Race, Class, and Gender

Constructions of mathematicians in popular culture and learners’ narratives: a study or mathematical and non-mathematical subjectivities

by Heather Mendick

This paper was co-authored with Marie-Pierre Moreau and Debbie Epstein. This paper was published in the Cambridge Journal of Education in 2010, volume 40, issue 1, pages 25-38. If your library subscribes then the hyperlink will take you to where you can access the paper. If not, then email me and I'll send you a copy.

In this paper, based on a project funded by the UK Economic and Social Research Council considering how people... more In this paper, based on a project funded by the UK Economic and Social Research Council considering how people position themselves in relation to popular representations of mathematics and mathematicians, we explore constructions of mathematicians in popular culture and the ways learners make meanings from these. Drawing on an analysis of popular cultural texts, we argue that popular discourses overwhelmingly construct mathematicians as white, heterosexual, middle-class men, yet also construct them as 'other' through systems of binary oppositions between those doing and those not doing mathematics. Turning to the analysis of a corpus of 27 focus groups with school and university students in England and Wales, we explore how such images are deployed by learners. We argue that while learners' views of mathematicians parallel in key ways popular discourses, they are not passively absorbing these as they are simultaneously aware of the clichd nature of popular cultural images.

Review of Crime as Structured Social Action by James W Messerschmidt

by Carl L Bankston

The American upper class and the American horse industry from 1865 to 1929

by Perky Beisel

Locating the learner within EU policy: trajectories, complexities, identities

by Jacky Brine

Published 2006
in B. Francis & C. Leathwood (Eds)
GENDER AND LIFELONG LEARNING: CRITICAL FEMINIST ENGAGEMENTS
London: Routledge.

This chapter focuses on the lifelong learning policies of the European Union and develops a feminist analysis that... more This chapter focuses on the lifelong learning policies of the European Union and develops a feminist analysis that asks, from within a theoretical framework of class and gender, which learners, what learning, when and why. This is pursued through a close analysis of the policy texts that are considered from within a framework of three trajectories: (1) the trajectory of governance; (2) the trajectory of time; and (3) the trajectory of contemporary textual influence. The chapter begins by contextualising the EU within a complex (backtracking) trajectory of inter-looping governance in order to highlight the significance of the focus upon it as a major policy-making level. Drawing together the insights from the three trajectories the chapter concludes with a further consideration of the primarily gendered (but clearly also classed and raced) learners constructed through the EU policies.

State Fatherhood: the Politics of Nationalism, Sexuality, and Race In Singapore

by Geraldine Heng

State Fatherhood: The Politics of Sexuality, Nationalism and Race In Singapore

by Geraldine Heng

The Invention of Race in the European Middle Ages II: Locations of Medieval Race

by Geraldine Heng

LITERATURE COMPASS 8.5 (MAY 2011): 275-293.

“The Invention of Race in the European Middle Ages”—a two-part article—questions the widely-held belief in critical... more “The Invention of Race in the European Middle Ages”—a two-part article—questions the widely-held belief in critical race theory that “race” is a category without purchase before the modern era.

Surveying a variety of cultural documents from the 13th, 14th, and 15th centuries—chronicles, hagiography, literature, stories, sculpture, maps, canon law, statuary, illustrations, religious commentary, and architectural features—the study considers racial thinking, racial law, racial formation, and racialized behaviors and phenomena in medieval Europe before the emergence of a recognizable vocabulary of race.

One focus is how a political hermeneutics of religion—so much in play again today—enabled the positing of fundamental human differences in biopolitical and culturalist ways to create strategic essentialisms demarcating human kinds and populations. Another focus is how race figures in the emergence of homo europaeus and the identity of Western Europe (beginning as Latin Christendom) in this time.

Part I—“Race Studies, Modernity, and the Middle Ages”—surveys the current state of race theory, and puts in conversation race studies and medieval studies, fields that exist on either side of a vast divide.

Part II—“Locations of Medieval Race”—identifies and analyzes specific concretions of medieval race, while continuing to develop the theoretical arguments of Part I.

The Invention of Race in the European MIddle Ages I: Race Studies, Modernity, and the Middle Ages

by Geraldine Heng

LITERATURE COMPASS 8.5 (MAY 2011): 258-274.

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/lico.2011.8.issue-5/issuetoc

“The Invention of Race in the European Middle Ages”—a two-part article—questions the widely-held belief in critical... more “The Invention of Race in the European Middle Ages”—a two-part article—questions the widely-held belief in critical race theory that “race” is a category without purchase before the modern era.

