Critical Conversations Research Articles

Intersections of Masculinity, Sexuality, Nationality, and Racial Identity in James Baldwin

James Baldwin stands as an enigma: the fiery, race-conscious sculptor of Go Tell It, The Fire Next Time, and the homosexual creator of Giovanni’s Room, Another Country, and Just Above My Head. His essays on racial, and national identities are archived in Nobody Knows My Name and Notes on a Native Son. In life and death, Baldwin’s quest for an inclusive humanism has been received both negatively and positively by black and white audiences. Baldwin has also become the subject of a revisionist impeachment for his unending provocativeness. This ambivalence in reading Baldwin defies an epistemological and ontological center on intersectionality and questions of gay and queer literature, migrants, civil rights, politics, and the role of the artist in the African American archive. This article contributes to critical conversations on periodizing Baldwin and racial identities at a time when America in 2021 glowers under telling dramaturgy embedded in #BlackLivesMatter and #ICan’tBreathe.

Navigating End-of-Life Needs for a Person With Intellectual Disabilities and Their Caregivers.

People with intellectual disabilities (IDs) are living longer, with many experiencing significant barriers to accessing palliative care and hospice services. Families, caregivers, and direct support professionals comprise essential portions of the community of support often surrounding a person with IDs. For a variety of reasons, including clinician bias and communication difficulties, many people with IDs are excluded from critical conversations regarding their health and life. This article uses a blended case study to explore the complexities and unique considerations in ensuring ethical and practical end-of-life care for people with IDs. Decision-making must center on the person with ID and include them in ways they can understand, thus facilitating their right to autonomy. A collaborative approach to care with shared expertise between caregivers and hospice and palliative care services is key to providing effective, patient-centered care at the end of life. There are tremendous areas of opportunity to improve end-of-life care for this population by partnering with people with IDs, their families, and caregivers.

Disrupting unlawful exclusion from school of minoritised children and young people racialized as Black: using Critical Race Theory composite counter-storytelling

ABSTRACT Utilising Critical Race Theory (CRT) as the analytical lens and CRT composite counter-storytelling as the method, this paper seeks to illuminate the experiences of minoritised children and young people racialised as Black in relation to encounters with the exclusionary practice called ‘off-rolling’. We conceptualise off-rolling as a hidden process of exclusion in education, and the stories shared in this paper bring into sharp focus the educational, relational and emotional impacts of camouflaged exclusionary practices. We offer four composite stories of exclusion to demonstrate how some of the most vulnerable, excluded, and marginalised young Black people from English urban cities experience further marginalisation because off-rolling, we argue, places learners in a space (both physically and educationally) located beyond care and inclusion. Storytelling is mobilised as a central method in CRT for challenging and exposing exclusionary practices, as it foregrounds the knowledge and lived experience of people of colour and we explore the processes of constructing such counter-stories. As an encouragement to reflection and critical conversation about unlawful exclusion and racial disparities, this paper was written with three goals in mind. The first is that it may inspire educators of colour to tell counter-stories that name their own reality and experiences of exclusion. Second, that in reading and responding to counter-stories, white educators will be encouraged to develop their own racial literacy. Finally, the third goal is that the call to action is answered from within and beyond the confines of academia, where inclusion and racial justice in education can no longer be left to wait.

Urban Space and Everyday Adaptations

This paper addresses Jem Bendell’s concept of “deep adaptation” in the Anthropocene through the lens of everyday urban practices in contemporary Northern Europe. It proposes that this “deep adaptation” should be defined less in relation to a socio-ecological “collapse” and more through everyday occurrences in presentday urban environments.
 Entering into a critical conversation with Bendell’s conceptual “4 Rs” framework, the paper draws on primary data from several cities in Sweden and Germany to show how, in practice, resilience can be found in the “quiet activism” of leisure gardeners; how ingrained notions of restricted land use may be relinquished through “commoning” urban space; how novel constellations of co-living restores old ideas of intragenerational urban cohabitation; and, finally, how a path to reconciliation may be articulated through an ontological shift away from an anthropocentric urban planning, towards one that recognises other-thanhuman beings as legitimate dwellers in the urban landscape.
 Accounting for urbanities of enmeshed societal, ecological, and spatial trajectories, the paper reveals an inhibiting anthropocentrism in Bendell’s framework and ultimately points to how his “creatively constructed hope” for the future may be found, not in an impending global collapse, but in everyday adaptations and embodied acts that stretch far beyond the human.

