Hey all,

Please check out this performance during a slang poetry reading. I think she touches on important ideas of identity, privilege, and inequity that we discussed.

I used it in my ESL classes and students of all ages feel inspired. Just wanted to share along.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=paM03zurPQw

These pictures remind me of our last class' discussion on Gutierrez and Rogoff' critique that treating cultural differences as individual traits works as a form of cultural reductionism....

Check out this link to picts:

http://www.slate.com/blogs/behold/2012/11/28/julian_germain_photographs_of_classroom_portraits_around_the_world.html

Hello everybody,

hope you all had a nice break. I am sitting here in my cold room being all warmed up by rhizomes and desiring machines. Really, I am thinking about the ways I can operationalize Tuck's framework of desire in PAR work within the immigrant community. I am also much eager to engage with the community in ways that they are primarely the ones "holding the power to make changes".

If you are interested in digging some more into Tuck's theorazing about change and community action, I recommend you check her excellent reading/call for community activism and protagonism: "Suspending Damage: A Letter to Communities".


The following is the abstract:

"In this open letter, Eve Tuck calls on communities, researchers, and educators to reconsider the long-term impact of “damage-centered” research—research that intends to document peoples’ pain and brokenness to hold those in power accountable for their oppression. This kind of research operates with a flawed theory of change: it is often used to leverage reparations or resources for marginalized communities yet simultane- ously reinforces and reinscribes a one-dimensional notion of these people as depleted, ruined, and hopeless. Tuck urges communities to institute a moratorium on damage- centered research to reformulate the ways research is framed and conducted and to reimagine how findings might be used by, for, and with communities."

Hello,

In case you are interested, I thought I'd share with some a couple of photovoice images from a PAR project with Latina mothers. These are amongst others prompted important discussions.

Be well

Danger of the single story

Hello Everyone,

In our class on November 7th, we will be discussing closely the ideas about complications and hauntings that Avery Gordon writes about in the opening chapter to Ghostly Matters. We will also collectively view this video, which focuses on the danger of the single story - a realized danger in much of social science. Our task: how to avoid telling single, simple stories that obscure the complexity of individuals, spaces, institutions, and society.

Interesting Post on Affirmative Action

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/04/education/edlife/affirmative-action-a-complicated-issue-for-asian-americans.html?hp

Ojibwe: Language and meaning

Full radio show for the excerpt we listened to in class on October 17, 2012