Dr. Rita L. Irwin
Professor of Art Education and Curriculum Studies
Associate Dean of Teacher Education
University of British Columbia
Embrace the Freedom to Create
I had the privilege of teaching Pauline in her first PhD curriculum course. At that time, Pauline was an exceptional classroom teacher. Now she is an exceptional scholar who has brought the aesthetics of her work into the very lifeblood of her writing and discourse. She has been transformed and her dissertation is a testament to the depth and range of her change. Her dissertation is an exemplar of currere as complicit curriculum conversation. It is pedagogy of parallax because it exemplifies conversations for understanding through multiple layers of perception. This perception underscores an embodied aesthetic wholeness - an a/r/tographic way of being in the world that penetrates our senses and reaches into our depths and causes us to question our own perceptions. As readers we are changed. Pauline, as an a/r/tographer, was inspired by her art forms and her pedagogy, as she pursued her inquiry and gave full attention toward her heart, mind, body, and spirit. As a result, she examined difficult concepts in sensitive, compassionate yet demanding ways.
It seems an epistolary foreword should echo the value of the characters and relationships in the epistolary novel. And so I invite you to be equally involved in the creation of this text. Pauline Sameshima writes an epistolary bildungsroman, a didactic novel of personal journeying through artful scholarly inquiry. Parallax is a play on perspective, shifting perceptions and interpretations. If you enter into this experience with an open mind, an imaginative spirit, and a reflexive gaze, you too will enter into a space of