(Re)Active Praxis: What Happens When You Read about Racism?

This reflective essay explores three graduate students’ experiences hosting an antiracist teaching book club with preservice English language arts teachers in the spring of 2021. The book club centered on practical advice for engaging secondary students through antiracist pedagogies while meeting the expectations placed on new teachers. Through reflection, the authors found the book club opened a space for critical conversations on their own responsibilities as antiracist educators.

New political ecologies of renewable energy

The critique of fossil fuel regimes has been a foundational concern for the field of political ecology, in its drives to expose the injustices and harms of energy extractivism and its early warnings of the climate crisis. However, it is increasingly evident that renewable energy sources and their infrastructures will carry their own costs and trade-offs, and that critique, resistance and alternative movement-building are needed to forge a truly just renewable energy transition. This theme issue underlines the many ways in which political ecology is well-positioned to lead critical and engaged scholarship in support of energy/climate justice. In this introduction and survey, we draw on new research collected here to reflect on political ecology's distinctive analytical capacities and forms of praxis for this task. We argue that the collection advances political ecology's intellectual and political purchase on renewable transition in several crucial ways. These include (1) Theorizing Renewables-Driven Land Transformations, (2) Advancing Industrial Political Ecologies of Renewables, (3) Locating Power within Technical and Artifactual Politics and (4) Generating Knowledge and Tools for Just Transitions. We conclude with reflections on further pressing concerns for the field: for example, rising debates over scale, ownership and accountability models within renewable energy justice and democracy movements and critical conversations growing around renewable energy's own extraction geographies and diverse forms of racialization.

Jane Austen in Mid-Victorian Periodicals

Victorian periodicals were an important part of the literary marketplace that shaped Jane Austen’s critical reception during the nineteenth century. Moreover, throughout the century, periodical authors used the critical conversation around Austen to create a space for themselves and their work in the press by beginning to shape a critical canon, as well as by raising and responding to questions about the nature of Victorian women’s authorship. Focusing on articles published during the mid-Victorian period (1852–1868), prior to the publication of James Edward Austen-Leigh’s 1870 A Memoir of Jane Austen, this essay considers Austen’s presence in periodical writing in the middle of the nineteenth century and explores how writers used both Austen herself and her writings to accomplish their own authorial ends.

Toward an impact‐driven framework to operationalize social justice and implement ICT4D in the field of information

AbstractInformation researchers can further social justice and social equity to meet the needs of minority and underserved populations experiencing intersecting modes of cultural marginalization. Scholars of information and communication technologies for development (ICT4D) can find overlooked intersections with social justice in “community networking” research since the 1980s to overcome the digital divides between the haves and have‐nots. To frame social justice initiatives within a consolidated vision of ICT4D in the field of information, this article proposes an impact‐driven framework, expounded through five interrelated elements: why (motivations), with who (engaged constituencies), how (at external and internal levels to change traditional practices), and toward what (goal). It is explicated through select historical instances of “community networking” and digital divides, ICT4D, and social justice intersections. Significance of the elements is also demonstrated via this author's select information‐related social justice research conducted in the United States. The urgency for critical and reflective conversations is important owing to historically abstracted human information behavior theory development within information research outdated in multiple contextualized needs of contemporary times. Historically situating impact‐driven social justice research is important to further the relevance, existence, and growth of the information field as it strengthens its ties with ICT4D.

