Project MUSE®: Radical Teacher - Latest Articles
https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/414
Project MUSE®: Latest articles in Radical Teacher.daily12026-05-14T00:00:00-05:00text/htmlen-USVol. 81 (2008) through Vol. 95 (2013).Latest Articles: Radical TeacherTWOProject MUSE®Radical Teacher1941-08320191-4847Latest articles in Radical Teacher. Feed provided by Project MUSE®Introduction:
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/523326
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This issue of Radical Teacher considers the possibilities and limits of radical teaching inside prisons and other institutions of incarceration. Following on the Summer 2010 issue of Radical Teacher, “Teaching Against the Prison Industrial Complex” that examined strategies for teaching against carceral institutions from outside their walls, this issue asks what happens when we teach inside carceral institutions such as prisons and detention centers.1 Assuming there is nothing intrinsically “radical” about teaching inside prison walls, the essays in this issue examine practices of critical pedagogy in the disciplinary context of the prison. We also asked authors to frame their teaching in terms of educational
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-14T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/414/image/coversmallIntroduction:2013-10-17text/htmlen-USIntroduction:2013-10-172013TWOProject MUSE®278082026-05-14T00:00:00-05:002013-10-17An “Impossible Profession”? The Radical University in Prison
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/523327
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It carries to their greatest intensity all the procedures to be found in the other disciplinary mechanisms. It must be the most powerful machinery for imposing a new form on the perverted individual; its mode of action is the constraint of a total education: “In prison the government may dispose of the liberty of the person and of the time of the prisoner; from then on, one can imagine the power of the education … which, in short, takes possession of man as a whole, of all the physical and moral faculties that are in him and of the time in which he is himself”.You say you’re a balla! Real ballas have educations.DOC will pay for your education now! Take Advantage, Man! Take Advantage.Sixty years ago, Michael
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-14T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/414/image/coversmallAn “Impossible Profession”? The Radical University in Prison2013-10-17text/htmlen-USAn “Impossible Profession”? The Radical University in Prison2013-10-172013TWOProject MUSE®453312026-05-14T00:00:00-05:002013-10-17Distinguishing Radical Teaching from Merely Having Intense Experiences While Teaching in Prison
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/523328
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Imagine a teacher who has just had a good teaching experience. Looking back at a semester of work, it seems clear that the course affected the language, thoughts, and actions of the students. What is more, the intellectual universe of the teacher was challenged at times, blurring the line between “teacher” and “student.” Everyone in the class had an opportunity to learn something and to share something that the others did not know. While all participants may not have come to the same conclusions, they shared challenges and changes of mind that could not be anticipated when the course first started.Add to the surprise that the course was taught in a prison. I have become accustomed to hearing teachers say, “Wow—what
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-14T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/414/image/coversmallDistinguishing Radical Teaching from Merely Having Intense Experiences While Teaching in Prison2013-10-17text/htmlen-USDistinguishing Radical Teaching from Merely Having Intense Experiences While Teaching in Prison2013-10-172013TWOProject MUSE®481952026-05-14T00:00:00-05:002013-10-17Rewriting Confinement: Feminist and Queer Critical Literacy in SpeakOut! Writing Workshops
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/523329
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“I don’t think we were glorifying here. We have to have a sense of humor about what we’re going through or we won’t get through this. We have to see the funny parts. Sometimes that’s even better than focusing on the bad all the time.”“I just went to go that one day but then we got the pens, paper, and folder. That is like gold in here. It’s like coffee and lotion.… Girls would kill in here for that stuff. Just kidding. But if one girl loses her pen, we all know which one is ours—even though they are all the same.”As these two writers illustrate, the regulatory mandates of carceral spaces often mediate the possibility of situating literacy as activism. Writing topics are filtered. Common writing tools are strictly
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-14T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/414/image/coversmallRewriting Confinement: Feminist and Queer Critical Literacy in SpeakOut! Writing Workshops2013-10-17text/htmlen-USRewriting Confinement: Feminist and Queer Critical Literacy in SpeakOut! Writing Workshops2013-10-172013TWOProject MUSE®381802026-05-14T00:00:00-05:002013-10-17Is Another Pedagogical World Possible? Teaching Globalization to My Fellow Prisoners
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/523330
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Before my six and a half years of incarceration I spent more than a decade as a popular educator for trade unions and social movements in South Africa. During that time I took my role as a critical pedagogue of the Freirian stripe quite seriously. However, my years as a teacher’s aide had lowered my pedagogical horizons to helping people pass their GED math test. 1 I had rigorously studied the mock exams, designed a plethora of practice tests, and tirelessly drilled the motivated and the not-so-motivated on simultaneous linear equations and the Pythagorean theorem. While in free life my workshop plans overflowed with learner activity and critiques of neoliberalism, the watchful eye of prison authorities and my own
