Looking Back, Looking Ahead (Asynchronous Session)
The Vietnam War and American Nationalism: The Institutionalization of Stereotypes in the Postwar US Foreign Policy Making Process View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Benedict Edward DeDominicis
The social movement consequences of leaving unchallenged the politically prevailing narrative of supposed US victory in the Cold War that ended 30 years ago are far-reaching. They include politically effective attacks today on progressive activism, including condemnations of counternarratives that challenge domestically white patriarchal supremacy, e.g., conservative denunciations of cultural pluralism include a focus on trends in the post-New Left public education system curriculum. They claim a leftist bias generally characterizing the academy and those teachers produced by it. The popularity of Howard Zinn’s _A People’s History of the United States_ among educators as assigned reading is frequently cited as evidence of this bias. A high-profile example is the critique by Daniel J. Flynn, former executive director of _Accuracy in Academia_. This organization first gained national media prominence during the Reagan administration, seeking, it claims, to rectify this alleged leftwing bias. Flynn writes, Who is the most influential historian in America? Could it be Pulitzer Prize winners Arthur Schlesinger, Jr. or Joseph Ellis or David McCullough, whose scholarly works have reached a broad literary public? The answer is none of the above. The accolade belongs instead to the unreconstructed, anti-American Marxist Howard Zinn, whose cartoon anti-history of the United States is still selling 128,000 copies a year twenty years after its original publication. Many of those copies are assigned readings for courses in colleges and high schools taught by leftist disciples of their radical mentor." Flynn focuses his ire also on the academy which tends to favor Zinn’s work.
Future Cartographies: Decolonizing the Periphery View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Julie Decker, Bodil Kjelstrup, Marek Ranis, Monique Maye
Places constructed as peripheral are not passive recipients of global processes and issues. Instead, these places of political and geographical isolation become centers of transformation, adaptation and creativity—sometimes by necessity. The Arctic is at the center of extreme forces—called to respond before the impacts of change reach more central urban places. In the North, change and adaptation is a constant. Creative and Indigenous voices represent place and resilience, rather than a response to art itself. The Anchorage Museum presents the periphery as center as a method of decolonization, empowering the voices of Indigenous artists and communities, acknowledging language and the land, and affecting traditional definitions of research, scholarship and knowledge. We feature artists and projects that embody histories, highlight spiritual and environmental knowledge, serve as boundary markers between home and outsiders, convey information from local knowledge of topography and memory, embrace natural and social connections, link present to past, and outline an understanding of place. We look at decolonization through creative production within networks of mobility and exchange. Putting this decolonization into practice is discussed with co-presenters Marek Ranis, artist and professor from the University of North Carolina Charlotte, and Bodil Kjelstrup from the Northern Norway Art Museum in Tromso, Norway.
Primary Source Amalgams: The Training of Transnational Researchers in the Twenty-first Century View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Chris Hulshof
The official history of United States foreign policy, published by the U.S. State Department as the "Foreign Relations of the United States" (F.R.U.S.), has profoundly changed the way that undergraduate history students are trained. The primary source documents curated in F.R.U.S. provide students with a rare view of the almost daily unfolding of the political transactions between U.S. diplomats, officials, and national leaders worldwide, supplementing the less evocative synthetic materials traditionally used in the classroom and providing students with a deeper understanding of historical events. By guiding students through the acquisition of the skill of reading such primary sources against the grain, student are able to learn the valuable skill of interrogating archival documents prior to embarking on their own research, ultimately increasing productivity in the field. Contemporary historians are blessed with the opportunity to work with the most extensive datasets available at any point in history. The challenge of reducing an enormous number of documents into comprehensible historical narratives, particularly for transnational subject matter, requires more agile research methods than in generations past. Synthesized primary source amalgams, such as F.R.U.S., offer the means to train a new generation of researchers in the methodology required to manage the ever-increasing size of data sets in the 21st century. This paper explores the pedagogical tools which can be used in the classroom to properly prepare undergraduate students to acquire the skills necessary for researchers to succeed in the age of information.
Janusz Korczak - Between Utopian Socialism and Ethnic Individualism View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Tamar Ketko
Janusz Korczak is well known in different contexts: By his pedagogical methods based on self-critique and dialog, as a medical doctor, being an author of novels and plays, short stories for children, and to perform as a journalist and a radio broadcaster. Nevertheless, less is known about his political tendencies and his innovative thoughts of how to integrate Socialism with Individualism within his educational methods. While identifying himself as an atheist Pole, a non-Jewish Jew, he also showed interest in revolutionary Zionist movements which empowered the need to become close to nature, agricultural work and communal life. This study attempts to introduce unknown ties that Korczak created with the collective settlements in Mandatory Palestine, and shed light on his inside-processes, while staying there on his two visits in 1934 and 1936. Did he intend to implement his visions by moving to the ancient land? The main discussion leans on new research, some interviews with a few of Korczak’s orphans who survived, and with those who accompanied him on the crucial visits.
Improvised Identities and Scripted Social Selves: Exploring Early School Influence on Understandings of Identity and Diversity View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Clydia Forehand
For much of history, people have sought deeper understandings of identity and how it shapes our ways of living in this world. Previous scholars investigated along a relatively linear, unified trajectory, first exploring self then cultural development, then social difference. Along the way, identities of “self” and “other”, hierarchies and prejudices were crafted and reified. Newer theories attempt to disrupt past shadows of imposed central/marginal positions, yet these colonial remnants continue to impact social spaces, including those found in schooling. This study questions what can be done to confront these spaces and their affect on students; in doing so, it interrogates contemporary notions of identity as they are drawn from psychology, sociology, philosophy, literature, and organizational dynamics. Additionally, it problematizes theories derived from these fields specific to development, self categorization and narrative, social identity, and organizational theory. The contact hypothesis and its conditions for ameliorating prejudice are also interrogated for applicability. The paper specifically questions how these notions may offer support for society’s youngest students, as elementary-aged children navigate social spaces that influence their understandings of acceptance, behavior, appropriate interaction, self, and others during their developmentally formative years. Recognizing the nascent forms of identity awareness awaking in these children, concurrent with their learning to negotiate multiple, previously unknown forms of social difference, crafts a framework for exploring beyond the theories mentioned, to invite thoughts on decolonized meaning-making in schools that may shape how children, faculty, and families consider “identity” as we collectively move forward.
Constructive Indigenization: Educational Pathways to Indigenous Ways of Knowing and Being View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Patricia Hornback
This research proposes the concept of “Constructive Indigenization” as a theoretical construct for applying uniquely Indigenous cultural values, world views, and perspectives to create equitable learning experiences for Indigenous students. The author describes the relationship between Constructive Indigenization and decolonization; considers the unique socio-cultural factors that affect the educational experiences of Indigenous people within the borders of the United States; and proposes Constructive Indigenization as a mechanism for revealing areas where Indigenous ways of knowing and being can be applied to create learning environments that transcend the systemic barriers encountered by Indigenous students for generations.
