman and MotherScholar who is an Indo-Caribbean American with Irish, African, and Spanish heritages. She first became interested in artful approaches to multiracial experiences when she watched the live dance production, HaMapah the Map, by McKinney and Banks (2022) at Skidmore College. In this performance, McKinney traced his Native American, African American, and Jewish heritages through story, genealogical history, and audience dialogue. Victoria was deeply impacted by the beauty of art, music, and dance as it enabled deeper reflection on her own multiracial experiences. She continues to think outside the methodological research box about ways she can use her agency to incorporate art into research and service to the multiracial community.

Case Study

This paper takes up a qualitative collective case study approach (Hamilton & Corbett-Whittier, 2013; Merriam, 2009; Stake, 1995). Three artful productions from a series of research studies conducted by the authors constitute the bounded unit. This focus on three specific artful productions across three separate studies enables an advantageous balance between depth and breadth. Depth is achieved because we do not analyze the full range of artful productions generated by each study (approximately 20 per study), but rather have selected a single case from each study to describe and interpret more deeply. Breadth is achieved by the fact that each study took place in a different region of the United States, at differing postsecondary institutional types (including public regional, land grant, and research institutions), and includes both undergraduate and graduate student populations. These three specific cases have been selected “for [their] very uniqueness, for what it can reveal about a phenomenon” (Merriam, 2009, p. 46)—that is, mixed and multiracial postsecondary students. Thus, our approach is both exploratory and heuristic in nature (Hamilton & Corbett-Whittier, 2013; Stake, 1995).

It is important to note that we consider visualizations and diagrams to be part of a broad range of artful productions. While we acknowledge that initial artful methods in education research tend to rely on diagrams and visuals, we do not seek to disengage from visualizations altogether. Thus, two of our cases definitely lean towards visualizations rather than more aesthetic forms of art. This range of artful cases actually calls for a case study approach even further since case study “do[es] not attempt to simplify what cannot be simplified . . . case study includes paradoxes and acknowledges that there are not simple answers” (Shields, 2007, p. 13, quoted in Merriam, 2009, pp. 52–53). We address this spectrum of artful productions further in our Implications.

Although other work has been published from the three studies, it is valuable to revisit these three cases for several reasons. First, larger social forces seem to be oscillating to a period of increased negative fervor concerning racial, ethnic, and national differences in the United States. It is timely then to pay attention to what emerging adults who embody supposedly “different” racial backgrounds can contribute to the larger national conversation, in this case through art. Furthermore, there is long-standing critique directed toward the field of critical mixed race studies (e.g., Sexton, 2008; Spencer, 2010), and an exploration of new insights generated by art produced by multiracial students is an important part of this overall discussion.

Three Cases

We present three cases of artful productions created by three research participants. These productions come from three studies conducted by Orkideh and Victoria from 2017 to 2020. In each instance, we first provide background information on the study and the artful engagement. Then, we describe the specific participant and their artful production. We also explore how the art is not only rich and meaningful but can serve as an aperture for analysis of the larger data set and beyond.

Case 1: Eco Maps & Multiracial Self-Reflection

Victoria conducted a critical narrative study in Fall 2017. The purpose was to explore familial relationships of mixed race college students. Interview themes centered on pre-college experiences with racism, familial relationships, and experiences with microaggressions (Malaney-Brown, 2022; see Appendix A for interview protocol). A total of 10 participants were interviewed, and each interview lasted between 60 and 90 minutes. Toward the end of the individual interviews, participants completed eco mapping. In this exercise, participants were asked to think specifically about their family and use a blank map to show their relationships (see Appendix B for eco map instructions). Participants used dotted, zigzagged, and straight lines to indicate which specific family members provided strong, weak, or stressed support when it came to discussing race, ethnicity, and culture while the participant was in college. Victoria then posed questions that allowed the participant to talk through the visualization and the relationships captured in the map. By using eco maps, participants critically reflected on and creatively discussed family relationships (Harold et al., 1997).

Elizabeth’s Eco Map

Elizabeth was an undergraduate student attending a Historically White Institution (HWI) of higher education in the northeastern United States. However, she grew up on the West Coast, in a diverse community in Huntington Beach, California. Elizabeth came from a Vietnamese and white family, and self-identified as Asian. Victoria interviewed Elizabeth and asked her to complete an eco map.

