Trained in Cultural Studies, my work learns from relational ethics, post-structural feminist thought, and critical pedagogy to examine the material, existential, and affective implications of anti-Black racism, white supremacist ideology, and the institutional normalization of state-sanctioned violence as historically-rooted logics that govern our everyday lives. I focus on how these violating forces are perpetually rendered "ordinary" and examine the ways they shape the intimate terrains of subjectivity and relationality. My hope is to better understand how individuals, collectives, and educational communities' come to know themselves as they/we are trained through an instruction and logic of what I conceptualize as "unremarkable violence." Supervisors: Noah de Lissovoy
An epistolary article commemorating bell hooks' legacy and impact in my life and work. Published ... more An epistolary article commemorating bell hooks' legacy and impact in my life and work. Published as part of a special issue honoring bell hooks.
As an inquiry into the way institutional responses to racist violence shape collective understand... more As an inquiry into the way institutional responses to racist violence shape collective understandings of violation and sustain precarious conditions that disproportionately impact people of color in schools, this project interrogates how white supremacist violence is discursively reproduced as an ordinary component of American schools and society. I develop the concept of unremarkable violence to discuss how response discourses fail to address the structural, historical, and ideological foundations of white supremacist logic, and thus render the ongoing reproduction of institutional violence and subjectification unremarkable. I further argue that the unremarkable violence of whiteness works to explain, sustain, and deny the realities of politically-induced vulnerability in the present. Grounding my theory in Black Feminist Thought, postmodern feminism, and intersubjective dialogue, I exercise Critical Discourse Analysis to examine primary sources released by political and educational leaders in response to two events of racist violence that impacted public schools: the May 2017 “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville, Virginia and the May 2020 murder of George Floyd by Minneapolis police officers. Examinations of the structural and political nature of response discourses revealed that while these events were rendered “remarkable” to the extent they conjured recognition, the process and nature of institutional response discourse reified whiteness as an unremarkable, yet powerful, mode of governing subjects and relationships in schools. I argue that whiteness and its essential violences are structurally remade and relegated into unremarkable, everyday conditions that fortify precarious conditions for people of color in schools. Finally, I consider dialogical possibilities in pursuit of more ethical relations, relations that require intrasubjective scrutiny by white teachers who choose to confront complicity within educational institutions. I theorize this ethical orientation towards radically undoing our intimate relationships with the violence of whiteness as a precursor to intersubjective solidarity in ongoing struggles for racial justice.
Through a Critical Whiteness Studies framework, this essay engages in an ideological critique of ... more Through a Critical Whiteness Studies framework, this essay engages in an ideological critique of white supremacy that conceptualizes sites of 20th century spectacle lynching as public pedagogy. After establishing historical sites of terror as teaching/learning moments, the author focuses on contemporary sites of violence—the modern classroom—and links educational structures, policies, and practices to violent legacies. Theorizing ideology within Althusserian and Žižekian frames, spectacle lynching is argued as a situation which crystallized understandings of racial dominance/violence that lay the foundation for modern educational contexts where racial violence is persistently mishandled. Theorized as a “collective turning,” legacies of violence are examined within contemporary educative situations, and readers are asked to recognize white supremacy and avoidance as active forces our contemporary realities.
This article attends to the possibilities that emerged from pedagogical invitation to the more-th... more This article attends to the possibilities that emerged from pedagogical invitation to the more-than-human in a qualitative inquiry course. We focus on the situated ethical and (micro)political grapplings that emerged from paying attention to the more-than-human alongside asymmetrical human and more-than-human lifeworlds. Our orientation toward the ethical and (micro)political is enacted through visual, poetic, and narrative storytelling that attempts to make visible what emerged for the students’ research and their becomings as qualitative inquirers in relation with course pedagogies. Our storytelling enacts a feminist practice that “stays with the trouble” stirred up by decentering the human while remaining accountable to enduring systemic, colonial, racialized, and gendered presences. While the particular lines of flight enacted by the pedagogical invitations in the course differed for each student, they come together in underlining the mattering of pedagogical and inquiry-based attunements toward the more-than-human within unequal worlds.
