This paper aims to demonstrate how Alayah, a 16-year-old African American girl, leverages multiple expressive modes for intersectional self-representation as speculative design…
Abstract
Purpose
This paper aims to demonstrate how Alayah, a 16-year-old African American girl, leverages multiple expressive modes for intersectional self-representation as speculative design. Here, speculative design refers to a multimodal composition (i.e. digital collage) which leverages multiple expressive modes for intersectional self-celebration in possible futures.
Design/methodology/approach
Informed by intersectional multimodal literacy frameworks and analyses, this paper addresses the question, “How does Alayah represent her college and career futures in her speculative multimodal design? To address this question, the author analyzed Alayah's digital collage using an intersectional multimodal analysis template complemented by a thematic analysis of her interview data and the narrated explanation of her collage.
Findings
In a speculative design composed of 15 images and words, Alayah agentively determined and critically celebrated her intersectional college and career futures through four interrelated themes: Black girl affirmation; Collegiate success; “Sweet” work; and Black livingness.
Originality/value
By centering Black girls’ speculative multimodal designs in college and career curricula, ELA educators (re)imagine college and career pedagogies to critically celebrate Black adolescent girls as intelligent, empowered and literate young women worthy of the futures that they desire.
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Slavery was originally practised in West Africa as a means of integrating into society individuals who had been cut off from their families after an inter-tribal war or some form…
Abstract
Slavery was originally practised in West Africa as a means of integrating into society individuals who had been cut off from their families after an inter-tribal war or some form of natural calamity. The entire dynamics changed drastically when the Portuguese and Arabian traders went to West Africa. Because of the need for cheap labor supply in their home lands, these foreign traders switched to trading in slaves by exchanging their Mediterranean or Asian goods for West African slaves. Between 1441 and the middle of the 19th century, the expanding slave trade became the Black African's only link with Europe and America especially, the Americas where cheap supply of human labor was needed on the cotton and sugar cane plantations. Before the Missionaries arrived on the West African Coast, the natives practised traditional African or Islamic religions. With the slave traders came the Christian Missionaries who, prior to the exportation of slaves, preached to them, converted them, baptized them and gave them biblical names. The slaves left their home land of West Africa with clouds of spiritual confusion on their minds and coupled with these was their inability to worship freely in the New World.While most or all the original slaves lived and died uneducated, enslaved, and emotionally traumatized, their children, grand children and great grand children after them enjoyed freedom to worship the way they wanted, attended schools and became literate. They moved as freely as they wanted, and raised their own families with as much unrestrained freedom as they dreamed of, However, the psychological and spiritual bruises on their psyche left them perpetually traumatized to the extent that most of them forgot their West African origin, custom, culture, and their traditional African religious belief systems.Today, however, descendants of former West African slaves who live in the Diaspora appear to be more privileged than their West African brethren. This paper traces the brief history of slavery from its unsavory beginning in the 14th century, to the period of its final abolition in the United States in 1865. The majestic roles of representative samples of the liberated Africans of the Diaspora are presented, the ongoing problems plaguing West African countries are highlighted, and specific intervention programs to correct for the ills of the past brought about by the slave traders and the Western Christian Missionaries are discussed. It is concluded that while the Missionaries might have had good intention, the end result did not justify the means; converted West African slaves were bruised emotionally and spiritually than they were blessed. This paper highlights series of the appropriate reparations that should be paid to measurably alleviate the centuries old posttraumatic stress syndrome and spiritual confusion suffered by the original slaves and their descendants.
Danelle Adeniji and Marquita Foster
The purpose of this study is to describe the authors’ experiences as Black feminist graduate assistants assigned to teach diversity courses led by white professors.
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this study is to describe the authors’ experiences as Black feminist graduate assistants assigned to teach diversity courses led by white professors.
Design/methodology/approach
The authors draw from Black feminist approach to provide authentic, liberatory anti-racist pedagogy, ensuring that the identities and cultural knowledge of Black, indigenous and people of color (BIPOC) pre-service teachers (PSTs) are given space in anti-racist education and social studies courses.
Findings
The study’s findings show that creating systems for (re)constructing performative anti-racist courses disrupt whiteness and whitewashed pedagogy in teacher preparation programs.
Originality/value
The implications of the authors’ experiences reflect that centering abolitionist teaching methods can bolster BIPOC PSTs anti-racist identities and future practices in diverse classrooms.
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Jordan Bell, Lorenz S. Neuwirth, Keisha Goode, Justin Coles, Esther Ohito and Willie Morris
The key concepts to be explored in this article include the blurring boundary between “indie” and “pop”; the significance of digital media in contemporary music industry and the…
Abstract
Purpose
The key concepts to be explored in this article include the blurring boundary between “indie” and “pop”; the significance of digital media in contemporary music industry and the distinctive socio-political nature of indie music in Hong Kong. To a large extent, it discusses the social functions of music – a subject discussed by Simon Frith (2007), a leading scholar in popular music studies.
Design/methodology/approach
In order to expound on some observations of the connections between music cultures and socio-political development in Hong Kong, a selection of musical works by indie musicians will be looked into closely.
Findings
A focus of discussion will be given to the difference between mainstream Cantopop and indie music in a way that the latter mentions socio-political matters overtly while the former downplays sensitive political issues, particularly in the post-colonial era after the handover of Hong Kong to mainland China in 1997.