Figure 1 illustrates that Elizabeth wrote her name in the center of the eco map and listed 12 other family members or close friends on the map, including her mother, father, two siblings, specific members of both of her paternal and maternal extended family, her college roommates, and close friends, both from high school and college. She drew strong, weak, and stressed lines between these individuals and herself, specifically meant to be a visual representation of the tenor of emotional and psychological support she received from these individuals.

Figure 1.

Elizabeth’s eco map.

Elizabeth used dotted lines to connect her Mom, Dad, Grandmother, maternal aunts, and maternal uncle with herself, indicating weak support in terms of her racial/ethnic/cultural background in college. In other words, there was some support from parents and material family members, though not strong support. Elizabeth used zigzagged lines to connect herself with her paternal uncles and aunts, indicating stressed support. Elizabeth explained:

So for my parents, and generally every member of my maternal side except for my cousin, I put a dotted line, as in, I get support from them, but generally, like both sides of my family are very Republican, and I don’t identify that way. So, it’s a little hard to talk about things like race and like problems that arise in society today. So, for my maternal side [and] my parents, I put dotted lines. They support me, but they are not necessarily like people I can go to talk [to] all the time.

On the other hand, Elizabeth drew straight lines between herself and her close friends, her two sisters, her maternal cousins, and her roommates. Elizabeth described that she and her sisters “spend all of our time together.” Elizabeth used a straight line to represent strong support from her sisters “because they are like a strong support system that I have, and I can talk to them about anything, especially like race-related things.”

Elizabeth contrasted her relationship with her parents to other extended family members, sharing that her family relationships formed different levels of stress and engagement for her depending on how her conversations regarding race evolved. Elizabeth discussed that politics influenced her thinking about race within her family as her white father and Vietnamese mother both support the Republican party, while Elizabeth aligned with the Democratic party since attending college.

Using MultiCrit as a contextual lens highlights the experiential knowledge of multiracial college students, particularly in terms of their familial relationships. Here, eco maps illustrate tensions in support and/or stress and challenge dominant ideologies concerning race and racism in student lives (Harris, 2016).

Centering Elizabeth’s eco map as an aperture for understanding allows researchers to ask themselves productive questions. For example, it is clear that multiracial students are tied to family members, and the tenor of those ties can either bring comfort and support or stress and tension. These ties can change in tone over time. When studying multiracial college students and relationships with family, researchers can consider whether it is possible that a source of tension could become a future source of support.

Elizabeth’s eco map illustrates that college students make sense of their experiences during postsecondary education not in absolute isolation and independence, but that they are always already tied to their families of origin. This is particularly important for multiracial students as they already have experience in making sense of diverse backgrounds and realities, and though they move into an arena of greater independence during the postsecondary years, familial ties still influence and shape their experiences and sense making. The eco map allows researchers to ask themselves: What else are students tied to? What strings bind multiracial students and hold them back? What strings lead to new pathways and exploration? Is there a way to add slack to a string without breaking the bond entirely? How can the curriculum, faculty, peers, and other elements of postsecondary settings support this? Engaging with eco maps as part of this research helped students process their relationships with family members in a different way. Students were enabled to deeply reflect on how family members have influenced their understandings of race and racism.

Case 2: Artful Timelines

Orkideh conducted a critical narrative and discourse analysis in 2017–2018 (Mohajeri, 2021, 2024), and used the same protocol again in 2018–2020 in a new region and HWI (see Appendix C). The purpose of each study was to examine how racial discourses extant in U.S. society shaped subjectivity for multiracial and contested white undergraduate and graduate students. The research protocol included two artful engagements: An artful timeline and drawing. Each study engaged a total of 20 participants. Case 2 is part of the second study and focuses on the artful timeline.

No more than 20 minutes into the individual interviews with Orkideh, participants were playfully told that they were “now going to do art!” They were asked to articulate a visual representation of their learning about race over their lifespan. Participants were invited to create “a timeline” running from birth to their current age, articulating how and when they “learned race”—not just their own race, but the concept of race and racial difference as well. Participants were encouraged to use colors, images, words, and phrases. Orkideh handed out colored paper and a sizable bag of colored markers, thick and thin, along with pens and pencils. Some study participants took a few minutes to complete this task, and others took up to half an hour to produce the timeline.