Surveying a variety of cultural documents from the 13th, 14th, and 15th centuries—chronicles, hagiography, literature, stories, sculpture, maps, canon law, statuary, illustrations, religious commentary, and architectural features—the study considers racial thinking, racial law, racial formation, and racialized behaviors and phenomena in medieval Europe before the emergence of a recognizable vocabulary of race.

One focus is how a political hermeneutics of religion—so much in play again today—enabled the positing of fundamental human differences in biopolitical and culturalist ways to create strategic essentialisms demarcating human kinds and populations. Another focus is how race figures in the emergence of homo europaeus and the identity of Western Europe (beginning as Latin Christendom) in this time.

Part I—“Race Studies, Modernity, and the Middle Ages”—surveys the current state of race theory, and puts in conversation race studies and medieval studies, fields that exist on either side of a vast divide.

Part II—“Locations of Medieval Race”—identifies and analyzes specific concretions of medieval race, while continuing to develop the theoretical arguments of Part I.

“Back to Harlem: Abstract and Everyday Labor during the ‘Harlem Renaissance’” in The Harlem Renaissance Revisited: Politics, Arts, and Letters, ed. Jeffrey O. G. Ogbar. Johns Hopkins University Press, 2010), 74-90.

by Jacob Dorman

Part of a planned future project on the social history of Harlem during the New Negro Renaissance.

Examining everyday life and work patterns in 1920s Harlem illustrates that the abstracted Harlem of the literary... more Examining everyday life and work patterns in 1920s Harlem illustrates that the abstracted Harlem of the literary imagination is an inadequate replacement for the knowledge of Harlem to be gleaned through social history. Harlem's black workers inspired and helped create the abstraction of Harlem, but discrimination prevented them from earning their due. In theoretical terms, one could say that their labor never became fully abstracted. Whereas the abstract image of Harlem became a commodity to be sold in the primary market of publishing and the secondary market of academe, laboring Harlemites were unable to receive adequate compensation for their labors, cultural and or otherwise. And so living in Harlem not only systematically impoverished them, but in so doing distanced them from the abstraction of Harlem that was their original creation. Yet it is the abstract Harlem, and not the street-level version of living laborers, that which has come to stretch its mantle across the entire era of the "Harlem Renaissance." A close examination of the working life of 1920s Harlemites both retrieves and destroys different versions of Harlem: bringing into focus Harlem at the level of lived experience makes it clear that the "Harlem" in the name of the designation "Harlem Renaissance" is not a place but is rather rather is a symbolic abstraction. Appreciating this duality allows us to have our "Harlem Renaissance" and understand Harlem, too.

Postelection Blues

by Myra Mendible

Race, Surplus Population and the Marxist Theory of Imperialism

by Michael McIntyre

This paper argues that capitalist accumulation requires imperialist expansion, and that this expansion creates a... more This paper argues that capitalist accumulation requires imperialist expansion, and that this expansion creates a “raced” surplus laboring population. The argument proceeds in seven parts: that Marx’s assertion in chapter 25 of Capital that capitalism produces an ever-increasing relative surplus population is tenable in all but the longest of time frames; that imperial expansion played an important role in the transition to capitalism, though not for the reasons traditionally given; that overinvestment rather than the increasing organic composition of capital best explains imperial expansion in the capitalist era; that the uneven development of capitalism produces at the same time an uneven development of the surplus laboring population; that race has served as a mark of membership in the surplus laboring population; that by intertwining itself with the surplus laboring population, race serves to perpetuate itself despite its contradictions; and that despite this resilience, the contradictions of race also set in process conflicts that make it possible to overcome imperialism.

Exploring Bilingualism In a Monolingual School System: Insights From Turkish and Native Students From Belgian Schools

by Orhan Agirdag

Published in British Journal of Sociology of Education

A growing body of empirical studies indicates the educational benefits of bilingualism. Despite this tendency,... more A growing body of empirical studies indicates the educational benefits of bilingualism. Despite this tendency, bilingual minority students are being pressured by school authorities to shed their mother tongues. We conducted qualitative interviews with Turkish-bilingual and native-monolingual students in Flemish (Belgium) secondary schools to investigate how students evaluate their languages, how Dutch monolingualism is imposed, and how students respond to the dominance of monolingualism. Our results indicate that the mother tongues of bilingual students are mainly perceived as a barrier to educational and occupational success, while the benefits of bilingualism are unknown. Thus, both Turkish-bilingual and native-monolingual students approved of speaking one language. We also found that monolingualism was strongly imposed on students by explicit encouragement, formal punishment when bilinguals speak their mother tongue, and exclusion of foreign languages from the cultural repertoire of the school. These results are discussed as they relate to policy-makers, scholars of bilingualism and institutional racism.

Hollywood's Vision of Team Sports: Heroes, Race, and Gender

by Deborah Tudor

This book is available through online bookstores.