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-14T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/414/image/coversmallIs Another Pedagogical World Possible? Teaching Globalization to My Fellow Prisoners2013-10-17text/htmlen-USIs Another Pedagogical World Possible? Teaching Globalization to My Fellow Prisoners2013-10-172013TWOProject MUSE®506152026-05-14T00:00:00-05:002013-10-17Geographies of Prejudice: Self-Narration and Radical Teaching in the Prison
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/523331
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Most days, my walk to class takes me across the university’s well-manicured quad. I pass the hundred-year-old trees, the ubiquitous Frisbee-tossing undergraduates, and the numerous reminders of Abraham Lincoln’s legacy. Each fall semester brings with it the sound of hopeful laughter, the sight of nervous freshmen, and the feeling of expectancy—meeting new friends, balancing studies and socialization, graduating and moving into the uncertain “real world.” This semester, however, my walk lacks this festive blend of joie de vivre and youthful debauchery. In its place, I hear the ominous slamming of steel doors, see the wary gaze of jaded guards, and feel the looming presence of four gun towers. To reach my classroom
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-14T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/414/image/coversmallGeographies of Prejudice: Self-Narration and Radical Teaching in the Prison2013-10-17text/htmlen-USGeographies of Prejudice: Self-Narration and Radical Teaching in the Prison2013-10-172013TWOProject MUSE®175812026-05-14T00:00:00-05:002013-10-17Ecology Behind Bars: A Teaching Garden Cultivates Free Minds
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/523332
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As a biologist in the natural sciences, one of the most important aspects of my own education and training was the ability to spend course time outdoors: it allowed me to engage directly with the material I was learning and develop a strong understanding of the patterns and processes shaping natural systems. Now, as a post-secondary educator, I have found that the value of exposure to natural phenomena is quantitatively measurable in students’ ability to learn and communicate course material. Learning biology while isolated from nature is nearly impossible. The conventional manner in which biology courses are taught in most universities includes very limited exposure to natural systems. Teaching biology using
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-14T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/414/image/coversmallEcology Behind Bars: A Teaching Garden Cultivates Free Minds2013-10-17text/htmlen-USEcology Behind Bars: A Teaching Garden Cultivates Free Minds2013-10-172013TWOProject MUSE®160852026-05-14T00:00:00-05:002013-10-17The Transformative Power of Holocaust Education in Prison: A Teacher and Student Account
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/523333
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In the fall of 2010, guided by the value of accessible higher education, I taught a course on the Holocaust through the Education Justice Project (EJP), a program at the University of Illinois that provides upper-level college courses and educational programming to incarcerated men at Danville Correctional Center. My chief concern for the class was how to navigate modes of inquiry at the intersection of two carceral contexts: the Nazi camps and the U.S. penal system. While there are clear dissimilarities between the two contexts, I anticipated that a study of the Holocaust through the discourses of public prejudice and state-sanctioned mass-incarceration would lead the students to a critical engagement with U.S.
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-14T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/414/image/coversmallThe Transformative Power of Holocaust Education in Prison: A Teacher and Student Account2013-10-17text/htmlen-USThe Transformative Power of Holocaust Education in Prison: A Teacher and Student Account2013-10-172013TWOProject MUSE®247792026-05-14T00:00:00-05:002013-10-17An Aesthetic Education in the Era of Globalization by Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak (review)
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/523334
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With such a specific title, readers would expect Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak’s new book to make a bold case for teaching aesthetics in the United States and abroad despite the utilitarian exigencies of global capitalism. Readers would expect, in other words, a sustained definition of aesthetic education, a detailed analysis of its place among other types of training, and a constructive argument for its value in the world today. If one is looking for these things, An Aesthetic Education in the Era of Globalization will disappoint. Recent books by Louis Menand or Martha Nussbaum, for example, better articulate precise political positions that would prove useful as teachers campaign against legislators and
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-14T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/414/image/coversmallAn Aesthetic Education in the Era of Globalization by Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak (review)2013-10-17text/htmlen-USAn Aesthetic Education in the Era of Globalization by Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak (review)2013-10-172013TWOProject MUSE®102502026-05-14T00:00:00-05:002013-10-17Antiracist Education: From Theory to Practice by Julie Kailin (review)
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/523335
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Julie Kailin’s book Antiracist Education: From Theory to Practice (2002), based on her ethnographic research done in schools in a Midwestern city (pseudonym Lakeview), begins strong and finishes even stronger. This book makes the compelling arguments that “teachers have to become agents of antiracist change” (122), that “antiracist education [should] become an inherent part of both preservice and in-service teacher education” (74), and that “a critical multicultural perspective should be infused in the entire curriculum” (23). The book consists of eight chapters separated into two parts—one dedicated to theory and the other to practice.In Part I Kailin discusses the racist underpinnings of our history and culture.