The range of visual images produced by participants were notable. Many drew a single, straight line with various points marked with an endarkened circle, with labels describing each specific point of time. Some participants bracketed a range of years or a longer span of time in particular—such as middle school or high school—and described that whole period with a label or phrase. One participant drew a more spiral-like line, hinting at the twisting, cyclical, and evolving nature of understandings of race and difference over the course of a life trajectory. Some labels that participants created were one or two words in length; others were entire paragraphs of text. Overall, using artful timelines allowed study participants to be more self-reflective and enabled Orkideh and the participant to go into greater detail during their subsequent interview discussion.

Al-Shabazz’s Race Graph

Al-Shabazz was a 22 year old, cismale graduate student completing his master’s degree at an HWI in the northeast. He was active in social justice issues on campus and in the larger region. Al-Shabazz was born in New York City. He identified his mother as a “Brooklyn Italian New Yorker” and his father as a Guyanese immigrant. Al-Shabazz had one older sister. At an early age, his family moved to a small, rural town in a neighboring state. They moved to a “big house” with “a horseshoe driveway in the front.” Both Al-Shabazz and his sister had positive schooling experiences in this “better school district” and both became involved in theater and arts through school programming.

Over the course of the interview conversation, Al-Shabazz listed the mix of his ethno-racial backgrounds as including Black, Jewish, Italian, Middle Eastern, Hispanic, ³ Indian, and Chinese. “I always looked like an Italian kid,” he stated, whereas his sister “looked mixed Hispanic or possibly light skin Black.” Al-Shabazz further described the phenotypic variation among his immediate family members and the ways in which his own race was ascribed by others in his new rural setting:

People thought a lot of time, like, “Oh, [he’s] white!” And then they’d see [my sister]. They’re like, “Oh yeah, she’s white [also]; she’s just tan.” And then like they would see my dad, and my dad wasn’t always at all the shows or at all the events [in high school]. When my dad, uh, when he comes up, they’d be like, “Oh, they’re mixed! Like [El Shabazz] is possibly half-Black, he’s possibly Hispanic.” So nobody knew what to call me.

Figure 2 below constitutes Al-Shabazz’s timeline of how he learned race over the course of his life. He created a unique timeline wherein he mapped his various understandings of race onto a graph, with the x-axis listing his age over time, and the y-axis capturing social impact. Al-Shabazz explained that the variable social impact meant “the level of impact [race] has on you from a social context.”

Figure 2.

Al-Shabazz’s timeline.

Al-Shabazz grew up knowing all of his diverse racial and ethnic backgrounds and was able to list them off at a young age. He described this as an early childhood “competency” or “awareness” of the wealth of his multiple backgrounds. In his early teen years however, “like 14 or 15 here . . . I, like, started to realize I don’t necessarily feel white.” Al-Shabazz noted that it was his friends that would point out to him that “you’re, you’re half-brown, like you’re mixed” and not just some “Mediterranean Greek Italian guy.” His peers pointed out to him that “you’re not necessarily just white.”

Al-Shabazz described that once he arrived at college, he “really started scrutinizing ideas about race.” He spent time exploring both Chinese and Jewish cultures. He completed a study abroad program in China and regularly attended activities at Hillel House. He read widely, attended lectures, and took courses with a critical perspective on race. Al-Shabazz detailed:

I was reading a lot of Ta-Nehisi Coates. I was reading a lot of Cornell West, um, bell hooks, uh, Fred Moten . . . And it was interesting cuz that, uh, it was a little bit of an existential experience too, for me . . . So I was watching lectures on YouTube and kind of understanding the existentialism of race in general, and that was really eye-opening to me. So that was something where I think my understanding of identity really peaked there.

Overall, Al-Shabbaz surmised that “there is more to me than I think.” And although he had spent time “kind of evaluat[ing] or kind of div[ing] into” his mixedness, “that’s kind of stayed in a place of ambiguity.”

