WIP Knowing Engineering Through the Arts: The Impact of the Film Hid- den Figures on Perceptions of Engineering Using Arts-Based Research Methods

Paper ID #34465

WIP Knowing Engineering Through the Arts: The Impact of the Film Hid-
den
Figures on Perceptions of Engineering Using Arts-Based Research Methods
Katherine Robert, University of Denver

     Katherine is a doctoral candidate at the University of Denver’s Morgridge School of Education in the
     higher education department. In her dissertation research, she uses arts-based research methods, new
     materialist theory, and is guided by culturally responsive methodological principles to collaborate with
     underrepresented engineering students to uncover their experiences of socialization into the professional
     engineering culture. Katherine is an interdisciplinary scholar and artist with an expansive career and aca-
     demic history that she intends to utilize to help STEM organizations become more inclusive and equitable.

                               c American Society for Engineering Education, 2021

Knowing engineering through the arts: The
         impact of the film Hidden Figures on
      perceptions of engineering using arts-based
                   research methods
                                               Katherine A. Robert
           University of Denver Morgridge College of Education, Doctoral Candidate in Higher Education

Abstract

Despite decades of efforts, racial and gender diversity remains elusive for engineering education and the professions.
Researchers in engineering education call for innovative research methodologies to increase diversity in engineering
education. My unique new materialist and arts-based research project explores the intersections of race, gender,
history, STEM education, and the arts, and is guided by the principles of culturally responsive methodologies. I use
this work-in-progress to better understand how the film Hidden Figures affected the public’s understanding of
science, technology, engineering, and mathematics education and the professions. My purpose is to uncover and
share additional hidden stories about Black women’s experiences in engineering education and the professions
today, but also to demonstrate a different methodological framework that centers Black women’s voices and shifts
how the lack of racial and gender diversity in engineering is perceived. I found that the film had a tremendous
impact on women and girls of color by providing visible role models in STEM professions.
Keywords
Engineering education, diversity, Hidden Figures, arts-based research methods, new materialism, culturally
responsive methodologies

Introduction

Despite decades of efforts, racial and gender diversity remains elusive for engineering education and the professions
[1]. Researchers in engineering education call for innovative methodologies [2], [3] to examine the complicated
historical and cultural entanglements related to increasing diversity in engineering education, which includes
research method alternatives to the use of positivist frameworks that dominate engineering culture [4]. I answer this
call with my unique critical qualitative and arts-based research project that explores the intersections of race, gender,
history, culture, education, and the arts, which is guided by the principles of culturally responsive methodologies [5].
The idea for my study arose during my higher education doctoral dissertation proposal research on diversity, equity,
and inclusivity (DEI) in engineering education. I use this work-in-progress to better understand how the film Hidden
Figures affected the public’s understanding of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM)
education and the professions, including my own perspectives as a White woman. My purpose is to uncover and
share additional hidden stories about women, and particularly Black women’s experiences in engineering education
and the professions today, but also to demonstrate a different methodological framework that centers Black
women’s voices and shifts how the lack of racial and gender diversity in engineering is perceived.
The film Hidden Figures [6] tells the stories of three African American female mathematicians who worked at
Langley in the space programs at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) in the 1960s. These
women’s stories were unknown and untold until author Margot Lee Shetterly discovered that her Sunday school
teacher was Katherine Johnson [7]. Johnson, along with Dorothy Vaughn and Mary Jackson, are the focus of the
film, which is based on Shetterly’s book “Hidden Figures: The American Dream and the Untold Story of the Black
Women Who Helped Win the Space Race” [8]. While the book detailed the oppressive, racist culture of the civil
rights context that all the Black women faced at Langley at the time, the film is geared toward entertainment for the
broader public and shifts the racial stories [7]. I use three guiding research questions to map the borders of my
inquiry:

