2010 Call For Proposals
31st Annual Bergamo Conference on Curriculum Theory and Classroom Practice
(Re)Negotiating Nostalgia: Building Curriculum Communities Without Consensus
Location:
Bergamo Conference Center
Dayton, Ohio
October 14 – 16, 2010
View Map and/or get directions.
New Deadline: August 22, 2010
We have been called upon by Professor Janet L. Miller, the founding organizer (with William F. Pinar) of Bergamo Conference and JCT, to complicate our relationships with the histories of the North American Curriculum Field. In her keynote address titled, “Nostalgia for the Future: Imagining Histories of JCT and Bergamo,” delivered at last year’s 30th Anniversary Bergamo Conference, Professor Miller theorized nostalgia in a more nuanced way that has the potential to allow us to carry our pasts forward in transformative rather than restrictive ways. Traditional understandings of nostalgia (romanticized longings for the way we believe things were) may bind our scholarly communities to repeating stagnant discourses bound by the limitations of these perceived histories. She cautions curriculum scholars to avoid making imperialist nostalgic claims such as declaring the Reconceptualization a victory over the Tyler Rationale. Instead it is nostalgia for the future, what she describes as a “most modest form of nostalgia”, that we must collectively undertake. This year’s Bergamo Conference asks that we engage with our possible futures by pulling apart the slices of these histories and understanding these shifting memories as constantly in-the-making.
Our collective engagement in this memory work cannot lead to a monolithic curriculum field, beholden to what could only be a false collectivity. To this end, at this year’s Bergamo Conference we will continue to work toward creating curriculum communities without consensus. We must dwell in our differences and seek understandings that can only blossom from thoughtful engagement with these tensions. To actively cultivate the Bergamo Conference as a curriculum community without consensus we propose to: avoid temptations to seek resolution to our intellectual disputes; weave different theoretical perspectives together in order to develop new, tentative, partial understandings; and understand ourselves as interconnected, but necessarily independent thinkers engaged in the collective act of constantly remaking conceptions of curriculum.
We invite teachers, students, scholars, theorists, administrators, and cultural workers to join us in this endeavor at The 2010 Bergamo Conference on Curriculum Theory and Classroom Practice. Reflecting our commitment to diverse modes of understanding curriculum, this year’s conference features three keynotes and respondents whose work embodies the spirit of this call to community. We are offering the opportunity for scholars to participate in one of three pre-conference institutes hosted by accomplished scholars that will focus on post-colonial thought in education, feminist poststructural historical research and theories, and activisms in education. A new series of conference sessions titled “Provoking Dialogue(s)” will feature the authors of prominent and influential curriculum studies books with dialoguers who will provide their own take on these texts. The conference will also feature three diverse and dynamic all-conference spotlight sessions, nightly social and cultural events, and professional development opportunities for graduate students.
Keynotes
Therese Quinn is an Associate Professor of Art Education at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC). Her most recent publications are Flaunt It! Queers Organizing for Public Education and Justice, which was co-written with Erica Meiners (Peter Lang, 2009) and Handbook for Social Justice in Education (Routledge, 2009). In 2009 she spent five months in Finland as a Fulbright Professor at the University of Helsinki, teaching and researching school choice and student resistance to university privatization. Quinn co-edits the Teachers College Press Series, Teaching for Social Justice, serves as president of the SAIC American Association of University Professors (AAUP) Chapter, and writes about public and art education at her occasional blog, The Other Eye.
Sandy Grande is an Associate Professor and Chair of the Education Department at Connecticut College. She is currently working on developing an Indigenous Think Tank, with a home location in New York City. Her research and teaching are profoundly inter- and cross-disciplinary, and interfaces critical, feminist, Indigenous and Marxist theories of education with the concerns of Indigenous education. Her book, Red Pedagogy: Native American Social and Political Thought (Rowman and Littlefield, 2004) has been met with critical acclaim. She has also published several articles including “Critical Theory and American Indian Identity and Intellectualism,” The International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education, and “American Indian Geographies of Identity and Power: At the Crossroads of Indigena and Mestizaje,” Harvard Educational Review.
Madeleine R. Grumet is a Professor in the School of Education and in the Department of Communication Studies in the College of Arts and Sciences. Drawing her scholarship from literature and philosophy, Grumet is interested in understanding how society influences what goes on in schools. Grumet’s early work explored the use of autobiographical narratives in the study of educational experience. In Bitter Milk: Women and Teaching, Grumet addressed the influence of gender on knowledge and teaching. Current projects address the arts and their integration into the curriculum of the academic disciplines and analyses of current trends in curriculum theory. In 2009 Grumet received the American Educational Research Association Curriculum Studies Division (B) Lifetime Achievement Award.
Respondents
RubĂ©n A. Gaztambide-Fernández is responding to Therese Quinn’s address. Gaztambide-Fernández is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Curriculum, Teaching, and Learning at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education of the University of Toronto. He teaches courses in curriculum theory, cultural studies, and the arts in education. His book The Best of the Best: Becoming Elite at an American Boarding School (2009, Harvard University Press) is based on two years of ethnographic research at an elite boarding school in the United States. His current research focuses on the experiences of young artists attending urban arts high schools in Canada and the United States.
