Journal of Ethnic and Cultural Studies

Introduction Special Issue: Tectonic Intimacies of Transformation Knowledges of Emancipation and Narratives of Resistance and the Amplification of Global Majority Voices

2024-12-31T22:06:20+03:00

Tectonic intimacies address the relationship between violence, resistance, and hope in academia with a specific focus on Global Majority scholars. It analyses colonial power dynamics in knowledge production and the effect of such dynamics on the emotions of people and communities using the concept of tectonic shifts. The contributions highlight how intimate acts of survival, cultural assertion, and collective care serve as forms of resistance, creating ruptures within colonial epistemologies and facilitating the emergence of postcolonial knowledges. These acts, which are regarded as the strategies of personal survival, present new theoretical paradigms that problematize the dominant epistemologies. Postcolonial intimacies emerge in these practices, as scholars engage in acts of love, solidarity, and healing that challenge the violence of colonialism. Specifically, the problem raises the question of the importance of creativity, such as narrative, visual, and performative, as well as joy, as agents of change. In these various ways of involvement, the work contributes to decolonial practice and foregrounds healing, the people’s power, and liberation in transforming knowledge creation processes in academic and societal contexts.

Intimate Betrayals: Uncovering Eugenicist Logics in the Stories of Two Black German Women

2024-12-31T22:06:34+03:00

This paper draws on data from an ongoing qualitative research study on the educational experiences and identities of Black transnational women to explore the question: “What can be learned about the transnational legacies of eugenicist thought as we examine the stories of two Black German women?” These data are represented in two vignettes crafted from interviews, conversations, and memories to explore the implications of eugenicist logic in the lives of Black German women. Decried as an ableist, racist, misogynistic, and pseudoscientific project that sought to improve “human stock,” the objectives of the eugenics movement of the early 19th century have been rejected in most scholarly fields of the 21^st century. However, the narratives centered in this paper show that eugenicist logic, ideologies, and discourses remain persistent, insidious parts of contemporary discourses. Theoretically and methodologically, the paper engages a Transnational Black Feminist approach (Burkhard, 2019, 2021) to qualitative research to attend to the ways in which eugenicist ideologies are narrated and reproduced in intimate moments of everyday life, highlighting the continuous need for contemporary feminist scholarship to consider global, transnational, and local lenses in knowledge production.

English and Global Education: Writing Apotropaic Texts to Deflect the Sorcery of Colonial|Modern|Development

2024-12-31T22:06:42+03:00

Irrespective of the scholarship that exposes the violent impact of English on education systems in colonial, settler colonial, and (post)colonial contexts, it continues to take center stage in educational policy changes in academic institutions around the world. It is promoted by school and university curricula, global funding organizations, and political leaders as a language that provides unimaginable opportunities for everyone and, particularly for historically disadvantaged communities. Consequently, English has become the/a language of colonial|modern|development[1] enabling the continuation of its civilizing mission through discourses of progress. As a Sri Lankan expatriate academic and a former English language teacher, in this paper, I explore how English is embodied as desires and traumas in (post)colonial subjects (le sujet). My research in Sri Lanka with English teachers show how their experiences about/around English that give credence to its manifestation as truth-power can inevitably lead to the reproduction of harm in/through education. Therefore, drawing on ethnographic and archival research, I tell stories (as apotropaic texts) imagining curricular orientations that would deflect the sorcery of colonial|modern|development in English. In this paper, rather than supporting the view that English is imperialistic, neocolonial, and a threat to linguistic diversity, or merely promoting discourses that glorify it as a panacea for sociopolitical and economic problems, I invite educators to sit with the sticky tensions that emerge from one’s attunement to English as the embodiment of desires and traumas.

Resisting the Allure: The West as Fiction in the Arab Immigrant Novel

2024-12-31T22:06:44+03:00

This article investigates the resemblance between the Arab immigrant experience in the Arab immigrant novel, on the one hand, and the experience of fiction reading, on the other one. The article analyzes Tayeb Salih’s Season of migration to the north (1966), Waguih Ghali’s Beer in the snooker club (1964), Walid Al Hajjar’s trilogy The search for the self (published privately in 1973, 1979, and 1984), Leila Aboulela’s The translator (1999), and Alaa Al Aswany’s Chicago: A novel (2007) to demonstrate the presence of a pattern depicting the experience of Arab immigrants as akin to fiction reading. Drawing from genre, postcolonial, and diasporic studies, this project argues that the West, for the Arab immigrant characters, shares many of the features of fiction: its emotional distance, authority, the privacy of its experience, the space it allows for role playing, and its allowance or requirement of a temporary reinvention of the self. Such characteristics, the project shows, illuminate our understanding of significant issues such as the integration of Arab immigrants into Western countries and their sense of home and belonging. While these characteristics comprise the lure of the fictional West, they also account for its oppression and exclusion. The Arab immigrant characters who find the prolonged fictional experience of the West painful respond to the agony of this experience through violence—to depart from the Western experience altogether or to settle for it despite its unpleasantness—or through the establishment of a native, home religion in the receiving Western countries.