This chapter is included in the edited publication Possibilities in Practice: Social Justice Teac... more This chapter is included in the edited publication Possibilities in Practice: Social Justice Teaching in the Disciplines (Ed. Summer Melody Pennell, Ashley S. Boyd, Hillary Parkhouse, Alison LaGarry, 2017) which can be accessed here: https://www.peterlang.com/view/product/79984?format=HC)
Chapter Description: Contemporary education, political, and social structures lend themselves ideologically and practically towards a project of dehumanization which valorizes difference, individual merit achieved through competition, and, therefore, isolation over common experience and community. Recognizing the socio-cultural and political powers of exclusion at work, this research inquires into a larger project of humanistic education; one which is dedicated to the cultivation of the human spirit, assumes dignity, honors difference, and encourages agency and transformation through relation with others. The following research was conducted in an urban middle school in central Texas through a Story Circle methodology. This approach to community building invites participants to engage with one another in focused dialogue and critical listening, and can be used in other settings, disciplines, and grade levels. This particular project asked participants to “Tell a story about a time you felt defined by an aspect of your identity that you cannot control.” The aim of this chapter is to provide a model alongside evidence from empirical research to support practitioners who would like to engage in the social justice work of humanizing pedagogy through the method of Story Circles. Organized as a phenomenological study, the examples of transformative experiences are accompanied by a toolkit which provides current and future educators with topics and ideas for how the Story Circle methodology may be applied within their diverse disciplines and particular classroom settings.
An epistolary article commemorating bell hooks' legacy and impact in my life and work. Published ... more An epistolary article commemorating bell hooks' legacy and impact in my life and work. Published as part of a special issue honoring bell hooks.
As an inquiry into the way institutional responses to racist violence shape collective understand... more As an inquiry into the way institutional responses to racist violence shape collective understandings of violation and sustain precarious conditions that disproportionately impact people of color in schools, this project interrogates how white supremacist violence is discursively reproduced as an ordinary component of American schools and society. I develop the concept of unremarkable violence to discuss how response discourses fail to address the structural, historical, and ideological foundations of white supremacist logic, and thus render the ongoing reproduction of institutional violence and subjectification unremarkable. I further argue that the unremarkable violence of whiteness works to explain, sustain, and deny the realities of politically-induced vulnerability in the present. Grounding my theory in Black Feminist Thought, postmodern feminism, and intersubjective dialogue, I exercise Critical Discourse Analysis to examine primary sources released by political and educational leaders in response to two events of racist violence that impacted public schools: the May 2017 “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville, Virginia and the May 2020 murder of George Floyd by Minneapolis police officers. Examinations of the structural and political nature of response discourses revealed that while these events were rendered “remarkable” to the extent they conjured recognition, the process and nature of institutional response discourse reified whiteness as an unremarkable, yet powerful, mode of governing subjects and relationships in schools. I argue that whiteness and its essential violences are structurally remade and relegated into unremarkable, everyday conditions that fortify precarious conditions for people of color in schools. Finally, I consider dialogical possibilities in pursuit of more ethical relations, relations that require intrasubjective scrutiny by white teachers who choose to confront complicity within educational institutions. I theorize this ethical orientation towards radically undoing our intimate relationships with the violence of whiteness as a precursor to intersubjective solidarity in ongoing struggles for racial justice.
Through a Critical Whiteness Studies framework, this essay engages in an ideological critique of ... more Through a Critical Whiteness Studies framework, this essay engages in an ideological critique of white supremacy that conceptualizes sites of 20th century spectacle lynching as public pedagogy. After establishing historical sites of terror as teaching/learning moments, the author focuses on contemporary sites of violence—the modern classroom—and links educational structures, policies, and practices to violent legacies. Theorizing ideology within Althusserian and Žižekian frames, spectacle lynching is argued as a situation which crystallized understandings of racial dominance/violence that lay the foundation for modern educational contexts where racial violence is persistently mishandled. Theorized as a “collective turning,” legacies of violence are examined within contemporary educative situations, and readers are asked to recognize white supremacy and avoidance as active forces our contemporary realities.
This article attends to the possibilities that emerged from pedagogical invitation to the more-th... more This article attends to the possibilities that emerged from pedagogical invitation to the more-than-human in a qualitative inquiry course. We focus on the situated ethical and (micro)political grapplings that emerged from paying attention to the more-than-human alongside asymmetrical human and more-than-human lifeworlds. Our orientation toward the ethical and (micro)political is enacted through visual, poetic, and narrative storytelling that attempts to make visible what emerged for the students’ research and their becomings as qualitative inquirers in relation with course pedagogies. Our storytelling enacts a feminist practice that “stays with the trouble” stirred up by decentering the human while remaining accountable to enduring systemic, colonial, racialized, and gendered presences. While the particular lines of flight enacted by the pedagogical invitations in the course differed for each student, they come together in underlining the mattering of pedagogical and inquiry-based attunements toward the more-than-human within unequal worlds.
