Degrees of Choice: Social Class, Race, and Gender in Higher Education

AbstractThis article explores blackface minstrelsy in the context of Elizabeth Taylor Greenfield's singing career of the 1850s–1870s. Although Greenfield performed a version of African American musicality that was distinct from minstrel caricatures, minstrelsy nonetheless impacted her reception. The ubiquity of minstrel tropes greatly influenced audience perceptions of Greenfield's creative and powerful transgressions of expected race and gender roles, as well as the alignment of race with mid-nineteenth-century notions of social class. Minstrel caricatures and stereotypes appeared in both praise and ridicule of Greenfield's performances from her debut onward, and after successful US and transatlantic tours established her notoriety, minstrel companies actually began staging parody versions of Greenfield, using her sobriquet, “Black Swan.” These “Black Swan” acts are evidence that Greenfield's achievements were perceived as threats to established social hierarchies.

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“I Didn't Come to Play”

Advances in Religious and Cultural Studies - Critical Reflections and Politics on Advancing Women in the Academy ◽

10.4018/978-1-7998-3618-6.ch004 ◽

2020 ◽

pp. 52-69

Author(s):

Sereana Naepi

Keyword(s):

Higher Education ◽

Race And Gender ◽

And Gender

Pasifika women in the academy face many of the same challenges as other racialised women working in universities. At the intersection of race and gender, we experience the white and masculine imprints of higher education. These imprints lead to Pasifika women experiencing excess labour, infantilization, hyper-surveillance, stranger making, expectations of intelligibility, and desirable diversity. In spite of this daily onslaught Pasifika, women continue to work and engage in higher education and the question needs to be asked: Why? This chapter explores these experiences and more importantly the motivations of Pasifika women to continue to engage with higher education in spite of the systemic exclusion they face.

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Exploring/Exploding the Boundaries of Inclusive Teaching: Social Class Confronts Race and Gender

Transforming Classroom Culture ◽

10.1057/9780230370319_12 ◽

2011 ◽

pp. 197-212

Author(s):

Phyllis Charlotte Brown

Keyword(s):

Social Class ◽

Race And Gender ◽

Inclusive Teaching ◽

And Gender

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The Utility of Social Class, Race, and Gender in Clinical Practice: A Case Study Involving Intraracial Dyads

Journal of Human Behavior in the Social Environment ◽

10.1080/10911359.2012.720908 ◽

2012 ◽

Vol 22 (8) ◽

pp. 1033-1049 ◽

Cited By ~ 3

Author(s):

Samuel R. Aymer

Keyword(s):

Clinical Practice ◽

Social Class ◽

Race And Gender ◽

And Gender

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Uses for a Dead White Male: Shakespeare, Feminism, and Diversity

New Theatre Quarterly ◽

10.1017/s0266464x00008873 ◽

1995 ◽

Vol 11 (41) ◽

pp. 55-61

Author(s):

Kim F. Hall

Keyword(s):

Higher Education ◽

American Association ◽

White Male ◽

Cultural Pluralism ◽

Washington Dc ◽

Race And Gender ◽

Feminist Teaching ◽

Teaching Shakespeare ◽

And Gender ◽

Education Conference

This article and the two following were prepared as complementary contributions to a panel of the American Association for Higher Education conference on ‘Theatre and Cultural Pluralism’, held in Atlanta, Georgia, in August 1992. In the first, Kim F. Hall, from the Department of English at Georgetown University, Washington, DC, describes her experiences as an African American feminist teaching Shakespeare – often against the expectations of students who expect either an affirmation of his supposed universality, a simplistic condemnation of his politically incorrect positions on race and gender – or his appropriation, on behalf of those wishing to stake their own claim to the ‘culture of power’ he is taken to represent. Instead, Kim F. Hall proposes that feminism offers ‘one way of helping students look at Shakespeare ‘multiculturally’, since gender is one area of inquiry that both crosses cultures and forces one to think about the differences between cultures’.

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The Influence of Biographical Factors on Adult Learner Self-Directedness in an Open Distance Learning Environment

The International Review of Research in Open and Distributed Learning ◽

10.19173/irrodl.v17i4.2345 ◽

2016 ◽

Vol 17 (4) ◽

Cited By ~ 4

Author(s):

Jo-Anne Botha ◽

Mariette Coetzee

Keyword(s):

Higher Education ◽

Distance Learning ◽

Adult Learner ◽

Age Groups ◽

Education Institution ◽

The Other ◽

Age Group ◽

Race And Gender ◽

Academic Activity ◽

And Gender

<p>This study investigated the relationship between self-directedness (as measured by the Adult Learner Self-Directedness Scale) and biographical factors such as age, race, and gender of adult learners enrolled at a South African open distance learning (ODL) higher education institution. Correlational and inferential statistical analyses were used. A stratified random sample of 1,102 mainly black and female learners participated in the study. The Adult Learner Self-Directedness Scale (ALSDS) identified four constructs of adult learner self-directedness in an Open Distance Learning Higher Education (ODLHE) milieu, namely the strategic utilisation of officially provided resources, engaged academic activity, success orientation for ODLHE, and academically motivated behaviour. The research indicated that significant differences exist between the gender, race and age groups with regard to self-directedness.</p><p>With regard to gender, males scored significantly higher than females on success orientation for ODLHE and engaged academic activity. With regard to race, Indian participants scored significantly higher than the other race groups on strategic utilisation of officially provided resources and engaged academic activity. The white participants scored significantly higher than the other race groups on success orientation for ODLHE. In terms of age, the age group >50 scored significantly higher than the other age groups on success orientation for ODLHE and self-efficacy. In terms of success orientation, the means for the age groups seem to increase as the ages of participants increase. The age group 18-25 scored significantly higher than the other age groups on engaged academic activity.</p>

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Implications of Race and Gender in Higher Education Administration: An African American Woman’s Perspective

Advances in Developing Human Resources ◽

10.1177/1523422309351820 ◽

2009 ◽

Vol 11 (5) ◽

pp. 606-618 ◽

Cited By ~ 25

Author(s):

Brenda Lloyd-Jones

Keyword(s):

Higher Education ◽

African American ◽

Higher Education Administration ◽

Education Administration ◽

Race And Gender ◽

And Gender

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Embodying Deficiency Through ‘Affective Practice’: Shame, Relationality, and the Lived Experience of Social Class and Gender in Higher Education

Sociology ◽

10.1177/0038038515589301 ◽

2016 ◽

Vol 50 (6) ◽

pp. 1140-1155 ◽

Cited By ~ 39

Author(s):

Vik Loveday

Keyword(s):

Higher Education ◽

Social Class ◽

Working Class ◽

Lived Experience ◽

Empirical Research ◽

Class Analysis ◽

Working Classes ◽

And Gender

Based on empirical research with participants from working-class backgrounds studying and working in higher education in England, this article examines the lived experience of shame. Building on a feminist Bourdieusian approach to social class analysis, the article contends that ‘struggles for value’ within the field of higher education precipitate classed judgements, which have the potential to generate shame. Through an examination of the ‘affective practice’ of judgement, the article explores the contingencies that precipitate shame and the embodiment of deficiency. The article links the classed and gendered dimensions of shame with valuation, arguing that the fundamental relationality of social class and gender is not only generative of shame, but that shame helps in turn to structure both working-class experience and a view of the working classes as ‘deficient’.

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