Epistemologies of Division in Arab Media Scholarship

2024-12-31T22:06:48+03:00

This article discusses epistemologies of division in Arab media scholarship as a topical case study, given the role of media as a convergence of ideology, values, politics, and market mechanisms. It specifically addresses these questions: How does the colonial structure of academia seek to alienate Global Majority communities from one another? What is the intimate impact of this structure on the lives of academics under these epistemologies of division? And to what extent do non-Western media scholars reinforce this alienated image through internalized Orientalism? Methodologically, the article is based on an autoethnographic approach where I reflect on my professional trajectory as an Arab “diasporic academic” who spent nearly thirty years in Europe before moving back to the Middle East. Theoretically, the article draws on Orientalism as an ideology to shed light on how Western higher education institutions (HEIs) reinforce their superiority, creating an epistemic exclusion of Arab scholars. This problem is exacerbated by the neoliberal policies that tend to place HEIs on a global hierarchy, and by Arab scholars’ acceptance of this exclusion, which is termed internalized or self-orientalism.

Citizenship Education: Toward a Relationality and Care Approach

2024-12-31T22:06:23+03:00

Responding to public rhetoric and policy documents advocating for citizenship education as the type of education that will safeguard democracy and address societal challenges, schools around the world have been including citizenship education as a discrete part of the curriculum. While the field remains complex and contextual, some of the major aims maintain the cultivation of a critical, active, responsible, democratic citizen. In this paper, I explore apolitical and exclusionary approaches to citizenship education by problematizing terms such as participation, human rights, autonomy, and critical thinking. Through emphasizing the citizen-in-context, I draw on Biesta’s notion of subjectification to approach citizenship education in a pluralistic society. In challenging a universal neutral framework of human rights, I propose citizenship as care and relationality to defy exclusion and unjust dominant discourses and practices in the field. I also reflect on my own personal journey as a researcher from the periphery, conducting research in and on the center. I bring in some memos and journals that highlight some tensions and struggles as well as channels of emancipation and relief.

(De)Coloniality of Mothering: Race, Gender, and Mothers in Schools

2024-12-31T22:06:28+03:00

This study builds on decolonial, Chicanx, and Black Feminist Theory to explore how “mothering” as a phenomenon has been theorized and how it manifested in our respective research sites: (a) within Somali immigrant mothers in urban communities in the United Kingdom; and (b) how the role of mothers was understood and deployed in predominantly White suburban Ohio. We draw on stories from our research to argue that the modern/colonial gender system constructs ideas and possibilities of motherhood in different ways depending on the sociopolitical and epistemological locations of those engaged in motherwork. We argue that decolonial mothering includes pedagogies of collectivism necessary for healing and joy. And finally, we reflect on how the findings from our studies can contribute to liberatory practices through projects of de-linking from discourses of coloniality in academic spaces.

A Research Project, Not a Program: Culture of Care in Photovoice Research with Black Girls

2024-12-31T22:06:31+03:00

Black girls in Kentucky are hyper-minoritized. This marker gives others the notion that Black girls are abnormal, in need of programming, and incapable of narrating their own existence. The D.O.P.E. Black Girl Research Collective—an intergenerational, interdisciplinary research collective comprised of community-centered researchers at the University of Kentucky, Berea College, and the Lexington Housing Authority – conducted an 18-month Photovoice research study alongside Black girls in central Kentucky to examine how and in what ways Black girls define their lives in a post-2020 climate—that is, after the murders of Breonna Taylor, George Floyd, and Ahmaud Arbery amidst the explosion of the COVID-19 pandemic. Using bell hooks’ “talking back” framing, this paper outlines a Photovoice methodological approach to conducting research by, for, and with Black girls pushed to the margins in a Southern locale. Our collective research revealed the distinct ways in which Black girls “talk back” while sustaining a culture of collective care.

Ignite the Night to Keep Talk Story: Hānai Pedagogy as an Act of Liberation

2024-12-31T22:06:46+03:00

Acting as a roadmap for doctoral students, scholars, and pedagogues, this narrative explores my journey through education and how I have used the confines of the academy to pursue research back home in Hawai’i using Kanaka ‘Ōiwi methodologies (Oliveira & Wright, 2016) to interview 10 Kanaka community members who entered into teaching as part of a homegrown teacher program called Ka Lama in the most densely Hawaiian populated area of Hawai’i to better serve their community and as an act of social justice. Additional data includes 12 semi-structured interviews with school administrators and Ka Lama-associated personnel and over 150 hours of classroom and community observations. As a result of this research, the Hānai Pedagogy framework (Brandehoff, 2023a) emerged, which is grounded in Indigenous ways of knowing and encompasses the values of Hands-on activities, Aloha, Navigation, Authenticity, and Interrelations, which are discussed at length in the findings. This study is limited to the specific area and participants of the setting; however, Hānai Pedagogy is now deeply woven throughout the curricula and doctoral programs designed and taught by the researcher to move toward action and liberation.

