Children and Citizenship
I've been thinking about how children are inculcated from a young age to other, marginalize, and treat other human beings as "less than." This idea was partially sparked by a study by Lalenja Harrington, an extraordinary artist and a grad student in my Feminist and Queer Performance-Making class. Her study worked with children's playground clapping songs: at first it created a sense of delight and intimate familiarity and then revealed, chillingly, the deep anti-black racism embedded in the song. I've also thought of the RSS rewriting textbooks to reflect pro-Hitler ideologies of racial purity, and anti-aboriginal legends taught in Taiwanese public schools. On the flip side, of course, there are traditional folktales of resistance and cultural retention, such as the Brer Rabbit stories. I've been thinking about the power of myth to de-historicize dominant power structures by making those power structures seem "timeless" and "natural," and the various ways in which we can subversively reframe these hegemonic scripts.
ASSIGNMENT:
Find a children's story, song, textbook, or other material connected to your particular Reimagining Citizenship topic: this material may either espouse a dominant ideology or embody resistance. Do some dramaturgical research to understand some of different interpretations, as well as historical and cultural context, surrounding this story/song/text/etc., if possible.
Create a study inspired by this children's "text" that cuts across the grain of the story by retelling it from a viewpoint other than the one it is written from. Your study may be in any medium and should incorporate an object that you feel is emotionally/poetically related to your Reimagining Citizenship topic (for instance, Pacific seawater for blood run), but is not directly drawn from the children's text/material.
Feel free to take any element of this assignment that is useful to you. You are welcome to modify, cut, throw out, or translate in whatever way you need.
POST YOUR RESPONSE BY APRIL 11th, 2016
I've been thinking about how children are inculcated from a young age to other, marginalize, and treat other human beings as "less than." This idea was partially sparked by a study by Lalenja Harrington, an extraordinary artist and a grad student in my Feminist and Queer Performance-Making class. Her study worked with children's playground clapping songs: at first it created a sense of delight and intimate familiarity and then revealed, chillingly, the deep anti-black racism embedded in the song. I've also thought of the RSS rewriting textbooks to reflect pro-Hitler ideologies of racial purity, and anti-aboriginal legends taught in Taiwanese public schools. On the flip side, of course, there are traditional folktales of resistance and cultural retention, such as the Brer Rabbit stories. I've been thinking about the power of myth to de-historicize dominant power structures by making those power structures seem "timeless" and "natural," and the various ways in which we can subversively reframe these hegemonic scripts.
ASSIGNMENT:
Find a children's story, song, textbook, or other material connected to your particular Reimagining Citizenship topic: this material may either espouse a dominant ideology or embody resistance. Do some dramaturgical research to understand some of different interpretations, as well as historical and cultural context, surrounding this story/song/text/etc., if possible.
Create a study inspired by this children's "text" that cuts across the grain of the story by retelling it from a viewpoint other than the one it is written from. Your study may be in any medium and should incorporate an object that you feel is emotionally/poetically related to your Reimagining Citizenship topic (for instance, Pacific seawater for blood run), but is not directly drawn from the children's text/material.
Feel free to take any element of this assignment that is useful to you. You are welcome to modify, cut, throw out, or translate in whatever way you need.
POST YOUR RESPONSE BY APRIL 11th, 2016
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