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Washington State University
College of Education

cultural studies

Research Conversations: Johnny Lupinacci

Scholar-Activism: Research as Praxis in Support of Democracy in Dangerous Times

Description: In this presentation, Lupinacci asserts that all research is political. Given the global challenges for social and environmental justice educators and researchers, he will discuss the importance of scholar-activism in education research in relationship to diversity, creative democracy, and sustainability. He draws from an ecocritical framework in education influenced by anarchism, ecofeminisms, critical animal studies, and abolitionist teaching. He emphasizes the need for scholar-activist research and teaching to expose human supremacy’s connection with hierarchized rationalization and justification of racism, sexism, ableism, and classism as cultural rather than given by nature. The stakes are high, and the capacity of the planet for sustaining life with respect to cultural and biological diversity depends upon future generations learning to live creatively, democratically, and at peace with diverse ecosystems. Offering more than just a critique of anthropocentrism and a discussion to better understand scholar-activism and research as radical praxis, Dr. Lupinacci will invite participants to discuss these very real threats and dangers, as well as the need for rigorous, thoughtful, respectful scholar-activism in solidarity with a myriad of ways folkx build communities. Together we can recognize, resist, and reconstitute education to include our more-than-human cohabitants and creatively reclaim democracies in favor of multispecies inclusion, equity, and justice.

 

Join Zoom Meeting from PC, Mac, Linux, iOS, or Android: https://wsu.zoom.us/j/97538024178?pwd=eGhPMXpESUpaZWFYaGFnNnF3Q09TZz09&from=addon
Meeting ID: 975 3802 4178
Passcode: 914400

A handful of times each semester, we give some time to a faculty to share their research with the rest of us. These one-hour (max!) sessions are always very compelling.

Guest Presentation — Amir Gilmore

Sustaining the Joys of Black Boys and Young Men in a World Against “The Black”
Wednesday, Feb. 3 | 6:00 p.m. | via Zoom
https://wsu.zoom.us/j/96820128880?pwd=U0NzODZQaHJWYmd1TkdGSWhPZllRZz09

What does it mean to be against The Black? The question serves as a reminder that Black people—in particular Black boys and young men struggle to exist as humans within a world where there is such a disdain with Blackness. In the wake of school surveillance, mass criminalization, and gratuitous state-sanctioned and anti-Black vigilante violence levied against Black boys and young men’s minds, bodies, and souls, I think about how precarious their joy is and its importance to their future. When so many people struggle to love Blackness, how do Black boys and young men find ways to cultivate and sustain their mattering, well-being, futurity, and joy? Black Boy Joy is a spiritual Life Force and a liberatory emotional expression that satisfies Black boys and young men’s desires through the desired-based refusal of anti-Black terms, codes, rules, and laws that subjugate them. Within these disavowals, Black boys and young men create spaces of affirmation where they are felt, heard, seen, and matter. Thus, Black Boy Joy desires to dismantle a world where denigrating Blackness is appropriate and creates territories where Black boys and young men can flourish in their humanity, beauty, and brilliance—immediately.

 

https://wsu.zoom.us/j/96820128880?pwd=U0NzODZQaHJWYmd1TkdGSWhPZllRZz09

Diversity in the classrooms

By Paula Groves Price, Associate Dean for Diversity and International Programs

This fall has been an exciting semester for elementary education. It included our WSU students visiting classrooms in Pullman Schools, grades 1-4, and teaching lessons on tribal sovereignty, and integrated critical social justice issues in language arts and mathematics lessons. This helped realize part of my dream of giving our pre-service teachers more practical experience in multicultural lesson planning and culturally-responsive teaching.

Here’s a video we put together about our students working at Jefferson Elementary School in Pullman:

While many teacher education programs across the country require a course on diversity or multiculturalism, most do not provide opportunities for teacher candidates to put theory into practice and engage with children on many of the tough equity issues that we face as a society. The reality is that children in America’s schools need and want to have these dialogues, and they deserve to have teachers that are equipped with the knowledge and skills to facilitate lessons and conversations about difference and equity.

When novice teachers can take risks and gain experience facilitating dialogue with children on issues of race, class, gender, and justice, they are more likely enter into the teaching profession with the confidence to teach multi-culturally and from culturally-responsive frameworks. For the youth in our schools, these lessons provide opportunities to think critically, engage in conversations around difference, and recognize their power to make their school and society more equitable and just.

As a parent with a young African American child in the Pullman Schools, it excites me to see her enthusiasm for having WSU students and multi-cultural books and lesson brought into her classroom. Perhaps the greatest outcome, however, is the significant lessening of the micro-aggressions that she and many students of color experience in school. As young children learn more explicitly about diversity, they also become more committed to ensuring that their school and class are inclusive.

Schools across the country, and in the State of Washington are becoming increasingly diverse, both culturally and linguistically, but the teaching profession is not diversifying at the same rate. Part of my mission is to ensure that teachers who graduate from WSU have a strong sense of understanding of what it means to be a culturally-responsive educator, and put those ideas and lessons into practice. When teachers understand multiculturalism as simply “good teaching,” it can then be implemented with all of the state and national standards that are required of them, and not as an “add on” to be done when time permits. Their approach to teaching, developing lessons, and creating community in their classrooms is one that facilitates greater justice. Their experiences in the program with the Pullman Schools are just the beginning. I know that my child, and many children across the state, are counting on them to continue to teach multiculturally.