Talk Back Research Articles

The Dis/appearance of Animals in Animated Film during the Chinese Cultural Revolution, 1966–76

Conventional studies of the Chinese Cultural Revolution usually come from a human-centered perspective that focuses on politics, revolution, and class struggle dramatized in well-established artistic forms such as literature, live-action film, theater, and painting. This kind of approach is presence-centered by drawing attention to the most visible scenarios under the revolutionary limelight at that time. In contrast, this article calls attention to what was invisible in the much-discussed cultural scene: how animals were represented and underrepresented in animation, a marginalized artistic form. Animation, like fairytale, fable, and parable, is usually an artistic form of fantasy full of (talking) animals. Prior to the Cultural Revolution, animated film was replete with (anthropomorphic) animals. As animated film began to be dominated by politicized human action in the mid-1960s, animals systematically disappeared from the silver screen until the late 1970s. The Chinese Cultural Revolution can therefore be redefined as a decade of absent animals. However, these animals did not vanish completely during the Cultural Revolution; rather they took refuge in the bodies of ethnic minorities and villains, waiting for opportunities to return, seek revenge, and talk back. The disappearance of animals in the mid-1960s marked the start of the Cultural Revolution but also paved the way for its own ideological demise. When the wrathful animals returned to the screen in the late 1970s, the seemly impregnable ideology of the Cultural Revolution gradually disintegrated.

Biting the hand that feeds you? Teachers engage with an ethnography of neoliberalism in education

Scholars who document neoliberal trends in education argue that privatization and corporatization in schools is dehumanizing and discourages democratic participation. These scholars assert that neoliberal education policies heighten social inequity by emphasizing individualism, marketability and colorblindness without interrogating social structures of power. Can qualitative documentation of the effects of neoliberal policy in education “talk back” to these trends? Can ethnographically mapping the complex effects of neoliberal trends on teaching and learning serve to heighten teachers' sense of agency and resistance? This paper documents the ways that teachers construct their identities in reaction to reading the author's critical ethnography of their school. Data were gathered for this paper in teacher interviews following two years of collaborative ethnographic fieldwork at the College Preparatory Academy, a small public high school in Brooklyn, New York that created its own in-house nonprofit organization in order to solicit funds from private donors. Using Derrick Bell's interest convergence theory, I critique competitive models of philanthropy in education and explore whether collaborative and critically engaged ethnography can serve to expose the tension between public and private interests in education, and can encourage teachers to challenge and critique these borders.

Host microRNAs Help Regulate, Talk Back to the Gut Microbiome

Epithelial cells lining the gastrointestinal tracts of mice secrete microRNA molecules that can enter and switch on genes that alter the growth of certain types of bacteria in the gut, according to Howard Weiner and Shirong Liu at Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston, Mass., and their collaborators. “It's a very basic finding, but it opens up an area of interaction between microRNAs and the gut microbiome that hasn't been known before,” Weiner says. “Our findings highlight microRNAs as a strategy for manipulation of the microbiome that may affect the health of the host.” Details appeared 13 January 2016 in Cell Host & Microbe (doi.org/10.1016/j.chom.2015.12.005).

Families, policy and place in times of austerity

Families in the UK have played a key role within the ‘third way’ policy regimes of the past two decades, promising to act as arenas of citizenship between the individual and the market. Such a framing has always posed questions about which families are imagined to be capable of this role, with competing constructions of ‘risky’ and ‘resourceful’ families within social policy discourses. Over the past five years UK families have been hit with an array of cuts and reforms to state benefits and other forms of government support. This paper argues that, within this context of austerity, problematic binary constructions in policy discourses are increasing. Certain families and households are relied on to deliver aspects of care, while others are vilified as unstable and ‘troubled’, in ways that view families as individualised and removed from their wider geographies. Against this background it is argued that detailed geographical research into the everyday lives of disadvantaged families can talk back to these powerful representations. This means paying attention to the ways that families navigate everyday landscapes of care, both material and emotional, which are in turn shaped by the unequal resources available, including increasingly unevenly distributed state services.

