Buscando para nuestra latinidad: Utilizing La Llorona for Cultural Critique

Abstract

This essay analyzes the contemporary constructions of Latina/o identity, Latina/o gender and Latina/o nationality as evidenced in the self-proclaimed “first major studio comedy to reflect the Hispanic cultural experience in America,” Chasing Papi. The contradictions between the film's progressive mission and the film's representations are teased out by a cross-reading of the film's usage of the popular Chicana/o mythic figure, La Llorona. Invoking La Lorona as muse and means, we find that the Latin Lover stereotype succeeds in its anti-assimilationist task while concurrently furthering confusion on who and what is a U.S. Latina/o. However, the authors also demonstrate how cultural cross-readings can provide hope out of delimiting discursive constructions.     

Thawing the North: Mostly Martha as a German-Italian Eatopia

Abstract

The establishment of the European Union, reunification of Germany, and Germany's extension of dual citizenship to immigrant minorities provided challenges to the country's understanding of itself as a nation. In negotiating these changes, debates on citizenship frequently centered on definitions of German culture. Using the concept of Leitkultur (guiding culture), conservatives argued that Germany should reject multiculturalism and stem immigration. This essay analyzes discourses on cultural policy in Germany through a contextual and textual analysis of the film Mostly Martha. In its alignment with aesthetic conventions of the art house food film, Mostly Martha participates in the debate on cultural citizenship and embodies changes in the German film industry that have moved German cinema toward increased commercialism. The film's main character, Martha, is transformed through an intercultural relationship and a trip to Italy. We argue that the film's citation of this well-known tradition of traveling south to redeem oneself and its treatment of ethnic “Otherness” engages in the Leitkultur debate and participates in the transition from national German to transnational cinema. Through the utopian treatment of Italian food, the film fetishizes cultural difference and reaffirms fixed constructs of nation and gender, thereby avoiding an explicitly politicized engagement with intercultural citizenship and identity.     

Communicating citizenship in China’s digital society

ABSTRACT

This research explores the (inter-) cultural dimension of communicating citizenship in China’s new media environment. It adopts speech codes theory as a theoretical and methodological framework to examine the historically situated and socially constructed meanings of citizenship and the normative communicative conduct for practicing “good citizenship” in China. Through a systematic analysis of Chinese online discourse surrounding two social events, this study captures one speech code pertaining to communicating citizenship that is premised on a paradox – citizenship is interpreted by the Chinese as a legal entitlement that they deserve, but it is simultaneously treated as an aspirational and unattainable ideal. Additionally, speaking sensibly and morally with a communal orientation is heavily emphasized in this speech code as it is considered a valuable communicative practice for performing “good citizenship.” Finally, participating in online collective actions such as “topping posts” is rendered an acceptable and effective way to communicate and enact citizen rights in China.     

History and civics education in Israel: reflections from Israeli teachers

In recent years, a number of studies have explored the link between Zionism and the latent racism prevalent in Israeli society. As a result of these studies, it has become clear that successive generations of Israeli citizens (and non-citizens) are exposed to a single historical and cultural narrative. Such a narrative is intentionally designed to strengthen the emergent ethno-national character of Israeli democracy. This study examines a selection of Jewish–Israeli teachers’ reflections on teaching in Israeli high school history and civics classrooms, and the institutionalized racism that they encounter both within the textbooks and from their students. I will demonstrate that these reflections are examples of negotiating dilemmatic spaces, resulting from the unique ‘structural conditions and relations to everyday practices’ that Israeli educators must face. Israeli teachers must mediate the curricular materials vis-à-vis the degrees of freedom they are provided to teach counter-historical narratives and their own emotional responses to both the content of the textbooks and their students’ reactions to the dominant national narrative presented therein.     

Social competence as an educational goal: The role of the ethnic composition and the urban environment of the school

This article concerns the relationship between social–educational goals and the school context. We used a questionnaire to map the educational goals of teachers in pre-vocational education in the field of social competence, and investigated whether these goals were related to the percentage of students from ethnic-minority groups and to the urban environment of the school. The results show that all teachers, regardless of the school context, value promoting the social development of their students as an educational goal. We did not find a relationship between the context the teachers work in and the social-competence goals they aspire to in their subject. However, teachers working in a more complex school environment, in terms of both the ethnic heterogeneity of the student population and the urban environment of the school, did consider a number of social-competence goals to be less attainable for their students. The results are discussed in the light of research on the competences young people need to participate in a multi-cultural society and the implications for teachers and teaching.     

