The present study details the theoretical and pedagogical development of an experimental cultural studies in education seminar. Specifically, we explore the societal ends of education, and the means they prefigure, through a meditation on the catastrophe of the present. This will involve theorizing this historical moment, thinking through the…

Through the use of horror movie motifs like zombies and mad doctors, "The Maze Runner: The Scorch Trials" (2015) stands in drastic contrast to other young adult dystopian properties like "The Hunger Games" (2012), for example, in that "Scorch Trials" uses allegory as a means to comment on neoliberalism, alienated…

In March 2016 when North Carolina's House Bill 2 (HB2)--the "bathroom bill"--was introduced and passed, I was teaching at a state university in North Carolina (N.C. Gen. Assem., 2016). In the Spring semester of that year, on March 23, HB2 was passed in a 12-hour special session meeting by the North Carolina legislature. The following…

Recent studies note how the US school reform movement is premised on a policy-making agenda that aims to redress what it sees as the complacent approach of educators who have, as reformers suggest, made poverty an excuse for low achievement levels in economically disadvantaged schools. An increasingly significant pedagogical approach employed to…

There is much in Freire's educational philosophy that can be helpful in the reading of a fictional work; similarly, in engaging fiction, the understanding of key Freirean principles can be deepened. These dual possibilities become evident in reflecting on his countryman Lima Barreto's novel, "The Sad End of Policarpo Quaresma" (Barreto,…

While updating standards is done from time to time to reflect a changing world, content within them is ripe for ideological contestation as it reflects the official curriculum that schools follow; in the case of Social Studies education, standards hold the potential to impact students' understandings of civics and citizenship. Ambiguity…

This paper argues for an Asian American racialization that takes seriously the political economy of racial capitalism. To do so, it first discusses the racial category of Asian American, and then take up the myth of the Model Minority as the defining form of Asian American racialization in education. This paper then connects the Model Minority to…

This paper is an experimental effort to look at a fairly traditional "gender diversity curriculum" that the authors assembled together over 2 years (Woolley & Airton, 2020). The aim of the curriculum assembled is to teach--presumably an in-service or pre-service K-12 teacher--how to incorporate gender diversity into their own taught…

Blockbuster young adult (YA) dystopian novels invite readers to explore questions of identity and agency in fictional societies impacted by familiar concerns, such as increased social and political violence and state surveillance. As young people navigate similar issues in their own lived experiences, these texts can serve as transformative…

School leaders face "one of the most important opportunities to influence social justice" (Cambron-McCabe & McCarthy, 2005, p. 208), but they cannot do this work alone. Teachers and school leaders must work together with students and families, who play a key role in student success (Epstein et al., 2009; Johnson, 2014). Too often,…

While recognition of the need for teacher education in media literacy is not new, in the context of social media it is growing. What this article offers is an approach to critical media literacy for teachers--what the authors call critical social literacy (CSL)--that treats media as a venue for the operation of power. By distinguishing between…

This study analyzes digital corporate media literacy content. The authors reviewed the various lesson plans and, when possible, "enrolled" in various online media courses. The study had three goals: (1) to determine what, exactly, digital corporate media literacy is teaching children and young people, (2) to see if there is merit in…

This study aims to show how digital youth leadership and activism on climate change has developed, what type of online discourse the movement has managed to channel in the fight against climate change and, above all, why the recently emerged #FridaysForFuture movement has succeeded, and not the classic adult environmental movement. The goals of…

This literature review examines 50 scholarly works published in the journal of "Critical Studies in Media Communication (CSMC)" from 2000 to 2020. Each "CSMC" article has been selected because it employs post-feminist, post-race and/or post-closet as categories to classify media discourse. The publication of 50 articles,…

Turning to key texts of Paulo Freire and Jacques Lacan, this paper argues that the experience organized in critical pedagogy can be rearticulated on the basis of a structural-practical connection to psychoanalysis. I pay specific attention to the methodical parallels that develop between the accounts of the psychoanalytic and pedagogical…