Girls Talk Back: Changing School Culture through Feminist and Service-Learning Pedagogies

This paper explores the intersection of feminism and service-learning by describing the creation of a women’s studies course for girls attending an alternative high school. In the course participants could critique sexist practices in the media and in the school, as well as establish cultural competence through engaging in service projects that they would lead. The researchers found that course content correlated with students’ identity development regarding sexual harassment awareness and prevention. Furthermore, participants’ increased their internal motivation (locus of control) in general and self-identification with feminism.

“It’s Irrelevant to Me!” Young Black Women Talk Back to VH1’s Love and Hip Hop New York

The reality television show Love and Hip Hop New York enjoyed immense popularity during its fourth season. The show, which profiles the love and relationship experiences of its Black and Latino cast, overwhelmingly perpetuates stereotypes of people of color through a narrow lens of Black masculinity and femininity. This article uses critical discourse analysis to unveil the ways in which the show invites its cast members to create hegemonic representations of themselves. It also argues against the effects model in hip-hop scholarship—which dogmatically asserts that these types of representations are inherently harmful to Black youth. Using audience analysis, the article works to add complexity to the findings of the critical discourse analysis by inviting young Black women to talk back to the representations transmitted by the show.

Moths avoid capture by ‘talking back’ to bats

Moths avoid capture by ‘talking back’ to bats

“We Need to Grab Power Where We Can”: Teacher Activists’ Responses to Policies of Privatization and the Assault on Teachers in Chicago

In the midst of neoliberal governing mentalities, policies of privatizing public education in the U.S., and corporate reform, to what extent do the voice, emotion, body and resistance of a teacher matter? This article considers the experiences of teachers as they develop a critical consciousness and attempt to resist the global and local forces that seek to (de)professionalize them in particular ways that omit their voice from educational matters. Instead of accepting that teacher bodies have become regulated through disciplinary acts such as policies of privatization, corporate reform models or mechanisms of standardization in education such as value-added analysis as part of teacher evaluations across the U.S., this article explores the ways in which teachers in the local context of Chicago “talk back” to policy reform. Utilizing Giroux’s (1988) conceptual frame of “critical consciousness” coupled with teacher as “radical organic intellectual” and additional frameworks around neoliberal governmentality in educational settings to situate the study (Foucault, 1994; Rose, 1996, 1999; Rose & Miller, 1992), the purpose of this article is to explore teacher activists’ responses to teacher assault, policies of privatization and school closings in Chicago during the 2012-2013 school year. Drawing on ethnographic field notes from participant observations as teachers protested, organized, and agitated local educational policies and interviews with three teachers, this article considers the purpose of public education from teacher perspectives as well as their reasons and motivation for speaking against policies of neoliberal governmentality and policies of privatization (Lipman, 2011). Locating teacher consciousness and reflexivity enables us to see the lived experiences of teachers in Chicago and to write against (othering of teachers, and) the normative discourses around teacher deficits and the profession of teaching’s positioning in policy as inferior. Using the narratives of three particular teachers, this study provides insight into the ways in which teachers make sense of policy, and the ways in which they disrupt the process of corporate, neoliberal ideology.

<em>“Talking Back”: The Perceptions and Experiences of Black Girls Who Attend City High School</em>