•    How do the arts influence participation in STEM higher education?
    •    Specifically, how did Hidden Figures, the 2016 film about African American women’s experiences as
         engineers and mathematicians at the 1960s NASA space program, affect efforts to increase participation of
         girls and students from racially underrepresented communities in engineering?
    •    How do engineering educators and the U.S public perceive and interpret new information about the history
         of discrimination in STEM fields?
My findings indicate that the film had a tremendous impact on Black women in STEM, but also White women and
other women of color by providing much needed visual models of success in STEM professions. I begin my paper
with a review of some of the research literature to set up the context of my study, after which I explain my unique
methodological framework and research design. In the last section, I discuss my analysis process and findings in
more detail. I end with the limitations and the future iterations of this project.
Literature Review
The purpose of my literature review is to contextualize my inquiry about the impacts that the film Hidden Figures
had on Black women and girls in STEM education and professions, but also how the broader American public
perceives Black women’s contributions to STEM fields and education. I take an interdisciplinary approach to
examining the research that aligns with my theoretical framework. I briefly show the history of racism and sexism in
U.S. education and STEM while also reviewing research about the current cultural climate in STEM in relation to
gender and racial identities. Next, I review the critical media research about portrayals of Black women and girls in
relationship to STEM. I weave in film reviews and discussions about Hidden Figures when pertinent. I end with a
short discussion about the use of different epistemological approaches to STEM research in the Black community to
justify my use of arts-based research methods as culturally responsive.
Historical Entanglements of Race and Gender in STEM Today
The film chronicles the ways in which the patriotic contributions by the Black women working at Langley in the
space program during the Cold War space race were excluded from history. The film includes the complicated ways
that the characters’ race and gender identities intersected with the politics of the era. Today, women from all racial
backgrounds have levels of participation in STEM education and professions that remains below their overall
population in the U.S. [9]. And for women who enter STEM, contemporary education researchers documented the
ways in which they continue to face discrimination in engineering education culture [10], [11], including the
historical links that influence perceptions about technology, gender, and STEM participation today [12], [13].
Historically, gender concepts related to technology complicated stories about who is an engineer and scientist and
what is considered legitimate technology and engineering practices [13]. The World’s Fairs in the early U.S. modern
industrial era in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries marginalized women as participants and inventors [14]
and contributed to a gendering of engineering and technology as masculine spaces and activities [15]. Indeed, the
emerging technology and science of the nineteenth century and early twentieth century were used to describe
women’s physiology as deficient and inferior to men [16]. In the film, women who calculated mathematics were
called computers, which both Black and White women performed as the task was deemed unskilled tedious labor
that was beneath men [12], [13], [17]. Recent research [18], [19] documents the gendered culture of engineering
education that remains chilly to women [20] and people of color [21], [22] today.
In the film, the women confront barriers to career advancement based on their gender and race, despite their
competency and skills. Contemporary empirical research also documents the way that gender is used today, often
unwittingly, to designate some engineering fields, tasks, and roles as more masculine or feminine within a hierarchy
[18]. Intersecting social identities [23] like age, gender, and race as well as academic and professional disciplines
and degree attainment generate a hierarchy of power in STEM that is difficult to study due to the complex
relationality between these various social identities [24]. This difficulty is increased when examined in relationship
to the culture of engineering, which is apolitical, ahistorical, and locked in a positivist mindset that research finds
often denies the space to acknowledge how different bodies experience engineering culture [11], [25]. However,
higher education in general rests on limited understandings about the complex intersections of social identities and
racialized conceptions about intelligence and ability that influence who is deemed “gifted” or “at risk” [26]. For
women of color participating in STEM today, research shows that race is usually less salient in their experiences
than their gender, while for men of color, race is more often cited as making them feel different in engineering
education [27]. Students’ report that their own perceptions about their racial and gender identities are potential risks

to their attainment in higher education, but that these identities can also often empower them in their STEM
education experiences. This empowerment includes Black female STEM students’ ability to self-author their own
STEM identities and which of their intersecting identities are salient for themselves [28]. Research in higher
education and STEM education shows that the barriers hidden in systemic racism are not in the past but are present
today. These barriers are rooted in the history of denying Black men and women access to opportunities in higher
education as faculty [29] and as students in STEM education that were unable to move into professional careers but
were rather limited to the role of technicians [30]. Kendi’s [31] extensive history of racism in the U.S. clearly shows
the centuries long legacy of White men and women not only devaluing and treating Black bodies and minds as
inferior, but how the dynamics of systemic racism function to reproduce inequities and exclusions that remain
hidden today. The form that racism takes changes over time [31], which contributes to it invisibility. Today STEM
students of color experience microaggressions [32] that generates additional stress, alienation, and anxiety for these
students [33], which the engineering education mental health research shows is in addition to already higher levels
of mental stress in engineering education [34]. As Towns [35] argues, Black bodies are not seen as fully human in
the U.S., including in the present political climate of racial tensions between Black Lives Matter movement and the
rising threat of domestic terrorism from white supremacy [36]. These are the historical and contemporary
entanglements with which we must examine Black student experiences related to engineering education and the
professions, but also my ongoing analysis of the impact of the film Hidden Figures.
The Paradox of Invisibility and Hyper-visibility
The film and book title Hidden Figures metaphorically points toward how these women’s stories and contributions
are absent from U.S. history, but the title also ties into the research findings about the experiences of Black women
in STEM today. The research shows that Black women, but also other women of color, exist in a paradox of being
both invisible and hyper-visible in STEM spaces [27]. Women of color are often invisible because of their
underrepresentation in engineering education and the professions [37]. The research also shows that for many of
these women, they also experience a form of hyper-visibility because they are the only woman of color in the room
[27]. Thompson’s [7] discussion of the film locates Katherine Johnson’s experiences of invisibility in the racist
hierarchy of the time, and her hyper-visibility as the only Black woman in many of the spaces she entered. In
Carpenter’s [17] interview with the author of the book Hidden Figures, Margot Lee Shetterly, Shetterly reveals that
she was unaware that her Sunday school teacher, mathematician Katherine Johnson of NASA, was part of this
historical contribution. It was this shocking realization that there were so many women, Black and White, working
at NASA and contributing to the space program that motivated Shetterly. Shetterly’s purpose was to correct U.S.
history by showing that women historically and patriotically contributed to the computing, math, engineering, and
science in the U.S. space program during the Cold War, though Shetterly acknowledges that the civil rights context
of the book is not as pronounced in the film [17].
Contemporary research shows that the success that Black women and girls’ experience in STEM in part comes from
having Black female role models and support networks. For young Black girls entering STEM, Black women STEM
role models are needed who have intersectional leadership skills and visionary strategies that are based on their lived
experiences of being Black women; they are role models because of their shared empathy for having multiple
identities that face oppression in educational settings [38]. Research indicates that professional STEM conferences
would benefit from increasing their support for Black women’s unique intersecting and nuanced experiences in
STEM, while also making their contributions more visible [39]. Successful Black women who are professional
engineers reported that they needed support at all levels during their education and professional experiences, from
family and friends to teachers and professors [22]. In the workplace, these Black women engineers succeeded with
mentors and support groups, managerial support, and peer groups where they could find empathy for their isolation,
tokenism, and alienation [22]. For Black women seeking to join an organization but who are aware of being
potentially stigmatized in predominately White settings, research shows that seeing oneself in a professional setting
through images of other Black women is important and signals trust and belonging [40]. A contribution of the film is
showing Black female leadership styles that can serve as models. Thompson [7] analyzed the styles of Black female
leadership the characters displayed in the film by comparing the book to the film using racial and gender
standpoints. Thompson argues that the film hides important parts of the story told in the book about the historical
ongoing forms of resistance Black women have used in their constant generational experiences of racial and gender
oppression and discrimination. Thompson [7] argues that the film shifted the content of the book toward
entertainment to make the movie less threatening to White audiences [41] [42], which dilutes the agency of the
women in their own stories. Research shows that efforts at diversity in higher education are often merely rhetorical
and do not substantially alter student experiences [43]. Additionally, diversity efforts in higher education generally

