A Desperate Comedy: Hope and alienation in Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot

Abstract

This article is both a personal response to Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot and an examination of the concept within literature of making the strange familiar and making the familiar strange. It discusses the educative force and potential of Beckett’s strangers in a strange world by examining my own personal experiences with the play. At the same time the limitations of Beckett’s theatre are explored through the contrast with the work of Berthold Brecht, who sought to make the familiar strange as a method of political enquiry to facilitate the transformation of the capitalist state. Parallels are drawn between the possibilities of both theatre and education as tools for social transformation and change.     

The school theatre as a place of cultural learning: the case of Soviet Latvia (1960s–1980s)

Abstract

The goal of this article is to reveal how through school theatre activities under authoritarian rule, changes took place in pupil knowledge, skills, attitudes, and behaviour regarding culture, namely, how the process of cultural learning occurs. I use a historical case study, specifically the case of the Valmiera School Theatre, which was the leading theatre group, not only in Soviet Latvia, but also in the entire Soviet Union. My primary sources are eight unstructured interviews, 20 published memoirs, articles in the press, theatre programmes, and photographs. One part of Soviet pedagogy was aesthetic upbringing, which was implemented through state-funded collectives, including school theatre groups. By participating in theatre activities, students gained knowledge of cultural heritage (literature, theatre, art, etc.), the ability to perform and acquire skills in other practical fields, and developed an appreciation of culture as a value. I argue that cultural learning through theatre was demonstrated by the fact that the students transferred their knowledge, skills, and attitudes to a new context, namely, their places of work and public cultural activities (e.g. amateur theatres). This case study also reveals the specific role of school theatre in the process of cultural learning, as well as some sensitive issues in the relationship between knowledge-orientated or formal educational environments, and the informal creativity of school theatre.     

Theatre and drama education and populism: The ensemble ‘family’ as a space for dialogic empathy and civic care

This article, understanding populism as an essentially undemocratic ideology, argues that the pro-social theatre education approach of ensemble pedagogy can offer a model of educational practice which counters these anti-democratic rhetorics by creating a shared space for the enactment of empathetic discourse. Via an ethnography of the UK Shakespeare Schools Foundation festival project, the notion of the theatre education ensemble ‘family’ as a model of civic caring is offered as an alternative, feminist ‘care perspective’ on civic and political rhetorics, in contrast to the patriarchal ‘justice perspectives’ which facilitate the reductive anti-democratic rhetorics of populism. Thus, this article concludes that ensemble approaches to theatre education, viewed through this feminist pedagogy lens, hold rich potential for developing learners’ capacity to resist populism and act in socially hopeful ways.     

Theoretical,Political, and Pedagogical Challenges in the Feminist Classroom: Our Struggles to Walk the Walk

Abstract

The authors explore both theoretical issues in feminist pedagogy and the politics of the contemporary university classroom. They examine various intersections of gender, power, pedagogical theory, and academic discipline in order to bring greater attention to the struggle many teachers face in “walking the walk” as feminist teachers.     

Gender machineries vs. feminist movements? Collective political subjectivity in the time of passive revolution

ABSTRACT

The aim of this article is to pose some questions concerning kairos and feminist activism. In recent years state feminism in Spain has been presented as a ‘success story’ of legislative victories and policy programmes regarding women’ equality and equal opportunities. Only two years ago, feminist movements in Spain showed unexpected vitality in forcing the government to withdraw the intended reform of the abortion law. However, relations between state feminism and feminist movements in Spain are weak and ambivalent, and feminism in Spain, as in other parts of Europe, is said to be in crisis. I refer to ideas elaborated by Antonio Gramsci in order to identify possible barriers to the formation of relationships between state feminism and feminist movements that could impact favourably upon possibilities of collective political subjectivity and social transformation. Education plays a two-fold role in this argument. In its formal manifestations, it is a component of the institutional feminism that this article critiques, and as a series of informal pedagogical networks, education is understood here as entangled in the different expressions of feminist activism and can thus contribute significantly to the development of feminist aims.     