Iesha1 is a senior at City High School (CHS). She is petite, insightful, and full of laughter. While responding to the question, How would you describe this school? she looked at me thoughtfully and replied: To be honest, at first I hated this school. I smiled while nodding my head. I appreciated her candor. I knew that Iesha faced a unique set of challenges during her tenure at CHS as Black girls are overrepresented in discipline referrals and graduate at rates below their peers at CHS and in high schools throughout the nation (Crenshaw, Ocen, & Nanda, 2015; Morris, 2015; U. S. Department of Education, 2016; White House Council on Women and Girls, 2014). Not surprisingly, Black girls are stymied by many of the race-based policies and practices that impede the success of their male counterparts. Despite this fact, Black boys remain at the center of research efforts and national initiatives aimed to improve their educational outcomes (see Brooms, 2016; Noguera, 2014; Toldson & Lewis, 2012; Wright, 2011).It is important to note that my concern for young people, Black girls in particular, is palpable. I am a Black woman, mother of a Black girl, and an activist scholar. My research is centered on effective school leadership. I work with school leadership teams to strengthen school-community relationships in ways that support student success. Moreover, based on my own experiences, I am critical of how some school leaders view Black girls. They see them through a deficit lens- ignoring many of the positive attributes that serve to sustain them. Therefore, I was excited when I received parental consent forms from six Black girls at CHS to participate in my perception study. I wanted to honor the voices that are oftentimes silenced in schools and to employ standpoints that are seldom considered in education research.Accordingly, this study answers the following research question: What are the perceptions and experiences of Black Girls who attend City High School? Furthermore, the purpose of the study was to illuminate the realities of Black girls who attend CHS and to apply a Black Feminist Theory analysis (Collins, 2000) to the study's empirical findings. The results of this study were to inform school leaders of the distinct challenges that impact the experiences of Black girls. The ultimate aim of this study was to improve the schooling experiences of Black girls at CHS and in schools throughout the nation.THEORETICAL FRAMEWORKGloria Steinem, the former editor of Ms. Magazine (see www.msmagazine.com) proclaimed Black women to be the originators of the feminist movement (Tisdale, 2015). Ironically, the function of feminism was found to be obtuse for most Black women as it privileges Whiteness and fails to acknowledge the intersection of gender and race (Guy-Sheftall, 1986). In the groundbreaking text, Black Feminist Thought: Knowledge, Consciousness, and the Politics of Empowerment, Collins (2000) recognized this rift and argued that Black women occupy a unique standpoint based on our own oppression.Black Feminist Theory is used to undergird this study because it centers Black women as creators of knowledge while providing a framework to contextualize and understand our nuanced realities. Collins (2000) delineated four tenets of Black Feminist Theory: (a) self-definition, (b) the lived experience, (c) the use of dialogue, and (d) personal accountability. Self-definition acknowledges the self (the Black woman) as a creator of Black womanhood and privileges the individual and collective Black woman's distinct reality. In the lived experience the realities and claims of the knower (Black women) is considered truth and is therefore not subject to 'White gaze. ' Meaning, our subjective reality is factual and should not be interrogated. The use of dialogue acknowledges the active participation of both the speaker and the listener in knowledge claims. Last, Black Feminist Theory places personal accountability (agency) on the knower. …