Meet Students Where They Are: Centering Wikipedia in the Classroom

There is a common classroom refrain, “Don’t use Wikipedia; it’s unreliable.” Unfortunately, this simple dismissal of the world’s largest repository of information fails to engage students in a critical conversation about how knowledge within Wikipedia is constructed and shared. Wikipedia is available in almost 300 languages, it is the top result in most Google searches, and it provides free, well-sourced, information to millions of people every day. However, despite these positives, there is uneven geographic, historical, and cultural representation; there are well-known information gaps related to women, gender, and sexual identity; and the majority of Wikipedia editors are white, Western, men. Engaging students in complex conversations about this information source is one way to improve students’ information literacy skills. In 2019 we decided to meet students where they are by developing a two-credit course, Wikipedia and Information Equity, at Oregon State University that centers and critically examines Wikipedia as an information source and as a community of editors co-creating public knowledge. This article shares our experience teaching this two-credit course three times, with the ultimate goal of providing a template and starting point from which other instructors can develop similar courses and curricula about information equity through the lens of Wikipedia.

Learning Analytics on the African Continent

While learning analytics (LA) has been highlighted as a field aiming to address systemic equity and quality issues within educational systems between and within regions, to date, its adoption is predominantly in the Global North. Since the Society for Learning Analytics Research (SoLAR) aspires to be international in reach and relevance, and to increase the diversity and inclusivity of the SoLAR community, it is pertinent to look at learning analytics use in higher education institutions in Africa. This paper reports the first scoping review of research in the field of LA conducted on the African continent. The coding and analysis show that LA research is still in its infancy on the African continent with only 15 studies, overwhelmingly from South Africa. The study also revealed several challenges, such as limited technical support and access to LMSs, the limited visibility of African scholars at SoLAR events and publication venues, and the limited focus on interventions that involve stakeholders. The article concludes with several propositions and provocations to advance the adoption of LA in Africa and open up space for critical conversations about the potential of learning analytics in contexts with characteristics different than those found in the Global North.

P28. Resident Perspectives on Diversity and Inclusion

Background: The summer of 2020 cast a new light on racial inequality and injustices that continue to undermine the health and well-being of specific populations. Like many institutions, our health system pledged a renewed commitment to initiatives that foster diversity and inclusion. Resident physicians make up a significant portion of the workforce in teaching hospitals. We set out to gauge residents’ perspectives on diversity and inclusion, with the understanding that any effort to move forward cannot succeed without considering where we are now Methods: An anonymous, electronic survey was sent to all resident physicians within our hospital. Residents were asked: (1) What do diversity and inclusion mean to you? (2) What questions do you have about diversity and inclusion? (3) Do you feel your program values diversity? If so, how? If not, how? (4) What programs/topics would you be interested in participating in? and (5) What other suggestions do you have to further progress in diversity and inclusion within your residency/fellowship program Results: Majority of residents had positive responses to the value placed on diversity and inclusion. Respondents most often defined this by racial, ethnic, cultural, and gender differences. Important comments were the difference between diversity and inclusion, and how the former without the latter can be damaging to a community. Additionally, a variety of questions and suggested programs were shared Conclusion: We hope to encourage programs to check the pulse of their residents. The pulse is a critical vital sign and should be checked on a routine basis so necessary interventions can be implemented to get the patient back to a healthy state. In checking the pulse of residents regularly, these critical conversations and feedback can inform needed actions. Furthermore, if the solutions to these problems are to be achievable and sustainable, they cannot rest solely on those with a personal account to share, nor can they measure success without actionable change and follow up. In this way, diversity and inclusion can become a shared responsibility, as opposed to the familiar feeling that organizations involved in diversity tourism only visit this topic when it is in vogue.

Equity: Critical Conversations-Closing.