[44] and in STEM education specifically [21] are often deficit focused. A deficit focus puts the emphasis for the lack
of diversity on student shortcomings rather than examining the institutional racist norms that are often unseen by
White people [42]. More support is needed from institutions for Black students [33], [45] but critical
counternarratives about STEM are also needed that re-stories African American and women’s participation in
STEM disciplines and professions and tells of their success and contributions [21]. Portrayals of Black women in
film and media related to STEM are rare [7]. Research shows that women, regardless of race, are still stereotyped in
media including in science advertisements [46]. In STEM related films, most female characters are White and often
play marginal roles [47]. Increased and diverse portrayals of women, and especially women of color, affect girls’
identification with careers in STEM fields. Alicia Morgan, a Black female aerospace engineer [48], describes
wishing she had experienced the film Hidden Figures to prepare her for the culture shock of her first job at Boeing
after getting her engineering degree from Tuskegee University in 2001, which is a historically Black school. She too
describes the paradoxical phenomena of invisibility and repeatedly being mistaken as a secretary, as well as the
experience of hyper-visibility of being the only Black woman in her department [48]. Morgan works with non-
profits to increase diversity and add the arts to STEM, or STEAM [49] and insists that many of the same issues
remain, including a shortage of role models and mentors.
A Unique Methodological Approach
Research about diversity efforts in STEM education includes calls for more diversity in the research methods used
that include interdisciplinary [2] and diverse epistemological approaches [50]. However, as Douglas, Koro-
Ljungberg, and Borrego’s [51] research shows, engineering education organizations are not always equipped with
scholars trained in disciplinary epistemological know-how outside STEM to evaluate different methodological
approaches to research. That being said, arts-based research methods [52] have been used in STEM education
research to help uncover first generation engineering students’ identities as engineers [53] and as a storytelling
method [54] that increases the researcher’s understanding of their own research. Poetry was used by Kellam et al.
[55] to understand in more complicated and nuanced ways how engineer identities form in students. These creative
and culturally responsive methodologies [5] provide local and specific stories that are missed in quantitative
approaches, thereby lending detailed understandings to student experiences. I use arts-based research (ABR)
methods in this study that are guided by the principles of Berryman, SooHoo, and Nevin’s [5] culturally responsive
methodologies (CRM). In this project CRM principles require that I center the voices of Black women, including
research by Black women scholars, but also that I use methods that are culturally responsive to Black women. For
the Black and African American cultural community, the arts, including poetry, narrative, and storytelling are
epistemologically prized as a means of coming to know [56]. As examples, Oliver [57] combines arts-based
narrative inquiry, hip-hop culture, and critical race theory to understand students experiences more deeply. This
framework the author created is called critical hip hop storytelling and is a unique arts-based framework for racial
minority students, educators, and researchers to explore their own experiences. Similarly, Davis [58] combines the
hip-hop aesthetic of sampling, critical pedagogy, and critical race theory to form a culturally responsive method that
allows minoritized participants in research to protest and create counternarratives. Lawrence-Lightfoot and Davis
[59] use a genre called social science portraiture that blurs disciplinary boundaries and aims to illuminate the
complexity in human lives and institutions in their cultural contexts. The authors share an example of a narrative
portrait of an arts center that served as a haven for African American children in a low-income neighborhood.
In summary, I have shown the complex historical, political, and cultural barriers that women and Black women in
particular face in higher education and specifically in STEM education. Additionally, I showed the importance of
role models and mentors for Black women in STEM, but also the dearth of visual portrayals in films and media
related to STEM. Lastly, I showed the nexus of engineering diversity researchers’ desire for different
methodological approaches to research with the importance of the arts to the Black and African American cultural
communities as a culturally responsive means of coming to know.
Methodology
In this section, I explain my use of a new materialist theory and how it fits with my use of arts-based methods in my
research design that explores the intersection of educational diversity efforts, the arts, and engineering history. My
unique framework requires some explanation to communicate across disciplinary understandings about how
knowledge is generated [3], [4]. For example, in my methods section below, I describe my literature and image
search methods because my framework does not differentiate distinct phases of the research; rather, I acknowledge
the messiness of my approach by showing the process of producing new knowledge as an iterative act, from which