CSI 1595: The Case of the Stiletto Kid

CSI 1595: The Case of the Stiletto Kid Jeffrey Kahan (bio) At the end of the last millennium, Gary Taylor argued that Shakespeare’s cultural influence was in steep decline. As an example, he noted that Shakespeare Studies was no longer the epicenter within the academy of bibliographical research: “the internecine battles of Shakespeare editing may be as vicious as ever, but their victors do not command as much cultural authority as they once did” (199). Further, Taylor stated that whatever “flood of counter-examples”—Shakespeare on video, CD-ROM, and the internet; a growing interest in hypertext; bestselling books such as Harold Bloom’s The Invention of the Human; or even award-winning popular films—did not amount to much: “different critics might cite counterexamples, but the technique of refutation would remain the same: a statistical claim is countered by citing individual cases that contradict it. Such refutations are illogical, because the statistical claim has already included the evidence of the alleged counter-examples” (198). Yet, if we are going to talk statistics, Taylor need only have looked at the number of “hits” on a website to see that, statistically speaking, what is popular or important outside academia outweighs what goes on within it. Today, that objection is all the more obvious: when one considers, for instance, that the Second City adaptation of Romeo and Juliet, “Sassy Gay Friend,” has been viewed over 7.8 million times, it follows that Shakespeare is alive and well, with the only real points of contention centering on who and what is “Shakespeare” and how the works should be valued and evaluated. A new generation of academics is fast embracing remediation. Thomas Leitch, for example, argues that course work should be revised to “get beyond passive receptivity to texts toward an active engagement with them” (15). He notes that “this [creative] alternative … does not approach adaptations as either transcriptions of canonical classics or attempts to create new classics but rather [serves] as illustrations of the incessant process of rewriting as critical reading” (16). Christy Desmet, who has tirelessly championed new media forms of Shakespeare, has called on “students as well as Shakespeareans” to embrace the “usefulness of talking back to Shakespeare” (11). Likewise, Stephen O’Neill argues that we should encourage “knowledge constructors,” “do-it-yourself responses to the plays,” “experiential learning” and “learning-by-doing” (218). James R. Andreas contends that our traditional assignments are not only stodgy, they are, moreover, limited to one form of learning assessment, the traditional [End Page 268] essay. He prefers “more lively and entertaining ways to communicate than simply ‘writing down.’” (31). In the same vein, Mary T. Christel and Christine Heckel-Oliver suggest that students might role-play parts of Shakespeare, which can lead “to various kinds of creative drama or improvisation” (21). Even a traditional critic like J. L. Styan has recently argued that assessment exercises on Shakespeare should somehow be an “appropriate extension of the creative act of performance” (4). Along with critical approval, remediation is in lock-step with aspects of the new common core standards, which seek “to prepare students for life outside the classroom.” The new standards, specifically, “include critical-thinking skills and the ability to closely and attentively read texts in a way that will help them understand and enjoy complex works of literature. . . . The standards also lay out a vision of what it means to be a literate person who is prepared for success in the 21st century” (ELA-Literacy). The intuition that 21st-century learners need a different set of skills from those presently offered is also endorsed by a 2012 report by the CFR (Council of Foreign Relations), chaired by Joel L. Klein and Condoleezza Rice, which embraces “creative analysis or imaginative problem solving” (47). But how to balance creativity with traditional academic discourses? In the following pages, instead of offering a panacea, I shall merely be discussing ways in which I have reformulated one assignment in my Shakespeare class. I fully admit that what I am offering here might not work for all levels of academia or suit the skillsets and preferences of all teachers. Details, I recognize, can bedevil, and my details...

Tillfällighetsmodrande och föräldralösa barn i amerikanska post-9/11-romaner

This article explores how ideas about national identity are staged and critiqued through representations of family relations in two American post-9/11 novels, focusing more specifically on mothering and the orphan child. Michael Cunningham’s Specimen Days (2005) and Lynne Sharon Schwartz’s The Writing on the Wall (2005) feature orphan children and women who take on the task of mothering them, if only temporarily, in the aftermath of the terrorist attacks. These orphans, as well as the women who mother them, serve to destabilize the “naturalness” of motherhood as well as the naturalization of the nuclear family. They are also interesting in that they talk back to a broadly mediatized nationalist rhetoric in the US that glorifies (dead) fathers and constructs mothers as suspect or unpatriotic if unwilling to support such glorification. Discussing meanings of orphanhood and motherhood from a critical perspective informed by feminist theory, family studies and American studies, this article proposes that fiction is a productive site for investigating nationally and culturally specific constructions of family, parenthood, and childhood.

Speaking Up and Talking Back? Media, Empowerment and Civic Engagement among East and Southern African Youth, edited by ThomasTufte, NorbertWildermuth, Anne SofieHansen‐Skovmoes, and WinnieMitullah, Göteborg, Sweden: NORDICOM, 2013. 302 pp. $140 (paper). ISBN: 9789186523558.