Useful citizens,useful citizenship: cultural contexts of Sámi education in early twentieth-century Norway,Sweden, and Finland

Abstract

This article investigates Sámi elementary education in early twentieth-century Finland, Norway, and Sweden. The main focus lies on cultural contexts that frame and limit language use. The key analytical concepts are useful citizen and useful citizenship. Through these concepts the article probes the ways in which governmental educational authorities and Sámi teachers talked about education and citizenship. Studying these concepts and the cultural contexts behind them sheds light on the formation phase of Nordic citizenship. Full-scale citizenship was not offered to all individuals inside the nation state. Where it was, it had certain conditions that excluded cultural elements of minority populations. Sámi teachers defined citizenship mainly within the Norwegian, Swedish, and Finnish nation states. However, some tendencies towards a more cross-national notion of Sámi identity can be discerned.     

Pupils' views on equity in schools

This paper presents student perspectives on what they consider to be a fair and equitable national education system, based on their own experiences of primary and secondary level schooling by the age of 13 or 14. A survey of 5432 students in five countries involved a questionnaire administered as part of an EU‐funded project to develop indicators of equity in European school systems. Overall, the UK students reported favouring an egalitarian system where all students were treated in the same way, and this was largely what they felt that they experienced. In this respect, they differed from their peers in the other EU countries, a substantial proportion of whom thought that the least able should receive more support and attention in class, but who found that more attention was actually given to the more able. The UK students also appeared to be more self‐confident about their ability to succeed in school. We discuss these results in terms of policies for school allocation, student assessment and the formation of personal notions of justice. In particular, we argue that equity in structure and procedure is important for the effective teaching of notions of justice in citizenship studies.     

Tagore’s “rooted-cosmopolitanism” and international mindedness against institutional sustainability

ABSTRACT

Cosmopolitanism is often seen as a western concept associated with liberal individualistic values. It is also associated mostly with the urban educated middle-class. However, cosmopolitan thinking has been also prevalent in the East. Scholars in the twenty-first century are increasingly arguing that, there are multiple ways of thinking about cosmopolitanism originating from different regions of the world. Among Eastern thinkers, Rabindranath Tagore from colonial British India has been considered by many as one of the most cosmopolitan thinkers. The uniqueness about Tagore’s cosmopolitanism is that, it did not uproot him from his rural Bengali roots and sense of ethnic identity. He was very much a “rooted-cosmopolitan”. In his book, ‘Cosmopolitanism: Ethics in a world of strangers’, Kwame Anthony Appaiah had agued that, a “rooted cosmopolitan” is someone who was rooted in his own cultural context while having an open-mind to feel literally at home in the world. This article draws on archival research at Rabindra Bhawan in Shantiniketan and University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign Library archives to further this argument and demonstrates how Tagore’s school and university were built drawing on his “rooted cosmopolitan” ideals and international mindedness. In conclusion, this article highlights some of the challenges of sustaining the reformist educational institutions led by Tagore’s unique personality traits, social and pedagogic reform movements in the nineteenth century and early twentieth century colonial British India.     

The art of self-making: identity and citizenship education in late-modernity

Taking the English National Curriculum as its main example, this article argues that an overly nationalistic, normative and ‘fact-based’ citizenship education curriculum is failing to engage the dimensions of young people’s identities which they experience as deeply meaningful. There is thus a chasm – albeit a false one – between official discourses and pedagogies of citizenship and what young people consider to be their ‘real’ selves. I argue that citizenship education must develop a more sophisticated understanding of the complexities of how identities are formed and performed, especially in light of globalisation and increasing migration. I also make a somewhat unorthodox argument for conceptualising ‘relating-to-otherness’ in the same way that we think of music consumption. This has implications for how we experience, interpret, value and create ‘others’. The article also makes some recommendations for how these ideas can begin to be implemented in educational settings.     

Critical Literacy for Young Citizens: First Graders Investigate the First Thanksgiving

In this piece, we share a story about the power of historical investigation as a means of developing critical literacy in young children. Drawing on the work of VanSledright (Social Educ 68:230, 2004), we outline four aspects of historical thinking as they relate to the development of critically minded citizens. We then turn to a discussion of a first-grade lesson on the First Thanksgiving Feast, reflect on the meanings children took from this experience, and explore possible implications and extensions.