previously undetected perspectives can emerge. In arts-based research [52] and culturally responsive methodologies
[5], transparency builds trustworthiness. Trustworthiness is a criterion for evaluating qualitative and arts-based
research methods that can be thought of as similar to reliability in quantitative approaches [60].
Theoretical Framework
I draw on two compatible and complimentary theories for my framework. One is Nail’s [61] quantum loop object
(QLO) theory. Nail provides an updated Western science-based paradigm for researchers trained in the Western
academic tradition that challenges assumptions about objectivity and representation derived from positivist
epistemology that ground Western forms of knowledge, particularly in STEM research and pedagogies [10]. The
other is Berryman, SooHoo, and Nevin’s [5] framework of culturally responsive methodologies (CRM). I explain
them both in detail to show how they work with my arts-based methods to provide a unique way of viewing the
continued underrepresentation of Black women in STEM using the cultural artifacts that emerged from the film as a
lens of analysis.
           Quantum loop object theory: Nail’s quantum loop object (QLO) theory [61] is a kinetic new materialist
process philosophy. New materialisms emerged from critical theories of the late twentieth century like feminist,
critical race, decolonial, and queer theories [62]. In simple terms, new materialist theories focus on the materiality,
relationality, and emergent qualities of what we experience and know [63]. Nail’s QLO [61] theory is part of his
larger kinetic framework of the philosophy of movement. Nail argues that we exist in an age of unprecedented
movement in the twenty-first century [64]. Additionally, he argues that there are more images [65] and objects [61]
than ever before in human history, which also are in constant motion. The purpose of his philosophy of movement
(POM) is to create new ontological (being) and epistemological (knowing) frameworks in Western philosophy that
are a better fitting lens through which to re-view historical events through their materiality, motions, and processes.
The historical re-viewing is crucial to Nail’s contribution and purpose to uncover hidden, misunderstood, and
ignored elements that are entangled with our conceptions and perceptions of ourselves and how we come to know
and experience the world today. QLO theory [61] is therefore a good fit for examining not only the material history
of exclusivity and inequities in STEM education and professions, but also for giving voice to those whose
contributions to the nation have been invisible and silenced.
There are three concepts Nail [61] uses that describe the relational motion of matter in knowledge production:
emergence, feedback, and hybridity. Interpreting quantum field theory, mathematical category theory, and chaos
theory, Nail provides an emergent process of producing knowledge, which he terms pedesis, that occurs through
contingent iterative feedback loops that produces hybrid meta-knowledge, or fields of knowledge like engineering
education. Nail argues that experiments are only one part of the labor of science. It is the repeated measuring,
objectification, and ordering of these material experiences into fields of knowledge that produces objects of
knowledge, including the motions of inscribing of descriptions in conference papers and presenting them. Because
quantum field theory hypothesizes all matter as in motion, emergent, and contingent, there is no objectivity, statis, or
determinant matter or knowledge [61]. Nail’s theory challenges the hegemony of modern western scientific
assumptions about knowledge production that are, at least in part, a source of conflict within EHED research to
increase and improve diversity, inclusivity, and equity [10]. The result of his interpretation is a formalization of the
process of knowing that does not obscure the process itself.
           Culturally responsive methods: Nail’s [61] quantum loop object theory resonates with Berryman, SooHoo,
and Nevin’s [5] culturally responsive methodologies (CRM) framework. Their framework combines critical theory
and an Indigenous New Zealand Māori framework called Kaupapa Māori to challenge the historical dynamics of
outside researchers devaluing the contributions of the communities and individuals that are the focus of the inquiry.
Critical theory acknowledges the hegemony of Western ways of knowing in modern Western education and is
informed by Indigenous, Latinx, LGBQ, disability, and other scholarship from communities that are
underrepresented in academia. Critical theory is an offshoot of critical pedagogy that is influenced by Freire. Both
critical theory and pedagogy share the intent to include the research participants’ cultural lives in the processes of
knowledge production. To this end, because I am researching with cultural artifacts and not people, I center the
critical literature by Black women to elevate their voices. Additionally, critical ethnography is incorporated into
CRM [5] with a requirement for self-reflexivity by the researcher of my own power, biases, assumptions, and
academic agendas. In critical theory and pedagogy, everyone must transparently share their various identities and
political ideologies in the research process. This sharing has the effect of creating an alternative learning and
research space in which there are no outside experts whose role is objective observers, only participants as learners.