Rural SociologyVolume 80, Issue 3 p. 393-395 Book Review Speaking Up and Talking Back? Media, Empowerment and Civic Engagement among East and Southern African Youth, edited by Thomas Tufte, Norbert Wildermuth, Anne Sofie Hansen-Skovmoes, and Winnie Mitullah, Göteborg, Sweden: NORDICOM, 2013. 302 pp. $140 (paper). ISBN: 9789186523558. Danielle J. Thomas, Danielle J. Thomas Louisiana State UniversitySearch for more papers by this author Danielle J. Thomas, Danielle J. Thomas Louisiana State UniversitySearch for more papers by this author First published: 02 September 2015 https://doi.org/10.1111/ruso.12074_3Read 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 onFacebookTwitterLinked InRedditWechat Volume80, Issue3September 2015Pages 393-395 RelatedInformation

Notes of a Medical Student.

Years ago, when I was a medical student and resident, I kept a list of all the patients I saw. I wrote down the name, diagnoses, and 1 medical thing I learned (the science of medicine) and 1 nonmedical thing I learned (the art of medicine). I encourage the students and residents I teach now to do the same thing. I always say, “You’re learning at the speed of light. If you review this list, at the end of a day, at the end of a week, at the end of a year, you’ll be amazed to see how much you have learned.” I recently came upon the little notebook from my very first clinical rotation as a third-year medical student. It was a fascinating read. There, I found the young student I’d forgotten about: scared, naive, full of false bravado, hopeful, excited to learn, unwilling to be belittled, amazed at the endless variations of the human condition, thrilled after years in the classroom to be actually seeing patients, trying to learn what it was to act professional. Here, unedited, are the “art of medicine” comments I wrote that summer long ago, as I was finding my way in clinical medicine. I learned a lot about Dr \_\_\_|\\_\__|. He has an ego problem and takes it out on students, especially in the presence of others. I found out, much to my surprise, that I can keep very quiet and not talk back. I also didn’t like the fact that it was so easy for me to be subservient; I thought I had more spunk than that. I also rediscovered that I cry when I get mad. I need to work …

Review: Thomas Tufte, Norbert Wildermuth, Anne Sofie Hansen-Skovmoes and Winnie Mitullah (eds), Speaking Up and Talking Back? Media, Empowerment and Civic Engagement among East and Southern African Youth

Review: Thomas Tufte, Norbert Wildermuth, Anne Sofie Hansen-Skovmoes and Winnie Mitullah (eds), <i>Speaking Up and Talking Back? Media, Empowerment and Civic Engagement among East and Southern African Youth</i>

Breaking silence: exploring motherhood and social transformation in a participatory action research with Alteñan mothers

In November 2012, a researcher, two social workers and five mothers embarked on a participatory action research (PAR) journey with the aim to develop new ideas for interventions for children and young people in street situations of the city of El Alto in Bolivia. In this article, we attend to the topic of personal and social transformation in PAR. We explore how the mothers of young people in street situations perform and negotiate their subjectivities as mothers in their everyday life; how they create (new) subjectivities in exchange and in interaction with each other during the mother project; and how the performance of their (new) subjectivities can bring social change. The mothers in our group shared stories of being silenced by social services in their everyday lives, as their motherhood is declared not good enough or as they are perceived too guilty to claim for help. It was the first time the mothers shared their stories with other mothers of their lives with their children in street situations. By noticing that they all experienced or heard of similar events that their children were subjected to in the streets, the mothers grew confident enough to talk back. Mothers talked back by denouncing injustice and by transforming doubts into questions, providing them with more knowledge. Finally, as the mothers reached out to social services, mothers’ presence, questions and stories confronted aid workers with their own flaws, and their comfortable discourse of blaming families, creating new paths towards social transformation.

