Journal of Curriculum Theorizing

Call for Manuscripts

Narrative of Curriculum in the South:

Lives In-Between Contested Race, Gender, Class, and Power

Special Issue of Journal of Curriculum Theorizing

Guest Editors: Ming Fang He & Sabrina Ross (Georgia Southern University)

This special issue of JCT is a continuation of dialogue on curriculum of the South with a particular focus on the power of counter narrative as a means to contest the official or meta narrative that often portrays disenfranchised individuals and groups as deficient and inferior. It is our intention that the counter narratives selected for this special issue challenge traditional ways of engaging in and interpreting curriculum research and affirm the significance of curriculum inquiry as a form of liberatory or radical democratic practice. It is also our intention that counter narratives help tell silenced and neglected stories of repressions, suppressions, and subjugations that challenge stereotypes of Southern women, Blacks, and other disenfranchised individuals and groups and encourage examination of the forces of slavery, racism, sexism, classism, religious repression, and other forms of oppression and suppression on the life and curriculum in schools, neighborhoods, and communities in the South.

The counter narratives of contested race, gender, class, power, and place are exemplified in Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglas (Douglass, 1845/2004), Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl (Jacobs, 1861/2001), Borderlands: La Frontera (Anzuldua, 1987), A Voice from the South (Cooper, 1988), Woman, Native, Other: Writing Postcoloniality and Feminism (Minh-Ha, 1989), Making Face, Making Soul: Creative and Critical Perspectives by Women of Color (Anzaldua, 1990), Faces at the Bottom of the Well: The Permanence of Racism (Bell, 1992), Savage Inequalities: Children in America’s Schools (Kozol, 1992), Their Highest Potential: An African-American School Community in the Segregated South (Siddle-Walker, 1996), Ghetto Schooling: A Political Economy of Urban Educational Reform (Anyon, 1997), Troubling the Angels: Women Living with HIV/AIDS (Lather & Smithies, 1997), Decolonizing Methodologies: Research and Indigenous Peoples (Tuhiwai Smith, 1999), A River Forever Flowing: Cross-Cultural Lives and Identities in the Multicultural Landscape (He, 2003), Red Pedagogy: Native American Social and Political Thought (Grande, 2004), Indigenous Storywork: Educating the Heart, Mind, Body, and Spirit (Archibald, 2008), Race Is–Race Isn’t: Critical Race Theory and Qualitative Studies in Education (Parker, Deyhle, & Villenas, 1999), and Personal~Passionate~Participatory Inquiry into Social Justice in Education (He & Phillion, 2008). The counter narratives are also demonstrated in Southern women writers’ fictions such as Their Eyes Were Watching God (Hurston, 1937/1965/2000), Strange Fruit (Smith, 1944), Killers of the Dream (Smith, 1949/1961), The Bluest Eye (Morrison, 1970), and The Color Purple (Walker, 1982).

This dialogue on narrative of curriculum in the South is originated from an exploration of the issue of place in Curriculum as Social Psychoanalysis: The Significance of Place (Kincheloe & Pinar, 1991), continued in An Indigenous Curriculum of Place (Ng-A-Fook, 2007), This Corner of Canaan: Curriculum Studies of Place & the Reconstruction of the South (Whitlock, 2007), The Autobiographical Demand of Place: Curriculum Inquiry in the American South (Casemore, 2008), and other works outside the field of curriculum studies such as Rooted in Place: Family and Belonging in a Southern Black Community (Falk, 2004), and Belonging: A Culture of Place (hooks, 2009). This dialogue is further invigorated by the analyses of the South begun by William M. Reynolds and Julie Webber in The Civic Gospel: A Political Cartography of Christianity (2009), continues to emerge in A Curriculum of Place: Understandings Emerging through the Southern Mist (Reynolds, in press) and in narrative analyses of the life in the South in South to a Queer Place: An Interdisciplinary Collection of Queer Lives and Southern Sensibilities (Whitlock, in press), A Quiet Awakening: Spinning Yarns from Granny’s Table in the New Rural South (Haynes, in press), Are You Mixed? A War Bride’s Granddaughter’s Narrative of Lives In-Between Contested Race, Gender, Class and Power (Carlyle, in press), and Exile Curriculum: Compelled to Live In-Between (He, in press).

In the Foreword, the Guest Editors provide an overview of diverse forms of curriculum inquiry and theoretical traditions of counter narrative illuminated in autobiography, biography, memoir, novel, short stories, documentary film, film, paintings, poems, songs, and artworks. Introducing the featured articles, the Editors invigorate conversations on contributions, potentials, and challenges of using counter narrative in diverse social justice oriented forms of curriculum inquiry. Afterthought by a scholar with expertise in curriculum studies in the South invigorates more dialogues on narrative of curriculum in an increasingly diversified, complicated, and contested South. We particularly call for manuscripts composed by curriculum inquirers who explore eclectic ways of engaging in activist oriented inquiries, tell counter narratives, and critically reflect upon their backgrounds, experiences, and values and the ways in which their personal histories, languages, cultures, identities, and experiences affect who they are as curriculum workers, how they interact with others, and how they live their lives in the South. We sincerely hope that curriculum inquirers to be featured in this issue raise challenging questions; transcend inquiry boundaries; transgress orthodoxy and dogma; research silenced narratives of underrepresented or disenfranchised individuals and groups with hearts and minds; embed inquiry in school, neighborhood, and community life to transform research into positive social and educational change; exile voluntarily; and work with underrepresented or disenfranchised individuals and groups to embody a particular stance in relation to power, freedom, and human possibility and to promote a more balanced and equitable human condition that embodies cultural, linguistic, and ecological diversity and plurality of identities of individuals, groups, tribes, and societies that is conducive to the flourishing of creative capacities that invigorate intellectual, emotional, moral, and spiritual existence for all.

Authors wishing to submit manuscripts in response to this call must have their work submitted electronically as Microsoft Word documents (doc/docx) to Ming Fang He and Sabrina Ross, the guest editors for this special issue, via both of their emails <mfhe@georgiasouthern.edu> and <sross@georgiasouthern.edu> no later than April 1, 2012. All manuscripts will be blind reviewed by at least two curriculum scholars. Potential authors will be notified of their acceptance to this issue by July 1, 2012 with an expected publication date of September 15, 2012. Manuscripts should be prepared according to the following additional guidelines:

1)      a cover sheet with name(s), contact information, and total word count to be included in a separate word file (NOTE: Manuscripts should not include any identifying information in headers, internal citations, or direct references to the author’s name)

2)      25 pages in length including references, double-spaced throughout, 1-inch margins on all sides, and 12 point Times New Roman

3)      endnotes preferred and references at the end of the paper

4)      the 5^th edition of the American Psychological Association required

Questions pertaining to this call for manuscripts should be addressed to Ming Fang He (mfhe@georgiasouthern.edu) and Sabrina Ross (sross@georgiasouthern.edu), the guest editors for this special issue, via both of their emails.