Al-Shabazz’s graph ends with a three-way split. One pathway is labeled “Connecting with more multicultural” and seems to trail off as if to represent a possible future. The second is entitled “Social justice movements” and “Activism,” and is positioned midway between the other two trajectories. The final pathway is lower in height and is labeled “Similar feeling.” It is uncertain whether these three pathways represent an inflection point for choices and decision-making, or if they are three dynamics that co-exist simultaneously. It is also not clear which pathway Al-Shabazz will pursue in the future, or if he’ll continue along all three.

Through his artful timeline, Al-Shabazz identified key moments and experiences in his racial identity development. He told stories about his childhood, teenage years, and young adulthood with considerable detail, and considered his development over time. The artful representation also allowed Orkideh, the interviewer, to ask specific questions and to prompt Al-Shabazz to reflect back and evaluate his life experiences thus far. Namely, Al-Shabazz was able to summarize and acknowledge that his mixedness remained ambiguous over time, even into the present day. Clearly, the artful visualization drew on Al-Shabazz’s experiential knowledge (Harris, 2016), gathered over time and context as a multiracial, multiethnic individual.

Stepping away from the content of the graph, if we consider this product from an artful perspective and allow this piece to act as a portal for understanding, many useful questions emerge. For example, what does it mean to put a timeline on a graph? What does it mean that variables are elucidated and that units of measurement have been used? Implications of objectivity and measurement are implicit in the artist’s choice to use a graphical representation. Intentional or not, a question emerges about the validity of constructivist understanding of race and racial identity development. Is Al-Shabazz playing with that notion? What does it mean that there are multiple pathways at the end of the graph? Is there an arrival point implied in the future? What if there are three simultaneous trajectories or three simultaneous arrival points? What happens if the graph falls over time instead of having a continual upward trajectory? How can we take these questions generated by the artful timeline and use these as a set of research questions, codes, or themes with which to analyze other timelines and other data across these two studies? This artful product can act as a catalyst for further analysis as it generates both a new set of research questions and a set of codes and understandings that can be applied to other data.

Case 3: Social Identity Drawings

Orkideh’s two studies also required participants to draw a visual representation of their social identities (Mohajeri, 2021). Participants were given a blank piece of paper, and a bag full of different colored pencils and pens, some of varying thickness. Participants were told that they could take as little or as much time as they wanted and were warned that the prompt would be a bit ambiguous. They were encouraged to follow their initial response to the prompt: “Please draw me a representation of your various social identities.” It was explained that this was meant to be a creative and artful activity. Some study participants took a few minutes to complete this task and others took up to half an hour.

A total of some 40 drawings were created across the two studies that used the same protocol. Across this range, some participants drew stick figures and used words and labels to articulate their social identities. Others only drew images, with no words at all. One participant drew different flags to represent racial and national identities. Others drew scenes in their bedrooms or homes, showing various artifacts that represented diverse backgrounds and conveyed parts of their identities and cultures that held deep meaning, such as foods, decor, and dress.

Lyra’s Box

Lyra was a 21 year old undergraduate student (see Mohajeri & Lou, 2021). She came from a multiethnic, multiracial family, and had grown up in a rural, predominantly white town, mostly populated by the descendants of Eastern European immigrants. Lyra lived all of her life in that small town until she came to college. Lyra had an older brother and three sisters, and there was quite a range of phenotypic presentation among her family members. For example, she had a younger sister with blond hair and blue eyes, and Lyra remarked that when they were together—hugging and being physically close as siblings are wont to be—strangers from her hometown were disconcerted, not being likely to identify them as siblings. When Lyra was by herself, people guessed that she was either Filipina, Mexican, Puerto Rican, or Native American. Lyra’s other commonly ascribed racial identities included Hawaiian and Middle Eastern.

During the interview, Orkideh asked Lyra to draw her social identities and handed out paper and markers. Lyra took a considerable amount of time to create what can be described as a three-dimensional box containing some of her social identities (see Figure 3 below). Orkideh and Lyra discussed the artful production in detail. Lyra said:

I was just writing down my identities, and then I had all these lines. I felt just like, “Oh my gosh, there’s something. . .” I decided to make a box, then put all of my identities in them. And then I also wrote the places in which I think I learned about my identities, and then I wrapped it up in a present with my favorite colors [laughs]. And this is a bunch of me’s dancing around it and on it [laughs]. Then I also intentionally wrote the words super lightly because I’m the most confused person [laughs]—as in, to be non-committal about the places where I learned them, but also—especially talking about my racial identity. (Mohajeri, 2018, p. 211)

Figure 3.

