Latest issue of #CritEdPol is out! “Beautiful Experiments”
Dear colleagues, students & friends,
We are thrilled to announce the release of the latest issue of #CritEdPol, the online journal of critical education policy studies at Swarthmore College:
“Beautiful Experiments”! Volume 3, issue 1
The theme of “beautiful experiments,” comes from writer and historian Saidiya Hartman (2017, 2019), who describes beautiful experiments as the moments, movements, and legacies of resistance, fugitivity, and worldmaking that are taken up to “refuse the menial existence” scripted for poor Black girls. Not a metaphor but a politics, we extend this politics to marginalized populations writ large to consider how their various experiments either respond to or raise implications for education as a site of struggle. While mainstream education discourse seeks to focus on the intersecting economic, political, and ecological crises that uphold a narrow, fixed victimhood of those deemed “the truly disadvantaged,” we believe the current discourse erases the ways students, families, community activists and agitators have continually imagined and actualized “otherwise” visions for education, reshaping the terrain of struggle for a more just world.
You can download the issue or individual pieces here: https://works.swarthmore.edu/critedpol/
Our featured piece for the week: Anderson & Anderson, “The Erasure of Black Women”
Over the next five weeks we will be highlighting one of the articles from the issue, and we begin with Tamara D. Anderson and Maya Anderson’s multimodal project, “The Erasure of Black Women.”
Erasure of Black Women cover, by Pempho Moyo
In their abstract, Anderson and Anderson note that “as a result of the intersection of patriarchy and white supremacy, Black women are too often left exhausted, overworked, and left out of the historical narrative. This multi-modal creative work is a call to action to end the erasure of Black women with scholarship, visual art, and poetry.”
You can check out this article here https://works.swarthmore.edu/critedpol/vol3/iss1/2/
Thank Yous!
We want to express our profound appreciation for all who were involved in producing this issue. Our brilliant group of editors were the people who moved Hartman’s notion of beautiful experiments in our call for papers, while reviewers thoughtfully provided contributors feedback to further develop each of these experiments. We are also appreciative of the Swarthmore College library’s support hosting and managing our online platform. Finally, we want to extend a special thanks to Pempho Moyo, who single handedly attended to the formatting of the issue. We think that readers will find what Pempho created in putting the contributions together accessible, educational and beautiful.
We hope you enjoy the issue, and invite you to share this issue with others in your networks, using the tags #CritEdPol and #BeautifulExperiments. You can also direct people to our facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/CritEdPol/
Many thanks!
Edwin Mayorga (Swarthmore College) & Chanelle Wilson (Bryn Mawr College)
#CritEdPol, Lead Editors