To this end, I include examples of my own self-interrogation as a White woman in the analysis section below,
including how my racial and gender identities affect my analysis and interpretation of the findings.
The other part of the CRM [5] framework is from the Māori of New Zealand and is called Kaupapa Māori. This
unique cultural framework identifies the effects of colonization and the differentials in power, control, and
participation in Western conceptions about knowledge formation. To shift the political consciousness of the Māori
people, Kaupapa Māori emerged in New Zealand after WWII to reject the colonizing stories told by outside experts
about the Māori. The movement prioritized the Māori culture in the knowledge production process to counter
centuries of experts degrading Māori ways of knowing in education and research. Today, it is has come to generally
mean reconnection with a community’s own historical culture and political power that treats their cultural practices
as different but equivalent frameworks with different purposes. Culturally responsive methodologies [5] draw on the
overlapping values of critical theory and Kaupapa Māori. These values include prioritizing relationships and
dialogue, giving voice through narratives, valuing human dignity, accessing cultural political consciousness, and
resisting power structures that are hierarchal. Both QLO [61] and CRM [5] embrace multi-logicality and
epistemological pluralism and situate the research details in holistic contexts. The goal of research in CRM [5] is the
generation of transformative and organic content and, related to ABR methods [60], the use of aesthetic and
dialogical spaces for inquiry. The purpose of CRM [5] is to benefit both the community of participants and the
researcher’s academic agendas. In summary, not only do QLO theory [61] and CRM [5] rest on different
epistemological approaches traditionally used in engineering education research, they both also challenge Western
academic assumptions about knowledge creation as apolitical and ahistorical, making them a good fit for my study
on the material history of STEM diversity.
Research Design and Methods
As an arts-based researcher, I adapt the creative arts for social research, using the unique capacities of the arts to
evoke and provoke different ways of knowing in the researcher but also in the audience as they reflect on their own
experiences in relationship to the research interpretations [60]. Arts-based research methods emerged as a branch of
Western qualitative research theories and practices [66] that occur along a continuum of art-science, which provides
flexibility for using creative practices in the research design, content generation, analysis, and/or interpretation. I
chose these inductive and generative creative practices to produce knowledge that mirrors the processes that Nail
[61] and CRM [5] describe. Arts-based methods can be used in tandem with traditional qualitative and quantitative
practices or alone [60], which in my work-in-progress study is a hybrid [61] of both qualitative and arts-based
methods. Arts-based methods are diverse and include all creative genres and media: visual art, video, performance
including theater and dance, poetry, and literature [60]. I describe my own unique hybrid [61] use of media and
methods across my research design below. In arts-based methods, creative practices provide a variety of ways of
knowing that are imaginative, non-verbal, sensory, and kinesthetic [53]. Arts-based methods are a good fit to
examine the hidden elements of Black women’s experiences in STEM as these methods can generate empathy,
disrupt dominant discourses, and transform viewers through an affective, emotional, and embodied experiences of
the creative output [52]. I conducted previous visual arts-based historical research that examined early modern
images of women with technology in the U.S. from between 1880-1930 that functioned as a pilot study for this
current research project [67].
          Content generation: Instead of the term “data collection”, arts-based methods utilize “content generation”
to better reflect and show the creative process of knowledge production [52]. In this section, I transparently describe
my ongoing, relational feedback loops to [61] show how new knowledge is generated in my study. I include my own
self-reflections, following CRM principles [5], to show how my new understandings of Black women’s experiences
in STEM emerged from looping with the film, the research literature, and the generated content that continues to
emerge during this work-in-progress study. By doing so, my aim is to show the reader how my unique methodology
is different as well as increase the trustworthiness of my findings through transparency [5], [52].
I began this study by re-watching the film at home for the first time since I watched in when it was released in 2016
but after beginning my literature review for context. I took handwritten notes on the images, scenes, and events in
the movie that resonated with the critical literature on diversity in STEM, and specifically the literature on Black
women’s experiences in STEM. After watching the film again, I wrote memos, poetry, and reflective analysis of my
own perceptions based on my intersecting identities [23]: a White female artist who is currently a doctoral candidate
in higher education researching diversity in engineering education using arts-based methods, but who also earned a
master’s degree and was an adjunct professor in an engineering school’s liberal arts program. My process of writing