Lyra’s drawing.

In other words, Lyra started the exercise by listing her various social identities. She then listed these identities in a box, along with some of the contextual factors related to these identities. From here, she experimented with things that brought her joy, like her favorite colors of pink and purple. She also illustrated actions that reflected a sense of joyfulness, such as dancing. Simultaneously, Lyra felt ambivalence and confusion surrounding her social identities.

Orkideh sought more clarification about the box that contained her various identities. Lyra stated that she had “been thinking about boxes a lot lately,” and how she did not easily fit various racial categories or “boxes” (Johnston et al., 2014). Lyra explained that growing up with her ambiguous racial presentation, many people wanted to put her in a box, to have her fit their preconceived notions. “I’m kind of an unfulfilling member” of various racial groups, she noted. Thus, it seemed that the box represented ascribed identities, or at least the expectations of others in terms of normalized racial groupings and categorizations.

Lyra clarified that her drawing also entailed a sense of both disruption of boxes and simultaneously, a sense of celebration and acknowledgement:

I was going to imagine some bursting of [the box] . . . The, the dancing is a way to navigate it, like, with my embodied knowledge. That’s how I process a lot. And also a way to jump on it and disrupt it. I thought about drawing it so I could throw it around but also dress it up [laughs]. (Mohajeri, 2018, p. 211)

Lyra’s drawing incorporated elements of celebration, processing, movement, and resistance. She explained that her identities were “a gift . . . to be shared” and also something to celebrate.

Lyra’s art incorporates her embodied and experiential knowledge (Harris, 2016) in ways that are surprising and valuable. Her embrace and even celebration of being “an unfulfilling member” in particular constitutes a meaningful contribution to explorations of multiraciality for college students. This drawing and its various elements challenge dominant ideologies which pressure individuals to fit in boxes (Johnston et al., 2014).

Once again, centering this artful production as a portal for understanding leads to a handful of generative questions. For example, what does it mean that Lyra’s identities were so closely tied to context? What does it mean that her identities were written lightly, as in a whisper? What does this imply about the permanence, impermanence, and materiality of social identities? What does it mean that her art conveyed both a sense of loss and entrapment simultaneous with joy, celebration, play, and comfort? How can we take these elements and use them as a set of codes or themes with which to analyze other data? It is evident that Lyra’s art unearths questions for researchers to ask themselves, to play with, to learn and grow from. These are questions about self-love, appreciation for complexity and ambiguity, and playfulness and joy in the midst of uncertainty and pain. Could researchers create new research questions based on some of these elements? Treating this art as aperture allows scholars to step back from past analyses and look for themes of boxing in, dancing and playing with, ambivalence, and resistance.

Emergent Implications and Significance for Higher Education

In this paper, we shared three artful productions created by multiracial students. The first was an eco map that illustrated how family members and friends supported Elizabeth in her navigation of race and racism as a mixed race person in college. It also elicited questions about the permanence and malleability of family ties and influences. The second production constituted an artful timeline created by Al-Shabazz. His graphing of his understandings of race over time unearthed questions about illusions of objectivity, psychosocial development trajectories, and choice in racial identity development. The third case comprised a drawing of social identities by Lyra. Her image served as a catalyst for more nuanced exploration of both the gifts and constraints of mixedness under white supremacy.

