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Call for Manuscripts

Difficult Returns: Curriculum History Disrupted

Special Issue of the Journal for Curriculum Theorizing

Guest Editors: Ann G. Winfield (Roger Williams University) and Petra Munro Hendry (Louisiana State University)

The reconceptualization of curriculum studies has long acknowledged the necessity of historical perspective for the purpose of revealing the ways in which history is, and has been, used to codify socio-political/ideological context. However, we maintain that the reconceptualist move to deconstruct curriculum history has struggled to extricate itself from progressive axioms which are wedded to a teleology of reason, a form of high modernism. Consequently, we must return to the difficult terrain of extricating curriculum history in ways which disrupt it from the normative tenets of modernism. As we return to the project of reconceptualizing curriculum history we utilize a remembrance pedagogy which challenges us to live not in the past but in relation with the past, acknowledging the claim that the past has on the present (Simon, Rosenberg, and Eppert 2000). This return will require new theorizing regarding the normative tropes of modernism and the extent to which linear narratives and positivistic aspirations for a ‘science’ of history have allowed the field of curriculum studies to become increasingly ahistorical. We find this ahistoricism problematic, resulting in a false neutrality which has served to deintellectualize and depoliticize the curriculum field at the same time as it casts historical work as either a form of nostalgia or complicit in the maintenance of the grand narratives.  Our hope for this special issue is to disrupt history and engage in a difficult return to the work of reconceptualizing curriculum history.

The implications of a “new” curriculum history (Baker, 2009) for re-imagining traditional narratives such as, for example, the common school movement as the origin of public education or the concept of public education as critical to democracy, disrupt a historiographical approach that has been focused on transforming the curriculum by constructing a unifying narrative that reflects fundamental or universal pedagogical and social beliefs. Dominant themes like democracy, progress, the common school movement and the relation of school to the history of America have come to function as “real” and taken for granted truths that obscure more complex, complicated and disorderly histories. Any attempt to move away from the “real” of progressive linearity requires a refracted lens that views historical inquiry from multiple disciplinary perspectives and allows for the eradication of linearity and origins as a disciplinary infrastructure and instead provides space for an understanding of the way ideology and memory operate in the minutia of everyday life in the present. Viewed in this way, history becomes a permeable force in the present moment and reveals the mechanisms by which we enact, and are enacted upon by what Foucault termed ‘the redistribution of discursive space.’ In terms of perspective, the present dominance of linearity and progress produces a misdirected gaze; a gaze that needs as fuel an identification of/with monumental events from which we can build our narratives. Curriculum theorizing is in a transitional position that requires resistance to the historically constructed search for grand narratives and origins. We call for curriculum theorists to instead utilize inter/cross disciplinary analytical frameworks to pursue a formulation of historical curricular inquiry that replaces linearity with porosity and acknowledges the simultaneity of past and present.

This special issue seeks to reexamine the relationship between curriculum history and curriculum theory. Based on the belief that history is theoretical, this issue seeks to consider the question of the nature of history/historiography in its various ontological, epistemological, methodological and ideological/discursive manifestations. While the very nature of history-specifically what constitutes time, space, place and subjectivity-is under debate, this issue will also address the practice of history including the ethical, methodological, archaeological, archival, and textual problematics of engaging in and writing history. Lastly, this issue will include pieces that are grounded in historical research, specifically those which engage the reader to reconsider the relationships between curriculum history and theory. Special attention will be given to those pieces which are interdisciplinary, drawing on fields such as anthropology, gender studies, postcolonial studies, queer theory, religion and philosophy, cultural studies, international studies and literary studies.

References:

Baker, B. (Ed.). (2009). New Curriculum History. Rotterdam: Sense Publishers.

Simon, Roger J., Rosenburg, Sharon, & Eppert, Claudia, (Eds) (2000). Between Hope and Despair: Pedagogy and the Remembrance of Historical Trauma. New York: Rowman & Littlefield.

Authors wishing to submit manuscripts in response to this call for proposals must have their work submitted via email to both Petra Munro Hendry <phendry@lsu.edu> and Annie Winfield <awinfield@rwu.edu> no later than June 15, 2012.  All manuscripts will be subject to a double-blind review process. Potential authors will be notified of their acceptance in this issue by Oct 1, 2012, with revisions to be completed by February 1, 2012 and an expected publication date of April, 2013.

Manuscripts should be prepared according to the author’s guidelines posted on the JCT website <http://journal.jctonline.org/index.php/jct/about/submissions#authorGuidelines>. Please note that these requirements include that the manuscript ascribe to the following guidelines:

1. Abstract of 150 words.
2. No more than 25 pages in length including references
3. Double-spaced throughout
4. 1-inch margins on all sides
5. Written in 12 point, Times New Roman
6. Footnotes should be gathered at the end of the paper
7. Utilize the 6^th edition of the American Psychological Association

Questions pertaining to this call for proposals should be addressed to Petra Munro Hendry <phendry@lsu.edu> or to Annie Winfield <awinfield@rwu.edu>.