reflections, poetry, and analysis memos is continuous and iterative throughout the research project as content
generation, analysis, and interpretation. Through each new round or loop [61] of interaction with the literature and
images, I generate new understandings from which this paper and my presentation at the conference emerge as new
fields of knowledge to share. I intend to fold in new feedback from readers and my audience of engineering
educators at the conference.
I generated content through searching university library databases, Google Scholar, Google, and Google Images. I
started by searching both for literature and images using the film title as my search term. This inquiry mostly
produced film and book reviews. Until this project, I was unaware that the film was based on a book, which I have
not read. The movie reviews interestingly reached across disciplines and journals. In searching the peer reviewed
literature, I found the film title Hidden Figures used metaphorically in a few titles related to diversity in STEM
education and professions, like Bookers’ [68] 2018 dissertation title “Hidden no more: factors that contribute to
STEM graduate degree attainment in African American women”, an education psychology article “(Un)hidden
figures: a synthesis of research examining the intersectional experiences of Black women and girls in STEM
education” [69], and Guzman’s [24] 2019 “Beyond Hidden Figures: shining a spotlight on constructed hierarchies of
gender, age, and elementary mathematics”. Often my search for literature produced images and links to websites that
were related to STEM education and diversity. These include NASA, a Wikipedia page, the Hidden Figures Twitter
account (inactive since 2017), and the online encyclopedia site “Alternatives to slavery”. Katherine Johnson, one of
the main characters in the film, died in 2020, so I found many obituary tributes that included images of her being
awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom from the nation’s first African American president, Barack Obama in
2015.
          Images as content for analysis: As a visual artist my epistemology, or way of knowing, involves thinking
with images. This method includes performing visual analysis of the images I generated that I iteratively looped in
[61] with the peer reviewed literature to uncover hidden relationships. In this section, I describe examples of my
ongoing iterative image generation. My Google image search using the search term hidden figures generated a long
series of links at the top of the webpage, which I found interesting in relationship to the critical literature I reviewed.
These links include the individual character’s names like Katherine Johnson as well as the actors who played them
in the film. Other link terms included: NASA, mathematics, human computers, John Glenn, Langley, engineer, and
Oscars, to name a few. What caught my eye were the three links related to clothing labeled as fashion, outfit, and
dress. I explored all three links and the images and patterns related to the Google algorithms that produced these
search terms. I found these links were related to the historical women’s clothing and fashion in the film. but also,
clothing worn by the actresses at the Oscar awards. I discovered that in all three of the links there were multiple
images of young Black girls wearing a Hidden Figures costumes of each character as shown in Fig. 1 [70]. For
context, I followed each of the search engine’s images to the websites from which the images came. Methods wise, I
oscillated back and forth [61] between the literature, news and popular websites related to the film, and the specific
images/content related to the movie and characters that emerged through my searches.

Fig. 1.   Girls dressed as Hidden Figures film characters from online source.

The social media image collection site Pinterest provided an enormous quantity of film related images and
additional related search terms. I followed an algorithm generated search prompt of “Hidden Figures aesthetic”
because of my use of aesthetic arts-based methods to uncover hidden relationships. I sensed these images were
centered on the historical era in the film, again mostly focused on the clothing and fashion in the film. Other online
images that were plentiful were Hidden Figures themed coloring pages for children and multiple lesson plans for
teachers including a NASA Hidden Figures Toolkit with resources for K-12 teachers to teach a variety of
mathematics and science lessons. I also came across a Katherine Johnson Barbie doll Mattel created as first in a line
of dolls celebrating inspiring women as historical pioneers. I found artistic interpretations [71], [72] of the three
main characters in posters and artworks that similarly showed the figures wearing the clothes from the film and each
character’s body type, hair style, and posture evident. However, I noticed that often the facial features were
abstracted and sometimes the faces were blank and devoid of features in these interpretive artworks (Fig. 2) [73].

Fig. 2.   Interpretive drawing of film characters from Guisil's Doodles.
          Generating my own content as feedback loops of analysis: CRM [5] requires that I constantly self-reflect
about how my own various social identities intersect with the entire research process, which I equate with Nail’s
[61] concept of feedback loops. Transparently, I must disclose that this project coincides with the development of
my doctoral dissertation research proposal that uses the same methodological framework and requires ongoing self-
reflection throughout the entire process [5], creating a hybridity of knowledge [61] across both my dissertation
proposal as well as this study. In my proposed dissertation research, I collaborate with underrepresented engineering
students to learn about their experiences of professional socialization into the culture of engineering. As I have
looped through and around both projects using my arts-based methods of concept mapping in a paper journal, poetic
writing, drawing, and oil painting as well as qualitative analysis memos, I have come to better understand my
positionality as a White [42] female doctoral candidate working on diversity in engineering education and how it
affects my process of analysis and interpretation. My process is different than in positivist methods where isolation,
control, and replicability are valued [60]. In my framework, there are no borders or separations other than the ones I
create as I order, re-view, and re-order this emerging new knowledge into a meta-stable pattern or field, [61].
Reduction to one answer is not my goal; rather, it is my process that uncovers what was previously hidden in
subjective ways that are unique to me as the researcher, but also to you as the reader. This uncovering process shifts
how we perceived the relationships between our own experiences of the film, the content I share here, and our own
local individual experiences related to our own intersecting social identities.
Discussion of My Analysis Process and Early Findings
As this is a work-in-progress, I am still looping through content generation and literature related to my study.
Indeed, in QLO theory [61] and CRM [4], theoretically I am perpetually entangled with the film as I move into the
future; each additional future viewing of the film or additional content I encounter will continue to be folded into my
understanding of the film and Black women and girl’s experiences in STEM that this study began. However, there
are a few patterns that emerged from my process that I share here. In my analysis process I repeatedly re-viewed the
draft paper I submitted, including the reviewer comments and suggestions, along with my guiding research
questions, my handwritten notes from watching the film, notes from my image and research literature searches,

