Book Overview
Current discourses surrounding education rely heavily upon developmental psychology and cognitive theory as the primary tools for depicting and explaining human experience and subjectivity. However, these tools prove to be inadequate, as they fail to account for the historicity and materiality of human development and personhood. Alternate approaches are needed if we are to understand the making of the self as a process through which socially and culturally situated bodies are construed and experienced within and against histories of racism, sexism, heteronormativity, ableism, and class inequality. Certainly the histories of oppression based on social hierarchies are addressed in social foundations literature as well as anti-oppressive pedagogies. However, these perspectives tend to focus on institutional critique, personal narrative, and/or critical sociology/ethnographic studies without recognizing the central role that actual bodies play in reproducing and resisting hierarchies of difference.
This collection explores the pedagogical moments or “flashpoints” when sociocultural formations of difference and power take hold through the corporeal capacities of the knowing body. In particular, this book is concerned with how the sensate human flesh acts as an interface or permeable membrane through which self and other as well as inside and outside come to influence one another, entering into complex relays of exchange, agonism, and entanglement. The notion of pedagogical “flashpoints” is an invitation to examine specific instances in which the body educates, and is educated in various formal and informal contexts, including schools, universities, museums, communities, and so forth. For this collection, we are interested in short, but powerful, phenomenological descriptions of such moments. The book will feature concise written accounts of flashpoints that attend to the somatic intensities of the flesh as a site of knowledge, resistance, and transformation. Contributions to the volume should utilize phenomenologically based methods for describing flashpoints through which the tacit, pre-conscious flesh of the body reveals how perceptual experience is always already shaped by hierarchies of difference. Although brief, these descriptions should succinctly illuminate how flashpoints are first and foremost fleshpoints that expose the embodied, intuitive context of our lived experiences of difference.
Chapter Guidelines
The chapters in this volume will be comprised of descriptions of no more than 1,500-1,700 words. The descriptions should focus on particular flashpoints that reveal the processes and structures of embodiment and perception within experiences that are punctuated by asymmetrical relations of race, gender, sexuality, class, ability, and other markers of difference. Topics and themes for description could include moments of physical or emotional encounter within educational settings where tensions around sociocultural difference became apparent. The viewing of an artwork or the reading of a text might have initiated these flashpoints. Embodied reactions that frame such flashpoints might include laughter, tears, pain, or a whole array of sensory responses.
Such descriptions may draw inspiration from not only the classic texts of Frantz Fanon, W.E.B. DuBois, Simone de Beauvoir, and others, but also contemporary feminism, queer studies, critical race theory, indigenous knowledge and postcolonial theory. While submissions should be informed by a phenomenological sensibility, descriptions should be more or less “jargon”-free, as this text is aimed at a broad readership composed of educators and students who might not be familiar with phenomenological literature.
If you are interested in contributing to this edited collection, please submit a brief proposal by May 15, 2015 following the format and procedures below:
Proposal Format: 300-word abstract, at least 3 references from the literature that serve as suggested further reading on issues brought forth in the chapter, and a chapter title. Please include author name, 200-word author bio that includes a statement on positionality, and contact information (email, mailing address, and phone number).
Submission Procedures: Submit proposals as .doc or .docx email attachments to fleshpoints@gmail.com.
Timeline:
Proposal Submission Due: June 1, 2015
Review Results Sent to Authors: July 1, 2015
Chapters Due: October 1, 2015
Requests for Revisions Sent to Authors: November 1, 2015
Final Chapters Due: December 1, 2015
Co-editors
Sarah Travis is a PhD student in Art Education at the University of North Texas. Her scholarship focuses on historical and contemporary issues of equity within school-based (art) education contexts as well as racialized, classed, and gendered experiences of art students and art educators. Her current research involves inquiry into artistic identity formation with adolescent art students in post-Katrina New Orleans.
Amelia M. Kraehe is Assistant Professor in the Department of Art Education and Art History at the University of North Texas. Her research concerns the social, political and cultural contexts that influence education, with a particular focus on the pedagogic possibilities and impossibilities created through engagement in the arts and popular culture. Her scholarship is published in numerous journals including, among others, Race, Ethnicity and Education; Souls: A Critical Journal of Black Politics, Culture, and Society; and Educational Studies.
Emily Jean Hood is a mother, artist, emerging scholar and educator who is currently a PhD student in Art Education at the University of North Texas. Her areas of study and research include post-humanities as a means for furthering inclusivity for all beings. Thus, her scholarship in the field of art education delves into the notion of things as co-creators, specifically in artistic creative practices of perception and making.
Tyson E. Lewis is Associate Professor in the Department of Art Education and Art History at the University of North Texas. His research interests include philosophy of education, aesthetics, art education, and critical theory. He is author of The Aesthetics of Education: Theatre, Curiosity, and Politics in the Work of Jacques Rancière and Paulo Freire (London: Bloomsbury, 2014), and On Study: Educational Potentiality and Giorgio Agamben (New York: Routledge, 2013).