Curating in the Postdigital Age

Curating in the Postdigital Age

Book review: Thomas Tufte, Norbert Wildermuth, Anne Sofie Hansen-Skovmoes, Winnie Mitullah (eds), Speaking Up and Talking Back? Media Empowerment and Civic Engagement among East and Southern African Youth

Book review: Thomas Tufte, Norbert Wildermuth, Anne Sofie Hansen-Skovmoes, Winnie Mitullah (eds), <i>Speaking Up and Talking Back? Media Empowerment and Civic Engagement among East and Southern African Youth</i>

Cultivating Promise and Possibility: Black Feminist Thought as an Innovative, Interdisciplinary, and International Framework

Created by Patricia Hill Collins over 20 years ago, Black Feminist Thought (BFT)1 has flourished in multiple disciplines including sociology, English, political science, psychology, education, law, history, philosophy, Africana studies, mass communication, and communication studies. Since its inception, BFT has served as a key means to unapologetically center the embodied knowledge of Black women and foster opportunities for Black women to “talk back”2 to systemic oppression(s). To honor the legacy of BFT and propel its theoretical and methodological significance into the future, this special issue will feature critical, qualitative, and performative works that productively utilize, challenge, and extend BFT. Essays in this special issue will be characterized by: Exemplars of how BFT can be industriously challenged and extended include works that:

Angels talking back and new organs of perception: Art-making and intentionality in nature experience1

Abstract This article focuses on the role of the artistic process in connecting to the natural environment. In my research I have explored what participants experience and learn when they engage in different types of arts-based environmental education (AEE) practices that I have facilitated. The premise of AEE is that efforts to learn about our (natural) environment can effectively take their starting point in an artistic activity, usually conducted in groups. I found that, on the whole, two major orientations can be distinguished. One starts from the point of aesthetic sensibility: the tuning in with the senses, or with ‘a new organ of perception’ (Goethe), in order to perceive ‘the more than human’ with fresh new eyes. This tradition can be traced back (but is by no means limited) to the Romantic Movement. Art in this context may help to amplify the receptivity of the senses and strengthen a sense of connectedness to the natural world. The other major orientation in seeking bridges between nature and art builds on a view of artistic process as leading to unexpected outcomes and ‘emergent properties’. The fundamentally singular experience of making a work of art may evoke an aesthetic object that becomes a ‘self-sufficient, spiritually breathing subject’ (Kandinsky). The artwork can be spontaneously generative and multilayered with meanings, some of which may even be ambiguous and paradoxical. But perhaps more importantly: it can catch the participant of an AEE activity by surprise, overwhelm him or her as ‘coming from behind one’s back’. The element of improvisation, of taking in the new and unanticipated and accommodating for it, is the core quality here. These two orientations, when practiced as part of AEE, have implications on how we relate to nature through art. In the closing of this article I address the question of whether it is possible to bridge the dualism between the two orientations.

Designing interaction: How do interaction design students address interaction?

Interaction design is usually described as being concerned with interactions with and through artifacts but independent of a specific implementation. Design work has been characterized as a conversation between the designer and the situation and this conversation poses a particular challenge for interaction design as interactions can be elusive and difficult to describe. Moreover, current trends in interaction design introduce physical materials to a higher degree resulting in even more complex design situations. There is a lack of knowledge about how interaction designers, and especially students, address the very phenomenon of interaction. This study contributes by describing how interaction design students attempt to address aspects of interaction and by presenting an in-depth analysis in the context of an interactionary-type design exercise. The quantitative and qualitative findings showed that (1) the design students brought up aspects of interactivity and dynamics through talk and gestures but (2) a comprehensive design idea about interaction did not guide the design work and they were to a little degree engaged in planning sequences of interactions or interaction on a longer time scale, (3) using physical materials disrupted interaction design, and, (4) there was a lack of continuity when addressing interaction compared to how proposals about artifacts were pursued. As interaction is the core of interaction design, the findings are discussed in terms of how the immaterial design materials may “talk back” to designers. Practical strategies for how the observed phenomena could be constructively addressed within interaction design education are suggested.