concepts from my theoretical framework of QLO theory [61] and CRM [4], and my self-reflective drawing and
mapping in my paper journal, which looped in all these entangled threads. I identified emerging patterns related to
race, gender, visibility, and power [42] and who is included in STEM history. Using QLO theory [65], I also
analyzed how these patterns move in the film but also in U.S. society’s and engineering educators’ understanding of
race and gender in STEM.
For example, the scene where astronaut John Glenn greets the NASA staff and the women of color are segregated
and ignored until Glenn, who has unrestricted mobility in the space, moves toward them to show appreciation.
White men in the film hold power over movement in spaces like the police officer at the beginning of the film, the
leaders at NASA who recruit bodies into prestigious roles and control access to information in closed door meetings,
and the judge empowered to control the character Mary’s entry into engineering classes. Towards the end of the
film, Glenn requests that Katherine Johnson calculate his Friendship 7 orbit trajectory; as she rushes her calculations
to the command center and hands them over, the door to the room is shut in her face, blocking her entry. It is another
empowered White male body, played by Kevin Costner, that opens the door and provides her access. There is a
revealing difference between the film’s adaptation and the book’s account about the movements of the women’s
bodies on the NASA campus [7]. The film version, written by a White man and a White woman, removes Katherine
Johnson’s agency and resiliency and instead gives these motions to Costner’s character as he dramatically removes
the “colored” sign from the women’s bathrooms, providing the Black women entry. In fact, Johnson used the
bathroom designated for White women in the building without ever asking for permission.
Other repeated themes of visibility in the film include the Cold War threat of the Soviets watching from their
Sputnik satellite, Katherine’s eye glasses as a code for her intelligence, her hyper-visibility on the ladder working
calculations on the enormous chalkboard, and when she pours herself a cup of coffee from the shared pot in the
Space Task Force room, resulting in her access to coffee being restricted to a designated coffee pot labeled
“colored”. In fact, her visibility as a brilliant mathematician is negated when she first enters the Space Task Force
room and is handed a full garbage can based on assumptions of how Black women entering this space are identified
as custodians. The character Dorothy’s leadership and managerial abilities and work are invisible in the organization
as she is repeatedly denied a formal management title. Dorothy experiences hyper-visibility in the public library
while searching for knowledge that strengthens her contribution to NASA and the nation, and she is removed from
the space. To summarize, the film demonstrates how the women’s visibility and hyper-visibility affect their
movements, while the film also takes liberty with the book’s account to elevate the White male characters’ motions
in relationship to these women’s experiences. The film does however make visible the invaluable work of patriotic
women like Johnson, Vaughn, and Jackson in relationship to the historic images and heroic stories of White male
astronauts like Glenn. My guiding research questions for this project, however, are focused on the movement of the
film with Black women and girls’ interest and participation in STEM and the film’s effect on the larger public and
STEM educators.
I found through my study that the arts can influence participation in STEM higher education through films like
Hidden Figures by visibly showing role models to girls and students from racially underrepresented communities in
engineering, which the literature shows are crucial [38], [39]. The content that I generated showed these motions
toward visibility like the activity of the Black girls dressing up as the characters in the film. Their dressing up
presented opportunities for the girls to ontological and epistemologically know their own STEM capabilities beyond
what they see in the media, that is, the dearth of Black female characters in STEM media [7]. In one instance, it was
a Milwaukee schoolteacher [70] who had all the children in his class dress as inspirational characters for Black
History Month, including the role models in Hidden Figures (Fig. 1). The other was a project through the Girl
Scouts with a similar intention to celebrate Women’s History Month in 2017 [74].
Another example of a pattern I sense is in the myriad of creative visual interpretations of the three characters without
distinct facial features. The interpretive artwork in which the three women characters are shown in their identifiable
dresses (Fig. 2) from the movie appear in a variety of backgrounds and were produced for a variety of reasons [63]-
[66], some of which are difficult to discern through social media like Pinterest. Drawing on the literature that shows
the need for Black women role models [33], [38], I contemplate that by leaving the faces somewhat ambiguous,
young Black girls and Black women STEM students and professionals can imaginatively insert themselves into the
image as a way of finding connection to a type of mentor. In some ways the blank or nondescriptive features could
be interpreted as making the historical women featured in the film invisible. However, I do not think this is the case.
Rather, I hypothesize that it provides a type of visibility that is accessible in which to see oneself. Additionally,