Peter McLaren is responding to Sandy Grande’s address. McLaren is Professor of Urban Schooling at the Graduate School of Education and Information Studies, University of California, Los Angeles. He is the author and editor of forty-five books, five of which have won national and/or international awards, and hundreds of scholarly articles and chapters. Professor McLaren’s latest books are The Havoc of Capitalism (edited with Greg Martin, Donna Houston and Juha Suoranta, Sense Publications), A Critical Pedagogy of Consumption, Living and Learning in the Shadow of the “Shopocalypse” (edited with Jennifer Sandlin, Routledge) and Academic Repression: Reflections from the Academic Industrial Complex (with Steve Best and Anthony Nocella, AK Press).
Jen Gilbert is responding to Madeleine R. Grumet’s address. Gilbert is an Associate Professor of Education at York University in Toronto, Canada. Her research interests include adolescent development, theories of sex education, and the use of literature and film in teacher education.  She is currently working on a project that investigates the meanings of “abstinence” for adults and youth in sex education and is completing a book manuscript, Between Curiosity and Human Rights: Sexuality, Human Development and Education.
Pre-Conference Institutes
This year’s conference will feature 3 full-day pre-conference institutes that address critical issues in curriculum studies on Wednesday, October 13, 2010. These institutes will provide an opportunity for established scholars in particular areas of curriculum theory and educational research to provide instruction and engagement, as well as facilitate dialogue between participants on their areas of expertise. The exact format, approach, and content of these institutes will be entirely determined by the facilitators. Space will be limited and on a first-come, first-serve basis. There will be an additional cost to attendees in order to cover the expenses of conducting the institutes.
Institute A – Transnational Perspectives, Neoliberal Times, and Education Policy
This institute will be conducted by Greg Dimitriadis and Nina Asher. Dimitriadis is a Professor of Educational Policy at the University at Buffalo, The State University of New York. Asher is the J. Franklin Bayhi Endowed Professor in the College of Education at Louisiana State University. Both Dimitriadis and Asher have published extensively in top-tier scholarly journals on issues of race, nation, globalization, and identity.
Institute B – Researching and Theorizing Feminist Poststructural Histories
This institute will be conducted by Petra Munro Hendry and Ann Winfield. Hendry is the St. Bernard Chapter of the LSU Alumni Association Endowed Professor in the College of Education at Louisiana State University. Winfield is an Associate Professor of Education at Roger Williams University. Hendry and Winfield have both consistently utilized feminist poststructural research methodologies in their research, teaching and writing. Â Both are prolific writers, having published in numerous scholarly journals.
Institute C – Activism and Education
This institute will be conducted by William Ayers, Erica Meiners and Therese Quinn. Ayers is the Distinguished Professor of Education and Senior University Scholar at the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC). Meiners is an Associate Professor of Education and Women’s Studies at Northeastern Illinois University. Quinn is an Associate Professor of Art Education and Director of BFA with Emphasis in Art Education Program at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Each is an accomplished scholar-activist in their own right, and they have published together on social justice issues and education.
All-Conference Spotlight Sessions
There are three all-conference spotlight sessions planned for this year. The sessions will focus on poststructural feminisms in theory and research; economics and material analysis in education; and articulating feminisms that consider and emerge from issues of gender, race, nation, and identity. Currently confirmed participants in these sessions include Peter McLaren, Patti Lather, Petra Munro Hendry, Ann Winfield, Wanda Pillow, Denise Taliaferro Baszile, Nichole Guillory, Nina Asher, Kirsten Edwards, Aliya Rahman, and Janet L. Miller.
Provoking Dialogue(s) Series
The conference will feature a new program titled “Provoking Dialogue(s).” These sessions will provide an opportunity for authors or editors of books that are significant within the curriculum studies field, dialoguers who are also notable scholars within the field, and the audience to engage in provocative dialogues using the featured book as a jumping off point. A few of the books highlighted as a part of this year’s series include Peter Taubman’s Teaching by Numbers: Deconstructing the Discourse of Standards and Accountability in Education, Pedagogy of Praxis in the Age of Empire: Toward a New Humanism by Peter McLaren and Nathalia Jaramillo, and Erik Malewski’s recent anthology Curriculum Studies Handbook: The Next Moment.
Graduate Student Opportunities
The Bergamo Conference values and recognizes the innovative and outstanding scholarship that graduate students present at the conference each year.  A Graduate Student Welcome Breakfast is planned to allow students to get acquainted with the co-editors of JCT. Other graduate student programming includes a series of Graduate Student Roundtables, where leading scholars in the field will discuss various topics of interest to students including, but not limited to: “How to Publish,” “Integrating Activism,” and “Getting a Job in Academe.” Once again, graduate students whose proposals are accepted for presentation at this year’s conference will have the opportunity to compete for the Distinguished Graduate Student Paper Award. The winner will have their paper published in JCT.
Book Sale
The annual Bergamo book sale is a tradition of the conference, with major curriculum theory texts available for purchase every year. A full list of books at this year’s conference will be posted on the site in September.
Entertainment and Wellness
The conference will, as in past years, offer evening entertainment, fun, and networking opportunities. Club Bergamo is back and will be hosted by Denise Taliaferro Baszile and feature the spinning of DJ Aliya Rahman.  To help you stay stress free and to allow you to adhere to any exercise goals while at the conference, we will be offering a morning jog and a yoga session throughout the weekend. In addition to these programs, we are inaugurating the “Cucumber and Sun-Beams Award” – a competition spoofing William G. Wraga’s “Extracting Sun-Beams out of Cucumbers: The Retreat from Practice in Reconceptualized Curriculum Studies” to see which attendee can come up with the most audacious, clever, and creative paper title.