Our stories matter: storytelling and social justice in the Hollaback! movement

ABSTRACT

As feminist and anti-racist scholars and activists have long known, which stories predominate and which are marginalised is always a question of power and authority – about who is entitled to speak, and who has the authority to decide the meanings of words and actions. Storytelling can be used as a tool for social justice, as exemplified by the international feminist movement Hollaback! and its regional and worldwide struggle to end street harassment and make public spaces accessible for everyone. This article examines the practice of sharing stories within one specific Hollaback! group, highlighting the timeliness of the online storytelling technologies promoted by the movement and considering this work as an example of extra-academic feminist education. The article concludes by questioning to what extent feminists manage to formulate their own localised struggles through storytelling within the feminist movement as a whole.     

Finding feminism,finding voice? Mobilising community education to build women's participation in Myanmar's political transition

ABSTRACT

This paper explores the role played by women activists and educators in mobilising community education to support new opportunities for women's activism in the context of Myanmar's political transition. Recent political reorientations in Myanmar which have resulted in a civilian-led democracy emerging from a repressive military regime, have facilitated increased international contact. Myanmar women activist-educators are rejecting hierarchical relationships and the sterile reproductions of idealised female citizenship evident in some training practices and are promoting a conceptualisation of feminist education. I reflect on the dynamics of this feminist activism, including the adaptation of feminist concepts and terminology, as articulated by activists, and I explore responses to the new avenues for women's engagement which are opening up in the first inter-election cycle.     

Empowering Students in a Feminist Social Work Practice Course

Abstract

Since 1993, a faculty collective has team-taught a feminist social work practice course. The course, designed to heighten student knowledge of feminist practice, was expected to empower students. An overview of the course is presented with an analysis of its impact on student perceptions of personal and professional power. Pre and post measures of empowerment were analyzed and used to derive outcome measures of change in student views of themselves as empowered persons and practitioners. Findings indicate that students had significantly higher perceptions of their personal and professional power upon completion of the feminist practice course than before. Implications for social work students and practitioners are discussed.     

Playlinks: a theatre-for-young audiences artist-in-the-classroom project

ABSTRACT

Playlinks, the project documented in this paper, contributed a theatre-based artist-in-the-classroom study to the Community Arts Zone initiative. Playlinks involved 248 elementary school classrooms in pre- and post-production workshops connected to live theatre that visited their schools. Data sources included researcher field notes, teacher evaluation forms, and interviews with both teachers and theatre personnel. Findings focus on teacher perceptions of three topics: (a) student engagement, (b) learning across cognitive and affective domains, and (c) benefits for teachers. The discussion section addresses implementation problems related to artist-in-the-classroom projects.     

Post-qualitative research

This article maintains that all research involves crossing (i.e., researching across difference) and then explores how scholars have approached issues of cross-group feminist research. The article is divided into three major sections. The first section explores issues of women?s diversity and their meaning for cross-group feminist research. The second investigates concerns raised with regard to contradictions inherent in this type of research. The third section reviews and discusses a number of strategies feminist and other scholars of qualitative research have used to address problematic issues and contradictions involved in cross-group research.     

Embodied [by] Dance: Adolescent de/constructions of body,sex and gender in physical education

Using developmental, sociological, feminist, and dance studies perspectives on the social construction of body, sex, and gender, the author discusses the functions of agency and performativity in the physical education curriculum with specific attention to the embodied performance of culture through dance and movement. Classroom examples of critical and feminist approaches to dance pedagogy are provided to deconstruct body/sex/gender through dance education. A dialectical approach to critical self-reflection is proposed that limits reproduction of the mind/body split, thus reinscribing the body as subject.     

Pawns against the devil

Abstract

This article outlines the innovative methodology I have developed for a study of young women, classed‐hybrid‐subjectivities and Australian government policies of ‘mutual obligation’. This methodology further develops and disturbs existing notions of research methods involving young people. I argue that in order for research involving young people to be inclusive it needs to attend to issues of ‘sameness, difference and diversity’. Central to this study are the notions of feminst praxis (Lather ¹; Weiner ²) where the feminist‐researcher as feminist‐teacher grapples with issues of classism, racism, sexism, reflexivity and self‐reflexivity whilst attempting to take on and fulfill the roles of teacher‐researcher, researcher‐teacher in an ‘inclusive’ classroom.     

Knowing feminism: the significance of higher education to women’s narratives of ‘becoming feminist’

ABSTRACT

Educational spaces have long provided opportunities for politicisation and activism. However, research into the processes through which students become politicised can often focus on participation in recognised forms of political action, thereby ignoring the multiple factors active in developing a political consciousness. This paper draws on narrative interviews with feminist women to consider the importance of education to their experience of becoming feminist. It considers how, for a particular group of women who were all students or recent graduates of non-STEM disciplines, academic feminism formed an important part of their narrative of becoming feminist. Each of the women referred to having a long-standing feminist inclination, instinct or feeling and indicated that studying academic feminism offered them the tools for reflecting on and articulating this.     