PM&RVolume 14, Issue 6 p. 740-744 PERSPECTIVE—CME Equity: Critical Conversations—Closing Priya Chandan MD, PhD, MPH, Corresponding Author Priya Chandan MD, PhD, MPH [email protected] Division of Physical Medicine & Rehabilitation, University of Louisville School of Medicine, Louisville, Kentucky, USA Kramer Davis Health, Louisville, Kentucky, USA Correspondence Priya Chandan, MD, PhD, MPH, Division of Physical Medicine & Rehabilitation, University of Louisville School of Medicine, Louisville, KY, USA Email: [email protected]Search for more papers by this authorMolly Fuentes MD, MS, Molly Fuentes MD, MS Rehabilitation Medicine, Seattle Children's and University of Washington, Seattle, Washington, USASearch for more papers by this author Priya Chandan MD, PhD, MPH, Corresponding Author Priya Chandan MD, PhD, MPH [email protected] Division of Physical Medicine & Rehabilitation, University of Louisville School of Medicine, Louisville, Kentucky, USA Kramer Davis Health, Louisville, Kentucky, USA Correspondence Priya Chandan, MD, PhD, MPH, Division of Physical Medicine & Rehabilitation, University of Louisville School of Medicine, Louisville, KY, USA Email: [email protected]Search for more papers by this authorMolly Fuentes MD, MS, Molly Fuentes MD, MS Rehabilitation Medicine, Seattle Children's and University of Washington, Seattle, Washington, USASearch for more papers by this author First published: 23 June 2022 https://doi.org/10.1002/pmrj.12825Read the full textAboutPDF ToolsRequest permissionExport citationAdd to favoritesTrack citation ShareShare Give accessShare full text accessShare full-text accessPlease review our Terms and Conditions of Use and check box below to share full-text version of article.I have read and accept the Wiley Online Library Terms and Conditions of UseShareable LinkUse the link below to share a full-text version of this article with your friends and colleagues. Learn more.Copy URL Share a linkShare onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditWechat Volume14, Issue6Special Issue: Equity: Critical ConversationsJune 2022Pages 740-744 RelatedInformation

Equity: Critical Conversations-Introduction.

Equity: Critical Conversations-Introduction.

Unspoken

Unspoken Sara K. Day "Children should be seen and not heard." This old proverb may not be asserted frequently today, but the underlying assumptions—that well-behaved children will be quiet and obedient, that children have more to learn from adults than vice versa, that children must wait for an adult to acknowledge them—continue to shape power dynamics between adults and children in many ways. At the same time, silences surround children in terms of what adults believe should be said to (or written for) them; some topics are considered dangerous; some language is considered inappropriate; some information is considered indoctrination. As we have seen an increasing number of attempts to ban books in schools and libraries across the United States, especially those by and about BIPOC and LGBTQ+ people, it is useful to consider the specific ways in which demands that children not speak intersect with ideas about what should not be said to children. This issue opens with Sarah Selden's "Harlem Renaissance or Momentary Aberration?: An Analysis of the Newbery's Progress toward Racial Inclusivity," an examination of two key moments in the history of children's literature's most visible prize. The first moment is 1975, when Virginia Hamilton was the first Black author to win the Newbery, followed two years later by Mildred D. Taylor. The second is forty years later, when in 2015 the prize was awarded to Kwame Alexander, with Jacqueline Woodson being awarded a Newbery Honor. Selden examines both the contexts surrounding these key moments—including, among other elements, the changing make-up of Newbery committees—but also the ways in which Black authors' treatment of race and racism has potentially influenced prizing. In turn, she looks to the lack of critical conversation about most of these texts as a reflection of a larger, often unspoken assumption that they are more useful in elementary school classrooms than literary scholarship. The question of what goes unspoken also affects what messages are embraced in children's literature, especially in times of political discord. Like Selden, Saffyre Falkenberg focuses on a specific chronological moment in her article "All Are Welcome: Picture Books and Liberal Multiculturalism Post Trump." [End Page 131] Using Jodi Melamed's work on liberal multiculturalism and official antiracisms as a framework, Falkenberg examines the ways in which four picture books by white authors published after the 2016 election of former president Donald Trump emphasize diversity and inclusion without working to disrupt oppressive systems. Falkenberg's analysis emphasizes the distinction between attitude and action, especially in terms of the assumption that increasing diverse representation in children's books is enough to make needed changes rather than a starting point that requires further engagement and work. In "'Infinite Others': Mythpunk and Middle-Eastern Folklore in Catherynne M. Valente's Young Adult Novels," Teresa Michals and Fizza Fatima illustrate how Valente attempts to disrupt fantasy conventions that code the racialized Other as evil while uplifting Western figures and values. Comparing Valente's novels to those of C. S. Lewis—whose Narnia series perhaps best encapsulates this tendency to binarize West vs. East, good vs. evil—Michals and Fatima point to the ways in which modern authors can resist the stereotypes and xenophobia in classic children's fantasy literature. In her Fairyland series as well as her novel The Glass Town Games, Valente casts a wide net, drawing on figures and symbols from a variety of traditions and complicating the straightforward binary that so frequently works to uphold Eurocentric worldviews as superior to those from other cultures. "A Girl Verses the World: The Poetics of Asian American Childhood in Thanhha Lai's Inside Out & Back Again" by Stephen Dudas likewise investigates the intersection of cultures—in this case, through the figure of narrator Hà, a young refugee who chronicles her experience as her family flees Vietnam for the United States. Lai's verse novel attends in important ways to the role of speech in Hà's journey, particularly as she grapples with the sounds of the English language and the challenges of navigating her new neighborhood and school; her literal efforts to speak up and speak out are clearly tied to the development of her...

