Working through Resistance to Resistance in Anti‐racist Teacher Education

This paper grapples with the idea that challenging racism in teacher education opens the landscape of racial melancholia by psychoanalytically exploring the author's affective reaction to white teacher candidates’ resistance. Drawing on critical multicultural education classes at a university in a mid‐Western rural state in the US, the author, an Asian American teacher educator contends that she must negotiate the loss of idealised objects during critical race dialogues for her to better serve containing function in supporting teacher candidates’ encounters with race work. While the author cannot see what it is that has been lost, the powerful emotions that at times display aggressive impulses signal toward wounded subjectivity and her desire to hold onto intrinsically ambivalent lost objects. Following Freud's assertion that the unconscious desire can be mediated only through efforts to symbolise and Bion's assertion that the containing mind involves active process, the author attempts to investigate what racial melancholia may represent for herself as a teacher educator. In the final section, the author interprets the manifestations of racial melancholia as an effect of racialised society and concludes that while the conscious meaning cannot exceed the unconscious, by working through the state of racial melancholia, she is able to create new meanings for her affective responses and make better sense of teacher candidates’ resistance and their anxiety.     

Evaluation of a lower-body compression garment

The aims of this study were to determine how custom-fit compression shorts affect athletic performance and to examine the mechanical properties of the shorts. Ten male and 10 female track athletes on a university's nationally competitive track team, specializing in sprint or jump events, participated in the study. Testing utilized the compression shorts with loose-fitting gym shorts as the control garment. Several significant effects were revealed for the custom-fit compressive garment. Although 60?m sprint time was not affected, hip flexion angle was reduced. Skin temperature increased more and at a faster rate during a warm-up protocol. Muscle oscillation was decreased during vertical jump landing. Countermovement vertical jump height increased when the participants were wearing the custom-fit compression garment. In materials testing, the elasticity of the compressive garment provides increased flexion and extension torque at the end range of extension and flexion, respectively, and may assist the hamstrings in controlling the leg at the end of the swing phase in sprinting. The compressive garment significantly reduced impact force by 27% compared with American football pants alone. Through various mechanisms, these findings may translate into an effect on athletic performance and a reduction in injuries.