Sappho, Hegel and Michael Field: Paradox and desire in lyric III

This article offers a close reading of Katharine Bradley and Edith Cooper’s lyric III in Long Ago, a Sapphic volume of verse published in 1889 under the collaborative nom de plume of Michael Field. This collection articulates a dramatic inquiry into the tragedy of unrequited love in a long cycle of lyrics whose third piece most effectively encapsulates the kernel of what the Fields reconstruct as Sappho’s ambivalent eroticism. The outcome of this reconstruction, as analysed in light of lyric III, is a consistent Hegelian view of desire that subsumes a complex system of tropes, myths, paradoxes and imaginative strategies under an overarching ideology of desire as a radical experience of appropriation, violence and self-destruction.

Creating space for interactive dialogue during preschool circle time using play-based pedagogies and dramatic inquiry

In this study, we examined how preschool students with language delays engaged in interactive dialogue during regular circle time and dramatic inquiry activities. Using frequency recording of three preschool students’ linguistic engagement and multimodal analysis of classroom video data, this article explores how these students produced social, instructional, and academic language as well as multimodal actions to engage in interactive dialogue with their teachers and peers. Overall, students exhibited higher levels of linguistic engagement during traditional instruction; however, multimodal analysis revealed the ways students engaged in interactive dialogue during dramatic inquiry was far more complex. We conclude that dramatic inquiry created opportunities for students to learn and produce academic language and corresponding multimodal actions while regular instruction provided students opportunities to practice social and instructional language. Our analysis demonstrates the complexities of how preschoolers with language delays use different forms of verbal and non-verbal language to share their personal experiences and content knowledge with others. In all, this study emphasizes the importance of considering both quantitative and qualitative data when trying to understand how preschoolers engage in interactive dialogue in the classroom.

“I’m trying to save some lives here!”

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to illustrate the plans for and implementation of critical dramatic inquiry with middle school youth. The authors also provide a theoretical frame for understanding dramatic inquiry as an embodied, persuasive and reflexive practice that can inform and transform the ways youth and their teachers experience their own and others’ worlds. Throughout, the authors argue for the centrality of imagination in youth literacies and critical inquiry. Design/methodology/approach Working with Stetsenko’s (2008) concepts of contribution and agency, the authors considered the different ways youth “found [their] place among other people and ultimately, [found] a way to contribute to the continuous flow of sociocultural practices” (p. 17). Further, the authors considered Stetsenko’s (2012) reference to moral philosophy and the idea that “humans are understood as being connected with the world precisely through their own acts – through what has been termed “engaged agency” in moral philosophy (Taylor, 1995, p. 7)”. The authors read and annotated documents, noting key moments in the videos where youth collaborated in “finding a place among other people” and became “connected with the world […] through their own acts”. Findings The authors identified three ways dramatic inquiry orients youth in time-space, offering addresses and possibilities for answerability that direct their actions toward critical, ethical questions: creating a life through embodied positioning, reflecting on action through transformation of representations and establishing a direction for one’s own becoming through persuasion and answerability. These three modes of contributing to a dramatic inquiry extend current research and thought about drama by pointing to specific contributions to and purposes for action in drama experiences. Research limitations/implications This work represents a single two-session workshop of teacher research with middle school youth engaged in dramatic inquiry, and is, therefore, the beginning of a conceptual framework for understanding dramatic inquiry as critical sociocultural practice. As such, this work will need to be developed with the aim of extending the dramatic inquiry work across several days or weeks, to trace youth insights and subsequent actions. Practical implications Critical literacy educators who want to implement dramatic inquiry will find clear descriptions of practices and an analytic framework that supports planning for and reflection on social change arts-based experiences with youth. Social implications The authors argue that educators who aim to support youth actions, in relation to multiple viewpoints and possible futures, need to pose imagined and dramatized addresses to which youth can imagine and embody possibilities and express possible answers (Bakhtin). Based on Stetsenko’s transformative activist stance, the authors argue that drama-based experiences disrupt the everyday so youth may collectively explore and contribute to an emerging vision of equity and belonging. Originality/value Few studies have engaged Stetsenko’s transformative activist stance as a way to understand learning, social change and the role of imagination. This study describes and explores a unique instantiation of process drama informed by critical sociocultural theory.

Finding Big Gay Church: An Academic Congregation Exploring LGBTQ Intersections with Religion, Art, and Education

Using the metaphor of mapping as an overarching metaphor, this article presents an amalgamated version of the first five years of Big Gay Church, an annual session at the National Art Education Association’s convention since 2009. Big Gay Church is a collaborative small group of queer art educators and allies coming together to explore the intersections of religion, education, the arts, culture, and LGBTQ identities. By using tools and constructs from dramatic inquiry and other performance pedagogies, as well as inviting attendees to fully participate as members of the congregation, we transform this conference session into an opportunity for scholarship, action, connection, and fellowship. Such arts-based academic interventions can provoke a re-imagining of ways forward, together, in education and research.