It is imperative that social work programs facilitate discussions pertaining to social justice in the classroom. This gives students the space to navigate barriers to changing policy and oppressive systems. However, there are multiple barriers to having critical discussions of challenges in advocating for marginalized and oppressed groups. One way…

This article presents the results of a survey among rectors of schools of music and performing arts in Norway. The aim was to map the schools' offerings in terms of musical genres and related instruments and ensembles, and to determine how the availability of different genres was distributed demographically and geographically. A questionnaire…

This article examines the ways in which "Hamilton: An American Musical" can be read less as a historical account and more as a prediction of a future immigrant, who is called upon to (re)define US nationhood. Keeping with the tempo of the musical as well as the broader issues of time, space and identity it attempts to address, this…

This issue of the "Bank Street Occasional Paper Series" seeks to grapple with the complexity of patriotism, particularly in relation to its workings in the lives of teachers and students in schools. Like it or not, schools teach (about) patriotism implicitly if not explicitly. Therefore, much consideration needs to go into what schools…

This article considers drama/theater education as a form of constructivism where popular culture is both accessed and employed to engage young people and animate education. Using the familiar cultural trope of zombies, and in reference to three separate performance projects, attention is drawn to why projects such as these matter and why they…

This article explores the practices and pedagogies of six literacy teacher educators with a critical stance. In this qualitative research study, three semi-structured interviews were conducted with each participant over a three-year period. They were able to negotiate a critical stance into their teacher education courses in several ways: using an…

Over the years that I have taken secondary school students to the theatre, the the digital revolution has moved through schools, classrooms, and even theatres, calling into question my goal of contributing positively to students' identity formation through exposure to live plays. Responding to calls to examine the ways in which young people's…

The Saturday morning acting class in the Pearson Hall auditorium at Miles College boasts the school's highest attendance all year. The teacher, actress Robin Givens, was a lure few students--and others from surrounding areas--could resist. Some came to learn about their prospective field from a professional. Others were there for pointers to…

Focusing on the drag king performances of Christie Whisman, who lived and worked in Columbus, Ohio, USA, from 1999 to 2001, this essay argues that rhetorical bodily performances have the capacity not only to subvert normalised notions of identity categories, but that such performances can also create alternate pedagogical sites that persuasively…

This paper introduces creative pedagogical techniques for exploring theory in the undergraduate classroom. Using criminal justice and criminological theories as a primary example, it describes a technique that professors from any theory-driven discipline can use to engage students through popular music, from hip-hop to musical theater in order to…

Contrary to Bourdieu's theory ("Distinction: A social critique of the judgment of taste". Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press (1984)) that cultural consumption of so-called "high" versus popular culture is determined by socio-economic class, Peterson ("Poetics" 21:243-258, 1992; "Poetics"…

In this paper we suggest that narrative representations that seemingly fail to reach an audience as intended may engage the audience in more meaningful ways. We use reader response theory to explore how an audience's responses to a conference narrative presentation made available a multiplicity of interpretive frameworks and narratives to the…

Many challenges currently face art educators who aim to address aspects of popular visual culture in the art classroom. This article analyzes the relationship between performance art and the MTV program "Jackass," one example of problematic popular visual culture. Issues of gender representation and violence within the context of Reality TV and…

Recently the author has been including in her undergraduate seminars Jean-Jacques Rousseau's "Letter to d'Alembert on the Theatre" (1758), the most provocative essay on the arts ever written. It is about the unintended effects of theater--which, for Rousseau, stands in for all of the arts--on an audience. The essay is an impassioned rebuttal to…

"Wish To Live: The Hip-hop Feminism Pedagogy Reader" moves beyond the traditional understanding of the four elements of hip-hop culture--rapping, breakdancing, graffiti art, and deejaying--to articulate how hip-hop feminist scholarship can inform educational practices and spark, transform, encourage, and sustain local and global youth…