A Critical Lens on Cognitively Guided Instruction: Perspectives from Mathematics Teacher Educators of Color

Elementary mathematics teacher education often draws on research-based frameworks that center children as mathematical thinkers, grounding teaching in children’s mathematical strategies and ideas and as a means to attend to equity in mathematics teaching and learning. In this conceptual article, a group of critical mathematics teacher educators of color reflect on the boundaries of Cognitively Guided Instruction (CGI) as a research-based mathematical instructional framework advancing equity through a sociopolitical perspective of mathematics instruction connected to race, power, and identity. We specifically discuss CGI along the dominant and critical approaches to equity outlined by Gutiérrez’s (2007, 2009) framework. We present strategies used to extend our work with CGI and call for the field to continue critical conversations of examining mathematical instructional frameworks as we center equity and criticality.

At the red table: how intergenerational Black women are using Facebook Watch to cultivate critical conversations on health, identity, and relationships

ABSTRACT Red Table Talk, a web series exclusively aired on Facebook Watch, represents the narrative of intergenerational Black women who tackle critical conversations. The show, developed by Jada Pinkett-Smith and featuring her daughter and mother, brings in special guests for discussions on race, gender identity, sexual and mental health, co-parenting, and relationships. This paper relies on both qualitative and quantitative data from an audience survey, supplemented by thematic analysis to explore these themes. We show how the alternative media model of Facebook Watch and the series itself act as rebellions against institutionalized narratives that perpetuate stereotypes against people of color. We examine how Black women creators reclaim agency and resist generational forms of silencing by authoring a counter-narrative at the intersection of their lived cultural experiences.

Facilitating person-centred learning between nursing students and clinical supervisors in practice: guideline and programme development

Background: Current literature is silent regarding the steps required to facilitate person-centred learning in practice between students and their clinical supervisors. This participatory person-centred inquiry was undertaken to address that gap and was underpinned by the theoretical perspectives of transformational learning and person-centredness. Aim: This research study aimed first to identify the essential steps for effective facilitation of person-centred learning between nursing students and clinical supervisors in the practice context, and second, to develop a guideline as the basis for a person-centred education programme for clinical supervisors. Methods: The study methodology was aligned to the principles of person-centred research, which are participatory and transformational in intention. The associated methods were embedded in critical dialogue and critical creativity, including the use of art to explore the experiences of the clinical supervisors. The information gathered was synthesised using a creative hermeneutic approach. Findings: Seven steps were identified: crafting healthful relationships; meet and check-in process; daily interaction and supervision; feedback in the moment; critical conversation; group debriefing; check out; and completion of the placement. Finally, to embed the guideline in practice learning, a person-centred educational programme for clinical supervisors was developed. Conclusions: Embedding guidelines for person-centred facilitation of learning in practice provides a basis for the education and practice of clinical supervisors. Further research is required to include the student voice in this process. Implications for practice: The person-centred facilitation of learning between nursing students and their clinical supervisors in the practice context is a shared responsibility The seven steps to person-centred facilitation of learning enable person-centred learning for both nursing students and clinical supervisors Further research on the impact of the seven steps is required, with a focus on the voice of nursing students regarding their role