From performativity to Aporia: taking ‘tremendous responsibility’ towards feminism and the university

ABSTRACT

This paper seeks to contribute to the thinking on feminism’s past and present entanglement with the university and strives to imagine its future. Through a close reading of the opening passage of Derrida’s essay ‘Mochlos, or The Conflict of the Faculties’, I trace ‘a university responsibility’ which does not lead to a subject conceived as self-identical. Drawing on the works of Hemmings, Scott and Wiegman, I argue that we must assume responsibility which will make us, feminism and the university tremble. This paper argues that envisioning feminist responsibilities as tremendous will allow us to conceive feminism as non-identical to itself and beyond the prerequisite of the sovereign (feminist) subject. Taking tremendous responsibilities will, as Hemmings proposes, help us create feminist narratives which will be potentially more politically transformative.     

For a revival of feminist consciousness-raising: horizontal transformation of epistemologies and transgression of neoliberal TimeSpace

ABSTRACT

This paper looks back on the methodology and experience of feminist consciousness-raising (CR) in the 1970s, in relation to the current re-emergence of feminism. It constructs an argument that a new wave of CR is desirable so as to construct new forms of feminist pedagogy and activism. The paper will argue that contemporary feminism in the UK and USA would benefit from this kind of methodology, through which a standpoint is constructed. The core of the paper is an analysis of how CR works as an affective and social process. Drawing on academic studies and participant accounts, the paper reconstructs the mechanisms through which participants’ subjectivities and narratives are expressed and transformed. It suggests that these mechanisms express different non-homogeneous temporalities. The paper invites feminist pedagogy to get back to the base level of experience and unfold new theories and strategies to address the current context.     

Response to Woods – When rewards and sanctions fail: a case study of a primary school rule‐breaker

This paper proposes a postmodernism and cultural studies influenced collorary to Cynthia Dillard's notion of "an endarkened feminist epistemology." The paper illustrates that Dillard has developed the notion principally as enabling of a project of recueillement : the articulation of a black feminist epistemology and research paradigm. What remains unaddressed in this project (albeit understandably), is the question of what difference difference makes within an endarkened epistemology. Illustrating that difference always compounds and complicates matters, the paper proceeds to draw on postmodernist and cultural studies theory to work with the ways in which race, gender, and sexual orientation interplay to produce an articulation that does not displace the notion of an endarkened feminist epistemology but rather runs parallel and acts as a corollary in the same dual project of contributing to both the "uriously belated" examination of race and racism in educational research in general, and the development of a black feminist epistemology and research paradigm in particular.     

Notes from a practitioner: A response to Julie Laible's loving epistemology

This article explains how Julie Laible's "loving epistemology" has implications for practitioners' research-based activities. Laible's view of the Other provides guidance for the research of those striving to be both feminist in approach and respectful toward research subjects.     

INTERDISCIPLINARY COLLABORATION AND PROFESSIONAL PREPARATION IN CAMPUS‐BASED CHILD DEVELOPMENT LABORATORY PROGRAMS

ABSTRACT

In an undergraduate families and communities course situated at a university in the borderlands of the United States and Mexico, early childhood majors have used Black feminist thought combined with photovoice to generate projects that explore family and community experiences with power and oppression. As a professor, teaching assistant, and student enrolled in the course, we share our conceptualization of Black feminist photovoice, student trends and issues engaging with photovoice throughout the semester, and provide an example culminating project that focuses on colonization. By describing students’ engagement with Black feminist photovoice, we illustrate how transformative spaces can be forged in early childhood teacher education, where students critically examine the struggles and empowerment of marginalized communities, and generate possibilities to serve as agents of social justice and change.     

Double Blind: Supervising women as creative practice-led researchers

Abstract

Many women creative practice-led researchers appear inhibited by a number of factors directly connected to their gender. This article discusses these factors, including the culture of visual arts professional practice, the circumstances surrounding women postgraduate students and unproductive self-theories about intelligence and creativity. A number of feminist strategies are discussed as potential interventions that may assist women creative practice-led researchers and their supervisors to reap more personal and professional rewards from their postgraduate research.