Across these three cases, certain insights about race, multiraciality, and U.S. postsecondary education emerge. First, these artful productions demonstrate that race continues to be important in college and graduate school. Multiracial students grapple with racism and monoracism throughout the years of their formal studies at the postsecondary level. Second, the art reveals that multiracial individuals come to college with understandings of race that are significantly influenced by pre-college factors (e.g., family, schooling, geographic contexts) and that the diversity among these factors matters. Third, undergraduate and graduate education can be a space for deepening, critiquing, and expanding student understandings of what race is, what it does, and how it operates. Fourth, these artful productions illustrate that race not only comprises parentage or the categories named by a census form, but also includes ethnicity, immigration, self-identification, and ascribed elements related to colorism and broader social discourse. Fifth, individual racial identity development not only entails struggle and conscious effort and reflection over time but can also be joyful and playful. Multiracial students can push back against racialization; they can resist through joy, celebration, resistance, and other actions. Finally, these artful productions make evident that college does not constitute a place of “final arrival” regarding multiracial identity or critical understandings of race and racism in larger society; Multiracial students continue to advance their understanding of both larger society and their own positionalities.

Experiential Knowledge Challenges Dominant Ideologies

MultiCrit was a key framework that guided this inquiry, and these artful productions all encapsulated the experiential knowledge(s) of multiracial students. These three productions “critique the role that white supremacist structures play in the (re)construction of multiraciality” (Harris, 2016, p. 797). Across these cases, the voices of multiracial undergraduate and graduate students were centered and their questions, engagement, and creativity took the lead. These three pieces challenge dominant ideologies regarding race and multiraciality. Taken altogether, the art questions the role of family and friends in the arena of learning about race. It pushes back against the omnipresence of monoracist categories, and pokes at normative trajectories of racial identity development. Although these artful cases do not only use narrative voice (as called for in the MultiCrit tenet of challenges to dominant ideologies), still the images and visuals serve to foreground the experiences of multiracial students and allow them to lead the way in exploring social forces and asking new questions.

An Iconography for Liberation

This study was also guided by the idea that ABER can generate an iconography for liberation (Campbell Galman in Atalay et al., 2019). The beauty and generativity latent in artful productions enables deep reflection by all: Student, researcher, and reader.

Postsecondary Students

Artful methodologies can be useful for understanding the experiences of postsecondary students. First, most young adults in college and graduate school—whether multiracial or not—are in a period of relative alienation from the ubiquitous art-making they engaged in as children. Having them re-engage with artful methods as part of systematic inquiry may help dislodge and reawaken creative capacities. Second, because these same learners are being exposed to the study of research through their methods and statistics training in undergraduate and graduate school, ABER may serve as a useful contrasting or accompanying paradigm, allowing them to consider alternative methods for data inquiry and analysis. Third, because postsecondary students are away from home, often for the first time, they are engaged in an ongoing process of self-inquiry, experimentation, and self-knowledge. Art can serve as a catalyst for some of the deep integration work they are engaged in, particularly through its elements of exploration, experimentation, meditation, and self-inquiry. Finally, artful methods bring to bear nonmaterial faculties such as intuition, spirit, and more. Postsecondary students can use these faculties as they continue to make sense of their upbringing, are exposed to new knowledge, and claim their own values for their futures.

Multiracial Students

Artful methodologies can be apt for understanding the experiences of multiracial students. Multiracial young adults are engaged in profound and consuming processes of identity development during their postsecondary years (Johnston, 2014; Johnston-Guerrero & Chaudhari, 2016; Renn, 2004). Artful methods offer formats beside survey data collection or interview conversations by which students can trouble, connect, and integrate the deep questions and themes they are grappling with. The studies described herein demonstrate the power of artful methods to allow for deeper, nuanced understandings of multiracial students’ lived experiences.

Artful approaches embrace a holistic perspective (Leavy, 2018). Multiracial students often describe living their lives in fractured parts; providing space for students to share voice and experiences through eco mapping, timelines, and drawing gives them agency to share their narratives in holistic, integrative ways. Furthermore, artful approaches can humanize “individuals who have been pushed to the societal margins throughout history and who are finding a means to bring their voices in to the world of research” (Mertens, 2009, p. 3). Mixed and multiracial students are marginalized by monoracism and white supremacy. They are often bound by singular research approaches that limit understanding of the complexity of their voices and identities. Higher education as a whole can benefit from pluralistic and open perspectives on multiracial students’ intersectional lives and artful methodologies enable this.