Language, Identity, and Racialization: A Trio-Ethnography of Spanish Linguists

Conversations on race and systemic racism have persisted since long before the deaths of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery and countless other murdered and missing Black, Brown, and Indigenous people. In an ever-enduring global pandemic and following a wave of resistance to racial oppression and violence, U.S. institutions are now facing a reckoning for the ways in which they maintain racialized power dynamics and exacerbate inequities across social sectors. Academic institutions are no exception. This trio-ethnography is simultaneously an interrogation of the current social, cultural, and political moment and an exploration of the many ways that our lived experiences with language, race, and identity intersect in the Academy. As professors of Spanish at a Historically Black University, a Hispanic-Serving Institution, and a Predominantly White Institution we turn to our own experiences, languages, and bodies for deeper study. In this trio-ethnography, we juxtapose the stories we tell and attempt to complicate understandings of the intersections of language, race, and identity in academia. We engage in critical conversations on our intersectional identities and experiences to problematize hegemonic whiteness and its persistent colonization of linguistic practices. We also explore the influence and impact of these forms of practice on our paths to becoming critical scholars of language and race. Our work seeks to engage faculty, administration, and students in dialogue on the ways that hegemonic language ideologies replicate problematic racial power dynamics and exacerbate inequities in the academy and beyond. With this conversation, we hope to facilitate a better understanding of how academic institutions must respond to the call to dismantle their own systems of oppression.

The Refractive Comic: Nanette and Comedy From Inside Identity

This essay theorizes a millennial-era iteration of stand-up comedy: refractive comedy. Through close textual analysis of Hannah Gadsby’s Nanette (2018), I argue refractive comedy alters the message, affective nature, and form of stand-up comedy through a rejection of the dominant worldview and subsequent centering of marginalized standpoints. This essay examines Gadsby’s refraction in a broader discourse of industrial and cultural, gendered, and racial gatekeeping. I examine how refractive comedy, additionally, has inspired critical conversation on comedy’s role in relation to shared and collective trauma, as seen in Bo Burnham’s Inside (2021).

Breaking down barriers to help-seeking: preparing first responders’ families for psychological first aid

ABSTRACT Background First responders regularly encounter both operational stressors and potentially traumatic events, increasing their risk of mental health issues (Declercq et al., 2011). Due to unique cultural complexities, they turn mostly to peers for early psychosocial support (Isaac & Buchanan, 2021). However, peer support and/or mental health assistance may not always be available or easy to access and first responders’ mental health suffers. Objective We need more accessible routes to crisis intervention to ensure first responder resilience and wellbeing, so they may continue to function in the service of public safety. Family members and close friends may be ideally placed to provide this immediate care. This article outlines the protective role of social support as an early intervention strategy to mitigate the effects of first responder trauma, exploring the potential opportunity for family members and friends to play an increasingly supportive role in their loved one’s wellbeing. This paper serves as a call to action for practical educational interventions that will prepare family members for these critical conversations. Conclusion We see potential in combining early intervention theory, psychoeducation, and a strengths-based gender specific positive psychology approach. Further study should investigate how best to help first responders break down barriers to support, by bolstering their existing social supports and ultimately reducing the stigma associated with experiencing traumatic stress. HIGHLIGHTS By training family members in psychological first aid, we may strengthen existing social support for first responders, providing more options for, and potentially breaking down stigma associated with help-seeking.