I'm a slave man for sure: incarcerated teens' restoried narratives of resistance

PurposeThe purpose of this study was to challenge the “single story” narrative the authors utilize counterstorytelling as an analytic tool to reveal the paradox of exploring human rights with incarcerated BIPOC teens whose rights within the justice system are frequently ignored. Shared through their writing, drawing and discussions, the authors demonstrate how they wrote themselves into narratives that often sought to exclude them.Design/methodology/approachThis paper centers on the interpretations of Universal Human Rights by Black adolescents involved in the juvenile justice system in the Southeastern region of the United States. Critical ethnography was selected as we see literacy as a socially situated and collaborative practice. Additionally, the authors draw from recent work on the humanization of qualitative methods, especially when engaging with historically oppressed populations. Data were analyzed using a bricolage approach and the framework of counterstorytelling to weave together the teens' narratives and experiences.FindingsIn using the analytic tool of counterstories, the authors look at ways in which the stories of colonially underserved BIPOC youth might act as a form of resistance. Similarly to the ways that those historically enslaved in the United States used narratives, folklore, “black-preacher tales” and fostered storytelling skills to resist the dominant narrative and redirects the storylines from damage to desire-centered. Central then to our findings is the notion of how to engage in the work of dismantling the inequitable system that even well-intentioned educators contribute to due to systemic racism.Research limitations/implicationsThe research presented here is significant as it attempts to add to the growing body of research on creating spaces of resistance and justice for incarcerated youth. The authors seek to disrupt the “single story” often attributed to adolescents in the juvenile justice system by providing spaces for them to provide a counternarrative – one that is informed by and seeks to inform human rights education.Practical implicationsAs researchers, the authors struggle with aspects related to authenticity, identity and agency for these participants. By situating them as “co-researchers” and by inviting them to decide where the research goes next, the authors capitalize on the expertise, ingenuity and experiences' of participants as colleagues in order to locate the pockets of hope that reside in research that attempts to be liberatory and impact the children on the juvenile justice system.Social implicationsThis study emphasizes the importance of engaging in research that privileges the voices of the participants in research that shifts from damage to desire-centered. The authors consider what it may look like to re-situate qualitative research in service to those we study, to read not only their words but the worlds that inform them, to move toward liberatory research practice.Originality/valueThis study provides an example of how the use of counterstorytelling may offer a more complex and nuanced way for incarcerated youth to resist the stereotypes and single-story narratives often assigned to their experiences.

Unique Lassoing Scene from the Mastaba of Akhmerutnisut at Giza (G 2184)

This article analyzes a unique scene from the Giza mastaba of Akhmerutnisut (G 2184), which shows a life-size depiction of the tomb owner holding a rope, ready to throw a lasso. The active participation of the tomb owner in a lassoing scene is unique in the iconographic program of Fifth Dynasty elite tombs. The location of this scene within the mastaba is also unparalleled: it is the first scene on the right (west side) encountered by visitors as they enter the mastaba. To understand this innovative decorative choice, this paper starts by discussing the iconography of lassoing in the Old Kingdom and its meaning in the elite tombs of the same period. The second part of this paper analyzes Akhmerutnisut’s lassoing scene with an analytical framework drawn from visual and material culture studies and focusing on the concepts of monumentality, identity and agency. This study provides a number of possible explanations—none of which are mutually exclusive—to understand why Akhmerutnisut had himself depicted as a monumental lassoer by the entrance of his funerary complex, highlighting the importance of visitor experience and participation in the design of the funerary complexes of the Old Kingdom elite.

Identity and Agency in Informal Science Education Through the Lens of Equity and Social Justice