This chapter is included in the edited publication Possibilities in Practice: Social Justice Teac... more This chapter is included in the edited publication Possibilities in Practice: Social Justice Teaching in the Disciplines (Ed. Summer Melody Pennell, Ashley S. Boyd, Hillary Parkhouse, Alison LaGarry, 2017) which can be accessed here: https://www.peterlang.com/view/product/79984?format=HC)
Chapter Description: Contemporary education, political, and social structures lend themselves ideologically and practically towards a project of dehumanization which valorizes difference, individual merit achieved through competition, and, therefore, isolation over common experience and community. Recognizing the socio-cultural and political powers of exclusion at work, this research inquires into a larger project of humanistic education; one which is dedicated to the cultivation of the human spirit, assumes dignity, honors difference, and encourages agency and transformation through relation with others. The following research was conducted in an urban middle school in central Texas through a Story Circle methodology. This approach to community building invites participants to engage with one another in focused dialogue and critical listening, and can be used in other settings, disciplines, and grade levels. This particular project asked participants to “Tell a story about a time you felt defined by an aspect of your identity that you cannot control.” The aim of this chapter is to provide a model alongside evidence from empirical research to support practitioners who would like to engage in the social justice work of humanizing pedagogy through the method of Story Circles. Organized as a phenomenological study, the examples of transformative experiences are accompanied by a toolkit which provides current and future educators with topics and ideas for how the Story Circle methodology may be applied within their diverse disciplines and particular classroom settings.
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Online article can be found here: https://womengenderandfamilies.ku.edu/online-essays-honoring-bell-hookss-legacy/1304/
Chapter Description:
Contemporary education, political, and social structures lend themselves ideologically and practically towards a project of dehumanization which valorizes difference, individual merit achieved through competition, and, therefore, isolation over common experience and community. Recognizing the socio-cultural and political powers of exclusion at work, this research inquires into a larger project of humanistic education; one which is dedicated to the cultivation of the human spirit, assumes dignity, honors difference, and encourages agency and transformation through relation with others. The following research was conducted in an urban middle school in central Texas through a Story Circle methodology. This approach to community building invites participants to engage with one another in focused dialogue and critical listening, and can be used in other settings, disciplines, and grade levels. This particular project asked participants to “Tell a story about a time you felt defined by an aspect of your identity that you cannot control.” The aim of this chapter is to provide a model alongside evidence from empirical research to support practitioners who would like to engage in the social justice work of humanizing pedagogy through the method of Story Circles. Organized as a phenomenological study, the examples of transformative experiences are accompanied by a toolkit which provides current and future educators with topics and ideas for how the Story Circle methodology may be applied within their diverse disciplines and particular classroom settings.
Online article can be found here: https://womengenderandfamilies.ku.edu/online-essays-honoring-bell-hookss-legacy/1304/
Chapter Description:
Contemporary education, political, and social structures lend themselves ideologically and practically towards a project of dehumanization which valorizes difference, individual merit achieved through competition, and, therefore, isolation over common experience and community. Recognizing the socio-cultural and political powers of exclusion at work, this research inquires into a larger project of humanistic education; one which is dedicated to the cultivation of the human spirit, assumes dignity, honors difference, and encourages agency and transformation through relation with others. The following research was conducted in an urban middle school in central Texas through a Story Circle methodology. This approach to community building invites participants to engage with one another in focused dialogue and critical listening, and can be used in other settings, disciplines, and grade levels. This particular project asked participants to “Tell a story about a time you felt defined by an aspect of your identity that you cannot control.” The aim of this chapter is to provide a model alongside evidence from empirical research to support practitioners who would like to engage in the social justice work of humanizing pedagogy through the method of Story Circles. Organized as a phenomenological study, the examples of transformative experiences are accompanied by a toolkit which provides current and future educators with topics and ideas for how the Story Circle methodology may be applied within their diverse disciplines and particular classroom settings.