Deviance, Resistance, and Coalition in U.S. Education

Undergraduate / Graduate

This seminar centers individuals who reside on the margins of formal education in the US. We will focus on the ways of knowing, being, and doing that are marked as deviant in the context of education in the United States through a study of the experiences of students and educators holding non-dominant social locations due to their race, sexuality, gender, disability, and/or class. Course materials will primarily concern public K-12 schooling, with some supplementary readings from non-school educational contexts. In responding to course readings, we will consider together questions such as: What does education look like for students and teachers who occupy "deviant" social locations? What can we learn about educational realities and possibilities from the perspectives of students and teachers who hold non-dominant identities? What types of individual and collective action are available to those who occupy the margins of public schooling? What is the role of the researcher in producing scholarship that bears accurate and care-full witness to experiences outside of the mainstream? In this course, we will engage largely with empirical qualitative scholarship, as well as conceptual and theoretical texts, from anthropological, sociological, developmental, and non-academic scholars.