Originality/value
Originality of research can be evidenced by the author's textual analysis of the musical styles and lyrics produced by various local indie artists' musical works through primary sources.
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Leodones Yballe and Dennis O’Connor
The time is ripe for a pedagogy of appreciation. This chapter is a cross pollination of the positive philosophies and visions of educators such as Dewey, Freire, Kolb, and Handy…
Abstract
The time is ripe for a pedagogy of appreciation. This chapter is a cross pollination of the positive philosophies and visions of educators such as Dewey, Freire, Kolb, and Handy with the vibrant and emerging organizational change ideas and processes of Appreciative Inquiry. This pedagogical stance is values driven and embraces the relevance of personal experience. There is a distinct bias towards success and positive change through supportive relationships and dialogue in the creation of knowledge. This chapter details step-by-step classroom applications that follow the 4-D model (Discover, Dream, Design, Destiny) and extend the experiential learning cycle. For the student, these applications have led to more energized and sustained interactions, an increase in positive attitudes towards other students and the professor, more relevant and personally meaningful concepts, and a fuller and more hopeful view of the future. For the professor, a deeper engagement with the students and their stories leads to a stronger connection with the values, concepts and models of the course. The chapter concludes by identifying some challenges in applying and extending an appreciative approach to educational systems as a whole.
Revolutionary thinker and Civil Rights leader, Ella Baker, once declared, “Strong people don’t need strong leaders.” Baker’s statement epitomizes her philosophy that the wisdom…
Abstract
Revolutionary thinker and Civil Rights leader, Ella Baker, once declared, “Strong people don’t need strong leaders.” Baker’s statement epitomizes her philosophy that the wisdom needed to fight against hegemony emerges from the brilliance of the people stuck at the bottom of oppressive systems. Standing in stark contrast to the charismatic leadership philosophy of many in the nation, Baker’s model encourages disenfranchised youth and elders to lead themselves into the struggle to bring down America’s apartheid system of governing. Yet grassroots governing is complex and constantly evolving. But it leaves no space for static hierarchal iterations of leadership, an epistemology that pervades and corrodes the nation.
Growing up in this nation’s segregated south, I have struggled to understand the impact of racism on school leaders, faculty, students, and parents. Thus, my chapter will use institutionalized racism as the lens to examine the toxic environment that school leaders, and, ultimately, all leaders face because of the country’s chosen amnesia of its bloody history, a history that still impacts current public policy. Within that context I will also offer alternative ways to lead, especially that modeled by Civil Rights icon and president of the Algebra Project, Robert P. Moses.
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William F. Danaher and Trisha L. Crawshaw
We use framing theory to analyze songs and poetry from the US women’s movement. Specifically, we utilize frame amplification and transformation as concepts to answer the question…
Abstract
We use framing theory to analyze songs and poetry from the US women’s movement. Specifically, we utilize frame amplification and transformation as concepts to answer the question: did messages in songs and poetry from the women’s movement change as the movement achieved its original goal of suffrage? Furthermore, are there new organizational goals mentioned in musical artifacts from the second-wave feminist movement? And, if so, why? We find that songs became more radical in the second wave of the women’s movement. This shift reflects and reconstitutes the changing concerns of social movement activists. We demonstrate how frame amplification and transformation are important theoretical concepts in explaining the ideological shifts found in songs and poetry from the first- and second-wave women’s movement.
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Katarzyna Kosmala and John Francis McKernan
This conceptual paper aims to elucidate and explore the implications for critical accounting and management of some of the ethical dimensions of Foucault's thought, hitherto…
Abstract
Purpose
This conceptual paper aims to elucidate and explore the implications for critical accounting and management of some of the ethical dimensions of Foucault's thought, hitherto comparatively neglected by critical scholars.
Design/methodology/approach
Foucault's late works are read as offering a view of the cultivation of ethical agency through the work of the self on the self, through care of the self, which at least implicitly gives priority to care for the other. This notion of moral agency is situated in the context of the broad spectrum of Foucault's influence on critical accounting and management thought, and its significance for professional responsibility in the workplace is explored.
Findings
It was found that the accounting and management scholarship that has drawn on Foucault's work on care of the self tends to marginalize its ethical dimension, in particular by neglecting the role of openness to, and responsibility for, the other, in the processes of ethical self‐creation.
Originality/value
It is emphasised that in his later works Foucault puts responsiveness to difference and responsibility for the other at the centre of his ethical project of the self, and it is argued that this opening up of the moral dimension in his work has the potential to enrich the ways in which critical scholarship addresses issues such as professional agency and responsibility, identity politics, and governance in the workplace.
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For many years, science fiction has been perceived as “rayguns and rocket ships” boys' literature. Any number of impressionistic and statistical studies have identified the…
Abstract
For many years, science fiction has been perceived as “rayguns and rocket ships” boys' literature. Any number of impressionistic and statistical studies have identified the typical SF reader as male, between the ages of twelve and twenty and, in the case of adults, employed in some technical field. Yet I continually find myself having conversations with women, only to find that they, like myself, began reading science fiction between the ages of six and ten, have been reading it voraciously ever since, and were often frustrated at the absence of satisfying female characters and the presence of misogynistic elements in what they read. The stereotype of the male reader and the generally male SF environment mask both the increasing presence of women writers in the field of science fiction and the existence of a feminist dialog within some SF novels. This dialog had its beginnings in the mid‐sixties and is still going strong. It is the hope of the feminist SF community that this effacement can be counteracted.