Learning and becoming are understood as emergent from participation in practices at the intersection of formal and informal science education. What learners value, engage in, and transform is understood as entangled with who they have been, think they are, and yet aim to become, calling for an intersectional lens to any analysis of learning and identity in science. Who one is and can become in science, given recognition by others as a science person, is political and a product of intersecting patterns of racism and sexism, to name two key dimensions, which are not additive but instead form a symbiotic relationship. Intersectionality foregrounds the structural, political, and representational of an oppressive system at work and is a lens essential to an equity- and social justice–driven conceptualization of science education at the intersection of formal and informal educational venues. Critical transdisciplinarity facilitates the unpacking of what science is and what kind of science a science person engages in, and it can move studies beyond paralyzing ideologies and meritocracies that undermine full participation in science by youth of color, for instance. Engagement with intersectionality, critical transdisciplinarity, and the political can make rightful presence a shared goal to work toward among science educators and researchers, a much-needed commitment in the informal science education field. Community-based educational spaces (CBES) challenge deficit discourses of youth and, instead, aim to build on youths’ funds of knowledge and identities through empowering practices. Identity work is approached through a grounding in practice theory, which calls for a focus on the figuring of worlds, lives, and identities. Becoming somebody in science is presented as a creative act by youth, who challenge what science is and who can become somebody in science. Actions by youth can make evident desirable identities that result in the “thickening” of their affinities with science, a process also charged by emotions. That is, intersectionality can be experienced as emotionally taxing, while agency and transformation by youth may result in positive emotions. A mobile view of learning and identity in science, captured by the notion of wayfinding, calls to attention hybridity, intersectionality, and critical transdisciplinarity. That grounding can move the study of learning and becoming in science beyond a binary vision of formal and informal science education while also making it political. A deeper commitment and engagement with social justice work in studies of learning and identity in CBES, a process well captured by the notion of rightful presence, could become a common goal to work toward in the vast field of science education, both formal and informal.

Suburban/Absurd: Subjects of Anxiety in the Fiction of John Cheever and Richard Ford.

<p>One aspect of the common ground between the work of Richard Ford and John Cheever is their careful depiction of domestic life. It was this attention to the middle class suburbs of America that led some of Cheever's contemporary critics to dismiss his work, seeing his subject matter as inappropriate to serious critical enquiry. By altering the terms on which Cheever's work is approached, and reading Cheever's and Ford's suburban fiction in light of some of the tenets of existentialism, post-structuralism, and neo-pragmatism, it is possible to affirm their works as central to contemporary concerns surrounding subjectivity, identity, and agency.</p>

Suburban/Absurd: Subjects of Anxiety in the Fiction of John Cheever and Richard Ford.

<p>One aspect of the common ground between the work of Richard Ford and John Cheever is their careful depiction of domestic life. It was this attention to the middle class suburbs of America that led some of Cheever's contemporary critics to dismiss his work, seeing his subject matter as inappropriate to serious critical enquiry. By altering the terms on which Cheever's work is approached, and reading Cheever's and Ford's suburban fiction in light of some of the tenets of existentialism, post-structuralism, and neo-pragmatism, it is possible to affirm their works as central to contemporary concerns surrounding subjectivity, identity, and agency.</p>

Transcending the Past: Singing and the Lingering Cold War in the Korean Christian Diaspora

Protestant music in South Korea has received little attention in ethnomusicology despite the fact that Protestant Christianity was one of the most popular religions in twentieth-century Korea. This has meant a missed opportunity to consider the musical impact of a religious institution that mediated translocal experiences between South Korea and the United States during the Cold War period (1950s–1980s). This article explores the politics of music style in South Korean diasporic churches through an ethnography of a church choir in California. I document these singers’ preference for European-style choral music over neotraditional pieces that incorporate the aesthetics of suffering from certain Korean traditional genres. I argue that their musical judgement must be understood in the context of their lived and remembered experience of power inequalities between the United States and South Korea. Based on my interviews with the singers, I show that they understand hymns and related Euro-American genres as healing practices that helped them overcome a difficult past and hear traditional vocal music as sonic icons of Korea's sad past. The article outlines a pervasive South Korean/Korean diasporic historical consciousness that challenges easy conceptions of identity and agency in music studies.

Decolonising globalised curriculum landscapes: The identity and agency of academics

This article explores how academics in a higher education institution (HEI) make sense of the challenges that they encounter in a neoliberal context typified by an increasingly globalised curriculum landscape. Two key questions are explored: What are the contours of the shifting boundaries which define the ‘global curriculum’ in HEI contexts? How do academics navigate and make sense of this fluidity in an uncertain and disputed landscape? Using reflections on practice emanating from the redesign of educational courses to respond to a rapidly changing student cohort, this inquiry takes an auto-ethnographic approach, offering the perspectives of five academic staff from a UK-based HEI through the lens of their lived experiences, and acknowledging the emerging shifts in identities that they experience and the need to confront tensions in this curriculum space. We conclude that our own scrutiny of, and critical reflections on, our identity and positionality as teachers and education practitioners represent a form of decoloniality, enabling us to find ways to share what we know without excluding knowledge outside it and to welcome contributions and possibilities beyond our own experiences. In terms of how we should act, we recognise that it must be through a dialectic that does not seek cultural supremacy or sovereignty.