In these three studies, students stepped away from traditional procedures that center the interviewer-interviewee relationship as the main arena for data generation. Instead, individual participants centered themselves and their lived experiences through artful approaches that engaged faculties that lie beyond the merely cognitive (Okello et al., 2022), such as intuition, creativity, and inspiration. Such artful inquiry required study participants to slow down, recall, and assess their life experiences, and then to engage artfully with these experiences and accumulated wisdom. In fact, employing artful inquiry—whether it was visualizations or more traditional forms—enabled participants to be expressive in complex, rich, and unexpected ways.

Researchers and Research

As researchers, and particularly during the analysis phase, we were able to step back and consider the artful products as more than pieces of data to be coded and themed. We regarded these artful productions as apertures through which we could gaze, as generative portals for new insights, new analysis, new questions. Furthermore, through ABER, we “braided” (Atalay et al., 2019) in other knowledge(s), including scholarly literature, our own lived experiences, our emotive responses, insights from previous related research studies that we conducted, other art that inspires us, and our own intuition and creativity.

Readers

Those who serve as audience to these artful productions (including researchers and even readers of published scholarship) can engage the iconography that is generated by ABER. Campbell Galman explained that the end goal of using art includes “generating an iconography for interpreting, complicating, and transforming stories for liberation” (Atalay et al., 2019, p. 770). The three cases provide such an iconography around family bonds that lead to strength and bonds that restrict and distract, the intimation of objectivity when studying race and racial identity development through scholarship, and the gifts and constraints of multiraciality as perpetuated under a white supremacist system. Some images in the iconography generated here include the following: Webs (webs of support, webs that trap and entangle, networks of friendship), vibrations in relationships (supercharged connections, flat connections, linear relations, generative relations), pathways (paths that converge, paths that diverge, paths that run parallel, choices among pathways), boxes and strictures (categories, breaking open boxes, leaving boxes open, escape routes, race as a box, race as a box that we can pry open), play (movement, jumping, pushing, pulling, tossing, catching, dressing up, playing with race as it plays with us, tossing race around as it tosses us around, tossing monoracial conceptualizations of race around), and more. Many potent images and concepts arise when art generates iconography as part of research inquiry. We acknowledge that there is significant room to move from visualizations toward aesthetic artful productions, and we join other scholars (CohenMiller, 2016; Flint & Toledo, 2021) in encouraging this expansion. Nonetheless, these three cases demonstrate that centering art as a portal for understanding allows multiracial students to lead the way in creating an iconography for multiple forms of artful interpretation and ultimately liberation.

Conclusion

It is valuable to study these three artful productions for a variety of reasons. First, larger social forces seem to be oscillating to a period of increased negative fervor around issues of racial difference in the United States. Contention and conflict are on the rise, and the increase in hate crimes, overall tension, and inequality are apparent. It is important to pay attention to what emerging adults who embody supposedly “different” racial backgrounds can contribute to the larger national conversation. Furthermore, there is long-standing critique directed toward the field of critical mixed race studies, and therefore an exploration of what new insights can be generated by art produced by multiracial students is an important part of this overall debate. Finally, the overall field of postsecondary education could benefit from inclusion of more artful methods.

Although a handful of visual methods such as photo elicitation and photo voice have been used in studies in higher education, there is ample room for expansion into arts-based educational research (Flint & Toledo, 2021; Leavy, 2020). This would include such modalities as poetry, dance, drawing, collage, music, and more. Even the cases presented here leaned toward visualizations as opposed to more aesthetic productions, but beyond the expansion into more diverse methods, there is room to elevate art as a paradigmatic approach to inquiry. Art is not just a form of qualitative inquiry. Art moves beyond qualitative inquiry to make use of other human faculties such as intuition and inspiration (Leavy, 2017, 2018). Art “locates knowing beyond the limitations of cognition” (Okello et al., 2022, p. 372). It allows for both preverbal ways of knowing and multiple ways of knowing (Leavy, 2018). Art can serve as a portal for understanding and analysis.

Artful methodologies can reveal understandings and insights about all student populations, including mixed and multiracial students (Jackson, 2012; Mohajeri & Lou, 2021). In the best cases, artful methodologies enable a transformation wherein the art itself serves as a portal, opening up an aperture of understanding. That is, sometimes the art itself lays bare and enables possibilities of further inquiry and analysis by scholars, participants, and readers.