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-14T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/414/image/coversmallAntiracist Education: From Theory to Practice by Julie Kailin (review)2013-10-17text/htmlen-USAntiracist Education: From Theory to Practice by Julie Kailin (review)2013-10-172013TWOProject MUSE®71662026-05-14T00:00:00-05:002013-10-17Teaching Notes: Side by Side: Israeli and Palestinian Cinema
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/523336
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A short six-week course about Israeli and Palestinian film is a trying experience for many reasons. Americans mainly have a distorted, media-generated notion of the histories, politics, and cultures that inform these films. Standard class time does not accommodate screening whole films in class, which is important as a shared basis for feelings and discussion. A ‘side by side’ pattern that puts the two national cinemas in dialogue with one another invites difficult comparisons that expose inequalities in the funding, professional training, critical visibility, and distribution that mirror the political, military, and economical inequalities afflicting the region. And finally, depending on the people taking such a
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-14T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/414/image/coversmallTeaching Notes: Side by Side: Israeli and Palestinian Cinema2013-10-17text/htmlen-USTeaching Notes: Side by Side: Israeli and Palestinian Cinema2013-10-172013TWOProject MUSE®84912026-05-14T00:00:00-05:002013-10-17The Sixties in Film, Fiction, and Poetry
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/523337
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I taught this course at Trinity College in Hartford, Spring semester 2012, and once a year and a half before. Moodle, mentioned below, is an open source course management system that Trinity uses.This course focuses on the relationships between social movements and art (film, fiction, poetry). It is not an effort to survey ALL of the creative work associated with the Sixties, nor is it intended as an historical account of the period (though some understanding of the history is critical to what we will do). We will deal both with works created in the Sixties and works created about that time; one concern, in fact, is how they differ.The social movements with which we will deal include the civil rights and black
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-14T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/414/image/coversmallThe Sixties in Film, Fiction, and Poetry2013-10-17text/htmlen-USThe Sixties in Film, Fiction, and Poetry2013-10-172013TWOProject MUSE®130662026-05-14T00:00:00-05:002013-10-17News for Educational Workers
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/523338
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A survey of teachers released from MetLife shows that of the nation’s 3.2 million teachers, the majority of them are dissatisfied with their work, marking “the lowest job satisfaction numbers since 1989, with just 44 percent… ‘very satisfied’… down from 59 percent in 2009 and 62 percent in 2008.” In addition, a third of public school teachers would like to find different work. The majority of teachers do not mind measures of student learning as a part of their teaching assessment, but they do resent the reliance on standardized tests to measure student learning (“What Teachers Want,” The Nation, May 14, 2012).For Teacher Appreciation Week in May 2012, President Obama kicked off the week by announcing that it would
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-14T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/414/image/coversmallNews for Educational Workers2013-10-17text/htmlen-USNews for Educational Workers2013-10-172013TWOProject MUSE®158372026-05-14T00:00:00-05:002013-10-17Contributors’ Notes
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/523339
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Robert Azzarello is an Assistant Professor of English at Southern University at New Orleans. He is the author of Queer Environmentality: Ecology,Evolution, and Sexuality in American Literature (Ashgate 2012).
Stephanie Becker recently completed her master’s degree at Colorado State University, where she is now working as an instructor. She continues to volunteer with the SpeakOut! program.
Michael Brawn has been a student with the Education Justice Project since the summer of 2004.
Jose Cabrales is a “founding student” of the Education Justice Project and is also a member of the Language Partners Program at EJP.
Kirsten K. Coe is an ecologist and post-secondary educator currently conducting research on the
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-14T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/414/image/coversmallContributors’ Notes2013-10-17text/htmlen-USContributors’ Notes2013-10-172013TWOProject MUSE®74022026-05-14T00:00:00-05:002013-10-17Images
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/523340
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YOLI PETRA STROEVEDESIGN ACTION COLLECTIVEERIK
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-14T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/414/image/coversmallImages2013-10-17text/htmlen-USImages2013-10-172013TWOProject MUSE®14472026-05-14T00:00:00-05:002013-10-17