Othered but Unbothered: Agentic and inclusive narratives of Black Professors in US higher education

2024-12-31T22:06:36+03:00

Black professors across US university campuses continue to navigate race–based and other forms of discrimination. This research paper argues that as a collective, African American, Afro–Caribbean and African professors experience discrimination at the intersection of their race, gender and nationality. To build my argument, I engage in conversations with ten professors from the Black Diaspora to elevate their stories of dialectical tensions, and racial and cultural stereotypes they confront and negotiate, while maintaining agency and creating safe spaces for inclusive and transformative teaching and learning in their classrooms. Using critical race theory and race–based essentialism to ground my work, I also engage in ethnography to illustrate the transformative role of intercultural pedagogy in dismantling essentialist misperceptions and simultaneously transforming the way students interact with and include others in society.

Proto-Narrative: A Critical Exploration of the Cultural Identities Held by Black Women in STEM

2024-12-31T22:06:40+03:00

Systemic structures have historically marginalized Black women, especially those with disabilities, from pursuing careers in STEM fields, perpetuating exclusionary practices within higher education institutions. The need for increased representation of Black women, including those with disabilities, in STEM has prompted institutions to prioritize graduation within this demographic. To meet the demand for more Black women entering the STEM field, higher education institutions encourage the integration of culturally relevant STEM curricula. Using culturally relevant models, such as Flake’s Four Dimensions of Cultural Identity, based on Paulo Freire’s Critical Reflection from the lens of Henri Tajfel’s Social Identity, humanizes the educational journey of Black women in STEM, fortifying the Black women in STEM industry. Building on Flake's Cultural Identity framework, this paper uses Freire's Critical Pedagogy to underscore the transformative potential of culturally aligned curricula, fostering a learning environment conducive to the empowerment of aspiring Black women in STEM while anchoring them to their cultural roots. Therefore, this paper explores reflective narratives of Black women in STEM during their higher education experiences, illuminating the significance of their cultural identity in shaping their agency in STEM. Their narratives seek to inform the development of STEM curricula that empower Black women with the introduction of the authors’ conceptual framework centered on cultural identity, learning communities, and agency. Within this framework, the proto-narratives of the study's participants, Black women in STEM with a disability, reveal how a sense of belonging within the learning community mediates the cultivation of agency within STEM. As such, this study elevates the experiences of Black women in STEM as proto-narratives, emphasizing these narratives as the genesis, in contrast to often labeled counter-narratives. It underscores the critical importance of recognizing and nurturing cultural identities to empower and advance the next generation of Black women in STEM.

Decolonize How? Experiences from a Master’s Course in Digital Media at a South African University

2024-12-31T22:06:38+03:00

Three decades after the end of apartheid, curricula at South African universities still reflect their colonial and Eurocentric origins. Starting with the student protests of 2015, calls for decolonizing the curriculum have become progressively louder. In scholarly literature and academic discussions (both formal and informal), much attention is paid to what is or should be taught and who can or should teach it. Interventions tend to focus on the inclusion of works by African authors in the syllabus and on the emergence of a cohort of African lecturers who can relate to the life experience and cultural background of the majority of students. Relatively little attention is paid to how the curriculum is delivered and to what end. By applying a decolonial theoretical lens, the present paper seeks to interrogate broader issues of the relationship between teaching philosophy and practice, hidden curriculum, and institutional transformation. I draw on over a decade of experience as a lecturer and later coordinator of a master’s program at a South African University. The program has been reworked in recent years to promote the formation of African decolonial scholars in media and communication studies. While the ethnic and linguistic composition of the class changed over the years, the program consistently attracts students from all over Southern Africa who bring a wealth of diverse cultural, life, and disciplinary experiences. I experimented with a wide range of pedagogical strategies to draw on such wealth by linking theory to the students’ lived reality and enabling ample choice of topics and readings so that each student could pursue their interests. Coordination inspired by flexibility, empathy, and cherishing autonomy proved invaluable during the COVID-19 pandemic and the subsequent shift from full-time coursework and thesis to a mixed full and part-time full thesis model.

Integrating Learning and Hummingbird Medicine to Heal Academic Harm

2024-12-31T22:06:26+03:00

Schooling practices and institutions of schooling have harmed racialized K-12 students, teachers, undergraduate students, graduate students, and faculty. How we define learning plays a significant role in understanding and ameliorating this harm. To envision a more hopeful future for education, in this article, we explore the relationship between learning, academic harm, and healing. To do so, we bring insights from Curanderismo—an oral healing and spiritual tradition—and sociocultural perspectives on learning into conversation to foreground the historical and cultural dimensions of learning in everyday practices. To breathe life into these connections, we share three stories inspired by hummingbird medicine, one form of wisdom found in Curanderismo. The stories illuminate the fluidity of time and space to support expansive views of learning and healing, the need to acknowledge the winding paths of learning and how they often grow through missteps and failures, and the need to offer ourselves and our students love as we try to heal ourselves from academic harms. Bringing learning and healing together intentionally can move us toward creating educational systems that allow for the flourishing of people in mind, body, spirit, and heart. We conclude with questions that can guide the design of learning environments characterized by healing and dignity.