2647 Race and Pedagogy Project - Research Archive » Race and the Academic Institution

Race and the Academic Institution

January 10, 2006

Connolly, Mark R. “What’s in a Name? A Historical Look at Native American-Related Nicknames and Symbols at Three U.S. Universities.” The Journal of Higher Education. 71.5 (2000), 515-547.

January 10th 2006 Posted to Native American, The Academy

In this article Connolly examines the arguments surrounding the use of Native American-Related nicknames and mascots at three U.S. Universities: The University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (the “Fighting Illini”), Miami University in Ohio (the “Redskins”) and Eastern Michigan University (the “Hurons”). After reviewing the history behind these nicknames and examining the controversies surrounding them, Connoly concludes that the attitudes many universities adopt towards Native American nicknames reflects a kind of institutional racism that must be dealt with not just by changing the university’s mascot but by implementing fundamental changes in school policy and attitudes. (Read the article)

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January 4, 2006

West, Cornel. “The New Cultural Politics of Difference.” Race, Identity and Representation in Education. Ed. Cameron McCarthy and Warren Crichlow. New York: Routledge, 1993.

January 04th 2006 Posted to Race and the Academic Institution, Race, Gender and Sexuality, Race and Globalization, African American, The Academy

In this article West announces the emergence of a new kind of cultural politics, marking “a significant shift in the sensibilities and outlooks of critics and artists” (11). West argues that previous forms of criticism can no longer account for the ethnic, gender and sexual diversity of late twentieth-century society. The new cultural politics that West promotes seeks to “trash the monolithic and homogeneous in the name of diversity, multiplicity, and heterogeneity; to reject the abstract, general, and universal in the light of the concrete, specific, and particular; to historicize, contextualize, and pluralize by highlighting the contingent, provisional, variable, tentative, shifting and changing” (11). The new cultural critic, West argues, must work to form alliances with disempowered or disenfranchised groups to enable social action and must learn to critique their immediate work contexts (the academy, museum or gallery) from within (11-12). (Read the article)

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November 17, 2005

Williams, Patricia J. “On Being the Object of Property (a gift of intelligent rage).” The Alchemy of Race and Rights. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1991. 216-236.

November 17th 2005 Posted to Race and the Academic Institution, Critical Race Theory and Pedagogy, Race, Gender and Sexuality, Pedagogy and Mixed Race, African American, Court & Policy Issues

Utilizing a combination of feminist personal narrative and legal discourse, Williams analyzes how contract law and the legal institution exercise a “deadening power” by creating in the individual “a passive relationship to the document: it is the contract that governs, that ‘does’ everything, that absorbs all responsibility and deflects all other recourse.” (224) She explores in particular how this quality of contract negatively affects those who have been institutionally (and thus legally) formulated as inferior: people of color and women. (Read the article)

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November 14, 2005

Suleri, Sara. “Women Skin Deep: Feminism and the Postcolonial Condition.” Women, Autobiography, Theory: A Reader. Ed. Sidonie Smith and Julia Watson. Madison: U of Wisconsin P, 1998. 116-125.

November 14th 2005 Posted to Race and the Academic Institution, Race, Gender and Sexuality, Race and Globalization, The Academy

In the context of the culture wars of the mid-1990s, Suleri calls for a reassessment of the terms under which we study gender and race, particularly as it is manifested in the discourse of postcolonial feminism. While Suleri is highly critical and ultimately dismissive of the popular contention that the academy is ceding itself solely to the issues of marginalized groups in the name of “political correctness,” she argues that it is necessary for academics to critique the very discourses under attack from the media. (Read the article)

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November 3, 2005

Giroux, Henry A. “Insurgent Multiculturalism and the Promise of Pedagogy,” Multiculturalism: A Critical Reader. Ed. David Theo Goldberg. Cambridge, MA: Blackwell, 1994, 325-343.

November 03rd 2005 Posted to Critical Race Theory and Pedagogy, The Academy

In this article Giroux argues that both conservative and liberal forms of multiculturalism do not go far enough to expose white racism and promote social justice. Whether in the classroom, the corporation or in the political arena, multicultural discourse tends to essentialize minority cultures and ignore underlying power structures. Giroux proposes a form of “insurgent multiculturalism” that would “strip white supremacy of its legitimacy and authority” (326). According to Giroux, schools and institutions of higher learning should use this “insurgent” version of multiculturalism as a “tool for critical understanding and the pluralizing of differences; it must also be used as an ethical and political referent which allows teachers and students to understand how power works in the interest of dominant social relations, and how such relations can be challenged and transformed” (337). (Read the article)

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September 20, 2005

Sleeter, Christine E. “How White Teachers Construct Race,” Race, Identity and Representation in Education. Cameron McCarthy and Warren Crichlow, Eds. New York: Routledge, 1993, 157-171.