and/or alternatively, many of the interpretive images are celebratory of the women and the film, perhaps reflecting
the enthusiasm in which the movie was received.
Answers to my research question about how engineering educators and the U.S public perceive and interpret new
information about the history of discrimination in STEM fields, however, are more complicated in terms of
visibility. As I showed, the political settings and agency given to characters in the film differs from the book [7].
While the film is celebrated for providing a much-needed set of role models for Black female STEM students, I did
not find extensive public content that indicated that the film substantially affected how the public perceives and
knows who is historically included as patriots and heroes of the Cold War space race. NASA embraced the women
in the film to promote diversity in STEM, even naming their headquarter building after Dorothy Vaughn [75].
According to their 2020 data, NASA also employs Black or African Americans at a rate of 12% [76], which is close
to the overall portion of Black and African Americans the U.S. population of 13.4% [77]. However, as recently as
2020, NASA declared an initiative to remove racist derogatory nicknames given to cosmic objects from use at the
agency [78], indicating that making the organization inclusive and equitable is an ongoing mission. The whiteness
[42], and maleness [11], of STEM remains in place as current diversity research demonstrates [17]-[26]. While I
found that a film can disrupt aspects of our Cold War historical narrative, a long legacy of women being
purposefully excluded and made invisible in engineering education spaces remains. I recall a story from Oldenziel’s
historical research [13] about Nora Blatch whose male classmates at Cornell in 1904 arranged a date for her with a
friend outside their department, during which time the picture of the male students doing field work was taken. And
given the invisibility of Black women scientists, engineers, and mathematicians in U.S. media [7], [47], one film
does not substantially alter public perceptions of American history. However, the film and book reviews do show
making these women’s stories visible is a step in the right direction [6], [16].
Lastly, as a White woman, I must reflect on how my own perspectives moved during this research process.
Admittedly, in my first viewing of the film back in 2016, I strongly identified with the sexism described in the film.
Growing up in the 1970s and 1980s, many of the same gender tropes in the film are familiar to me. However, I
relegated the depictions of racism in the film to the historical past because I did not experience this form of
oppression personally; it was not real to me and I gravitated towards what Ahmed [42] calls happy diversity stories,
which focus on the progress made in diversity efforts. It has only been through my doctoral research and
intentionally choosing coursework that required self-reflection on my various social identities that I have come to
understand that I do not understand Black women’s experiences but can learn about them through my own research
with projects like this one.
Limitations and Future Work
My use of a unique arts-based research method [52] guided by culturally responsive methodologies [5] uses my own
individual subjective experiences during the research process; there are not universal replicable findings [60]. In this
way, my project has many limitations, but also many potential future iterations by other researchers besides myself.
Indeed, QLO theory [61] interprets the process of creating knowledge as iterative and relational to the past and the
future. I found much more visual material related to the film than I had originally anticipated and there are countless
possibilities for future work by others using my methodology or with quantitative and/or qualitative methods and
theories of their own choosing. I look forward to looping in the feedback that emerges from engineering educators
when I present my study at the conference.
As this is a work-in-progress, I have not yet completed my analysis using my visual arts-based methods with the
Adobe software program Photoshop. I use photographic collage [79] [80] as a method to aesthetically loop with the
visual and textual content I generated. Through this practice, I create hybrid [61] collaged images that furthers the
analysis I described above about the motions related to visibility and power. Examples of what I may include in
these hybrid images are juxtapositions [81] of my images/content with other elements related to STEM such as
popular magazines and professional journals, diversity research, and media about Black women and girls’
experiences in STEM. Another juxtaposition that I sense may create potent new understandings about the history of
racism and sexism in STEM are images of the political and social conflict from the timeframe that Thompson [7]
argues was downplayed in the film in contrast to the book, with the media content related to the current iterations of
Black Lives Matter movement and racial political strife that emerged since killing of George Floyd by police in
2020 [36]. Other content I am interested in exploring is the impact Katherine Johnson had as a living public figure
for several years after the release of the film in 2016. I want to better understand her influence in the African

American community, but also any reactions from and impacts on the White public’s understanding of the
contributions of Black women in STEM through examining media images and stories.
In conclusion, I believe my study makes significant contributions in two ways. One contribution is my use of a
methodology that is radically different from the positivism that dominates engineering education [4]. My goal was to
uncover new hidden stories that may help increase diversity [61] in STEM by using the film Hidden Figures and
content related to the film. My use of QLO theory [61] and my own arts-based methods [52] shifted how I
approached my research questions, generated content, and analyzed and interpreted the findings; I focused on the
iterative relational feedback loops and the hybrid knowledge that emerged from this process to show the
relationships and motions between the arts and STEM diversity. My second related contribution is the findings
themselves that show the myriad ways that the motions of Black women in STEM are affected by their visibility but
also how visible Black women STEM role models can change the trajectory of young Black girls. And lastly, by
folding in Ahmed’s [42] phenomenology of whiteness as a lens for my own self-reflection [5] and to analyze the
content, I added another dimension from which I can better understand the visibility issues that women of color face
in STEM and how their movements may be arrested and restricted.

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