"Bhimayana" is a graphic novel that narrates Dr. B.R. Ambedkar's experiences of being discriminated against. Using a graphic form inspired by Pardhan Gond art, "Bhimayana" breaks popular conventions of graphic narratives published in the West. The narrative of "Bhimayana" is interlaced with contemporary events and…

Jennifer Hitchcock interviews community activist and director of Syracuse University's Composition and Cultural Rhetoric doctoral program, Steve Parks. They discuss Parks's working-class background, career path, influences, and activism. Parks also considers the direction of the field of composition and rhetoric and expresses optimism for the…

Prof. Niemonen claims that the concept of white privilege is "anti-sociological" and "mask[s] complex race-class interactions." He highlights the importance of including social class in discussions of white privilege but focuses exclusively on the white working class, neglecting how race and social class also intersect for…

In the fall of 2016, the "Harvard Educational Review" ("HER") published "Cross-Pollinating Culturally Sustaining Pedagogy and Universal Design for Learning: Toward an Inclusive Pedagogy that Accounts for Dis/Ability" by Federico R. Waitoller, assistant professor in the Department of Special Education at the University…

In this response to Lingley's (2016) article "Democratic Foundations of Spiritually Responsive Pedagogy," the author invites the framework of (a)spiritually responsive curriculum to include a more direct engagement with a culturally relevant curriculum as well. The author agrees with Lingley's postulation that (a)spirituality is deeply…

This is a panoptic paper in five parts. In Part One, Immiseration Capitalism, I examine the current neoliberal cum neoconservative austerity capitalism and its "class war from above", in particular its resultant relative immiseration and its absolute immiseration, with particular reference to Greece, Ireland, Britain and the USA. In Part…

While whiteness studies at most institutions aims to expose the persistence of white supremacy to a disbelieving audience, whiteness studies within the College of Ethnic Studies (COES) at San Francisco State University (SFSU) begins with the assumption that racism still exists. The course then traces how whiteness is constructed and fortified to…

Mounted on the walls, windows, and bookcases of Ms. Cati de los Rios's Pomona High School classroom are a multitude of faces, mainly heroes, martyrs, and leaders of Latina/o and African descent. These faces are a symbol of the countercultural and student-centered approach to education that occurs in her classroom. The mere presence of these…

On December 18, 1996, a controversial resolution was passed by the Board of Education of Oakland, California that recognized the legitimacy and significance of Ebonics in the cultural lives and in the education of African American children. The resolution, which was eventually amended, particularly around the implications that Ebonics was a…

Before the 2008 presidential election, when an African American friend asked him whether he thought whites would vote for Barack Obama, the author found himself answering by going back to the 17th century, to the invention of the white race as a buffer class to keep those at the bottom divided, and the way that his own white working-class people…

Arguing against the emphasis of traditional U.S. composition classes on linguistically homogeneous situations, the authors contend that this focus is at odds with actual language use today. They call for a translingual approach, which they define as seeing difference in language not as a barrier to overcome or as a problem to manage, but as a…

This interdisciplinary paper is about applying Adult Education methods of learning and teaching to higher education. I argue that higher education students need to be stimulated via interactive methods that improve their motivation and lead them to question the value system/s that exist around them. A Freirean approach as used in the teaching of…

The delivered curriculum, or the curriculum the students actually experience has always been a function of teacher decision making. Since the inception of high stakes accountability, the curricula to which students are exposed have become a focal point of school reform efforts. This article argues that the null curriculum is expanding in ways that…

One of the most challenging problems faced by teachers of history is how to give voice to the vast majority of people who lived in the past. People's knowledge of history tends to center on the great and important because they are tied to extant written records, almost all of which were produced by and/or about people of high stature in society.…

This article offers a critical perspective on the default mode of freshman composition instruction, that is, its traditionally middle-class and white racial orientation. Although middle-classness and whiteness have been topics of critical interest among compositionists in recent years, perhaps the most effective challenge to this hegemony in…