The prevalence of institutional racism in the United States presents an urgent and complicated challenge. Little agreement exists among scholars regarding the existence and implications of racism, or the position educators might take in addressing it. In the context of public and scholarly retreats from the significance of and responsibility for…

In 1996, Stuart Hall gave a famous lecture entitled "Race: The Floating Signifier." In that lecture, Hall argued against an ontology of race that linked racial identification to any other human characteristic. Undertaking a broad survey of the history of the concept of race, Hall highlighted how the meaning of the signifiers of racial identity…

Serious consideration of disability in the major social theories is a relatively new development. Feminism, critical race, and queer studies have rigorously grappled with issues of embodiment and social justice. These perspectives greatly enhance pedagogy and learning. However, the embodied experience of disability has not been a traditional topic…

In this article, the author profiles Jacques Derrida, whose teaching activity made an invaluable and indelible contribution to the intellectual life of the University of California, Irvine (UCI). The question of pedagogy is central for Derrida, not only in terms of teaching people to read and write differently, but as a means for appreciating the…

Feminist historians have argued that the body needs to be historicized, noting that the body, rather than simply a static, biological, or material reality, is a site of inscription and intervention for notions of nation, race, class, sexuality, ability, and gender within particular historical contexts. Some feminist scholars have made particular…

In this article, the authors attempt to explore some of the ways in which youth subjectivities are constituted in the neoliberal order, the ways in which their behaviours are criminalized, and the harrowing manner in which schools, as one site, are complicit in a larger cultural disinvestment in youth. The authors accomplish this through an…

This article is an intervention into and examination of hypermodern forms of militarization or what the author calls "hypermodern militarized knowledge factories," exemplified here by the increasingly militarized universities of North America. He specifies the important arguments of his intervention into the hypermodern militarization of higher…

In this article, the author seeks to address the present function of Canadian criticism by undertaking a meditation on the contemporary Canadian university and stating his own position as a critic of Canadian literature in this institutional framework. The author asks: What are the connections between neoliberalism and cultural nationalism in…

In May of 2004 Henry Giroux, a creator of the field of critical pedagogy and a leading advocate for young people, democracy, and education in the United States, reluctantly left Penn State University after twelve years as a Distinguished Professor in the education department. He has been a critic of the corporatization of and conservative…

The author initially describes several seminal and interconnected departures from the old social order which are currently happening and which are creating a new and indeed unprecedented setting for the educational process, thereby raising a series of never-before-encountered challenges for the educators. He then details how society is being…

In this article, the author discusses education and the politics of cyberpunk. The importance in contemporary education of critical theory as a pedagogic basis for the analysis of textual and cultural resources creates a space for educationalists to implement meaningful curriculum content. The genre of cyberpunk acts on this level, yet also…

This essay offers a schematic reflection on the institutional formation and political location of Asian-American Studies in relation to the rise of the United Sates prison industrial complex over the last three decades. The author is generally concerned with the peculiar location of "Asian-Americans" as fabricated cultural figures within a U.S.…

In the simplest terms, academic freedom means unfettered scholarly inquiry, a scholar's fundamental right of research, publication, and instruction free of institutional constraint. This indispensable principle of scholarship is the precious gift of independent intellectual judgment--an endowment of open inquiry, free investigation, speculation,…

The Great Khan's atlas contains also the maps of the promised lands visited in thought but not yet discovered or founded: New Atlantis, Utopia, the City of the Sun, Oceana, Tamoe, New Harmony, New Lanark, Icaria. Kublai asked Marco: "You, who go about exploring and who see signs, can you tell me towards which of these futures the favouring winds…

This article is a commencement speech delivered by the author on May 26 at Memorial University of Newfoundland, Canada. In his speech, the author focused on affirming public discourse, civic morality, and what it might mean to conduct your lives as engaged citizens attentive to the suffering of others and the fragility of democracy itself. He said…