September 20th 2005 Posted to Race, Class and Pedagogy, Public School Initiatives, Whiteness Studies

In this article Sleeter assesses the strengths and weaknesses of multicultural teacher education programs. She begins by noting that the teaching population in the U.S. is becoming increasingly white, even as the student population grows increasingly diverse. Sleeter argues that while multicultural teacher education is somewhat effective at raising white teachers’ awareness of racial issues, the only way to reverse institutional racism is to draw more teachers of color into the teaching profession. (Read the article)

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September 19, 2005

Bourdieu, Pierre and Jean-Claude Passeron. Reproduction in Education, Society and Culture. 1970. Trans. Richard Nice. London: Sage Publications, 1990.

September 19th 2005 Posted to Race, Class and Pedagogy, The Academy

In this, one of his most influential books, Bourdieu describes how systems of education reproduce the cultural dominance of the ruling class. Drawing on the theories of Marx, Weber and Durkheim, Bourdieu points to the examination, academic language and certification as ways of concealing the class inequality inherent in the School as an institution. While the first half of his book is primarily theoretical, the second half draws on research conducted in French schools and universities. (Read the article)

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Race, critical pedagogy, literacy/composition studies, and higher education bibliography

September 19th 2005 Posted to Race, Literacy and Pedagogy, Race and the Academic Institution, Race, Class and Pedagogy, The Academy

This bibliography, a selection of texts appropriate to this category but which have yet to be abstracted for the site, is a work constantly in progress and should be considered partial. Suggested additions are not only welcomed, but solicited. The title of the bibliography intentionally addresses multiple categories on the RPP site since these three categories are so closely linked. Some of these texts will inevitably cross over into additional categories as well. As titles are abstracted and posted as a separate entry on the RPP site, they will be removed from this list. (Read the article)

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hooks, bell. Teaching to Transgress: Education as the Practice of Freedom. New York: Routledge, 1994.

September 19th 2005 Posted to Race, Literacy and Pedagogy, Race and the Academic Institution, Race, Gender and Sexuality, The Pleasures of Teaching Race, Race, Class and Pedagogy, African American, The Academy

In this indispensable and highly influential book, bell hooks (the writing persona of Gloria Watson) writes essays in the varying forms of feminist personal narratives and/or dialogues, based on her experience as a black woman (both student and teacher) in an educational system dominated by a white male ethos. The essays all strive to break down that structure of domination. “Multilayered, then, these essays are meant to stand as testimony, bearing witness to education as the act of freedom.” (11)

Hooks’ work is informed by both feminist pedagogies and the Marxist critical pedagogy of Paulo Freire (see his Pedagogy of the Oppressed, abstracted on this site). In the introduction hooks discusses where these pedagogies took her and also the point at which she believes they failed. They lent her the tools to eschew the submission to authority and rote memorization occurring in what Freire calls the “banking system of education” and to practice in their place critical thinking and a democratic classroom engagement with the object of knowledge. But hooks suggests that even these critical systems fail to acknowledge the radical value of the pleasure of learning, particularly in higher education. (Read the article)

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Yarbro-Bejarano, Yvonne. “Expanding the Categories of Race and Sexuality in Lesbian and Gay Studies.” Professions of Desire: Lesbian and Gay Studies in Literature. Ed. George E. Haggerty and Bonnie Zimmerman. New York: MLA, 1995. 124-35.

September 19th 2005 Posted to Race, Gender and Sexuality, The Academy

Yarbro-Bejarano writes about the continuing marginalization of lesbian and gay issues within American ethnic studies, and notes that the underlying problem is the way in which categorical areas of study “focus on one issue, whether it be gender, race, class, or sexuality, as if it existed separately from the others” (127). Instead of employing a strategy such as “inclusion,” Yarbro-Bejarano suggests “a relational theory of difference that examines identity formation in the dynamic interpenetration of gender, race, sexuality, class, and nation” (128). (Read the article)

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