June 3, 2020

Assistant Professor of Art Education Hyunji Kwon, Ph.D, has received two grants in support of her research and community outreach programs. Professor Kwon is an advocate for social justice through research and teaching in the areas of Critical Global Art Education, Emotion & Critical Pedagogy, Community-based Art Education, and Cultural and Historical Trauma, among others. Her newest grants, a Faculty Research and Scholarship Grant from the College of Arts and Sciences and a Provost Grant from the Office of the Provost, are in support of her art workshops for women in shelters and sexual assault survivors. 

At the School of Visual Art and Design, she has redesigned five courses to be more socially-responsive and student-oriented. Besides her teaching and research, Professor Kwon is a core faculty member of the community outreach program, Women’s Well-Being Initiative, in the Women’s and Gender Studies Program at the University of South Carolina.

As part of this initiatives, she has provided art workshops for women in several shelters and sexual violence survivors on campus. Dr. Kwon’s art workshops, consisting of eight 1.5 hour-long sessions, are provided two to three times a year and utilize critical feminist pedagogy and various mixed media and methods such as drawing, painting, collage, photography, and fabric art.

Because local shelters are transitional homes for women and their children from periods of a few months to years, her art workshops aim to create a space for them to express and work through their feelings and memories that often engage with drug abuse, violence, incarceration while gaining a sense of agency and community. Most recently, her participants’ unique artworks were displayed in an exhibition at Stormwater Studios, a local artist studio and gallery.