Para finalizar, reproducimos reflexiones del alumnado que realizó la actividad:

Viola Ruggieri: “Making a collage using copies of historical sources was an engaging experience that allowed us to learn in a way that went beyond standard frontal teaching, using an art-based, collaborative approach. I particularly enjoyed working in a group and reflecting on the primary sources with my peers provided. I also liked the slow process of taking our time to reflect, critique and select what to include in our collage. This was also an opportunity to produce an output that employed artistic skills instead of written ones, which could easily be shared with the broader community by displaying it on a wall. The collage process also pushed us to engage with historical primary sources in a critical, as we had to read them, observe them and include them in our collage by transforming them to convey a different message. Overall, this was an effective way to learn, moving beyond vertical hierarchies and written productions, and instead engaging collective participation, creativity, and critical thinking.”

Mairéad Butler: “After analysing the discourse around the contraceptive pill in the mid-to-late twentieth century, seeing and reading the advertisements offered us a more materially grounded and creative engagement with these visual sources. The diversity of my group, with members from Poland, Germany, and Ireland, allowed us to situate these sources in their historical, national, and linguistic contexts and see the connections across borders. Attempting to subvert the narrative of these advertisements forced us to unpack and critically analyse the seemingly innocuous, but ultimately harmful and patriarchal messages they conveyed, with an eye to the ways in which restrictive ideals of femininity and female sexuality were constructed visually. The analytical and political potency of this method of creative, feminist counter-visuality was made more prescient by the barrage of anonymous hostility these collages and other such pro-choice material in our building encountered. As such, this exercise enabled us not only to put into practice our skills in historical and visual analysis, but also to draw attention to the transnational histories of contraception in a material, creative, and collective way, going beyond the limitations of the written word.”