Something Old, Something New

As the school year winds down, I've been thinking a lot about what projects I'll have lined up for the summer. I've recently submitted a proposal to the International Journal of Critical Pedagogy for special edition of that journal. The working title for the article is "Covert Critique: Privileging Students' Voices in Critiquing Middle School Curriculum." Simply put, the technology curriculum standards that I've been told to use are heavily infused with neo-liberal rhetoric and interests, and I've been trying to empoy a critical pedagogy in my classroom that centers on students knowledge consumption/production in disrupting this neo-liberal discourse. The purpose is to help students develop the skills necessary to conduct a meaningful, critical reading of their world so that, as Freire suggests, they can understand the political, cultural, and economic contradictions in their lives (see Pedagogy of the Oppressed and The Politics of Education).

Another project I'm working on currently is a conference proposal for the Bergamo conference this year. The due date for proposals in June 1, so I better hurry. I have a couple of options in terms of what I can submit, and maybe I'll submit more than one. I'd like to get the other members of my department involved, and we've talked about some ideas, but none of them have presented at a conference before and they seem a little hesitant to give it a try. I hope I can convince them otherwise within the next day or so.

Finally, I've been talking with my friend Dennis Carlson in revisiting a piece I wrote while in his "power" seminar at Miami University. He had suggested at the time that I continue polishing the paper and get it ready for publication. I definitely wanted to do that, but I had a million things going on with working full-time and doing graduate work. Now that I've graduated and school is winding down, he and I have decided to work on this piece together and get it ready for publication. I'm really excited because it is a fascinating topic and has generated a lot of interest at the conferences where I have presented the idea. I'll hold off for now on exactly what this is, but I've written about it before on this blog. We will be using a postcolonial approach to the topic, and that's something that I'm excited to get started.

Of course, I'm still thinking on how to move forward in putting my dissertation in book form, as well as how to move forward with the data I collected in 2008 while in Carmarthen. I might have to meet with some friends to get my head around how to best finish that project.

I had what I had thought at the time was a minor setback, but now that I think it over, I'm glad it happened. I had submitted a chapter for a book with a professor at Ohio University. The project was slow to start, then took off rapidly only to die out again. I researched the publishing company that would be producing the book and wasn't comfortable with their approach, or their reputation. This, and a few other factors, prompted me to withdraw my chapter. I feel good about the decision. I'm more interested in having my work represented in a quality publication than in having a quick-publish situation with a vanity press. So... I'm shopping it around. We'll see how that goes.