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Calls for Articles
Radical Teacher is a socialist, feminist, and anti-racist journal grounded in radical left politics. We publish articles that focus on education written by educational workers at all levels, in traditional and nontraditional institutions. Since 1975, we have provided a forum for progressive and accessible voices, promoting peace, social justice, and equality. We encourage potential contributors to explore our politics, our submission policies, and our past issues at www.radicalteacher.org.
Teaching Outside The Box: Activist Art and Other Cultural Interventions
Posters, caricatures, hip hop, graffiti, flags, banners, demonstrations, graphic novels, photography, bumper stickers, theater, drumming, break dancing, film and video, YouTube, blogs, rapping, T-shirts... art as activism is everywhere. With or without words, its artifacts assert a commitment to radical social change and belief in the ability of expression to challenge norms and bring about such change. This focus raises basic questions about how one may define "art" including the tensions between so-called high and vernacular art, advocacy and propaganda, revolution and change, etc. At issue is also the relationship between radical political will and action: how and when does art in fact translate into or generate social action? Addressing this question in turn raises issues of audience, of expressive medium, and of context: the face of Angela Davis on a T-shirt, a performance by the Bread and Puppets Theater, Dykes on Bikes at the head of a Pride parade, a museum exhibition of posters from the Spanish Civil War, or a home-made poster carried by an anti-war demonstrator—all of these artworks speak in different ways, through different media, to different (if at times overlapping) groups of viewers. How are progressive educators addressing these issues in (and outside) the classroom? How do teachers use radical art to engage students and to teach the history of social activism and the role that art and culture play in the transformation of political realities? And how do students respond to such teaching given their particular social inscription by gender, class, ethnicity, etc.? Radical Teacher invites essays that address these, and related, questions.
We welcome articles that focus centrally on teaching and engaging in diverse art forms that promote and/or contribute to radical political change in a range of settings. We are especially interested in discussions of ways such work, when addressed in educational contexts, deepens students’ understanding of the social realities that affect their lives and shapes their willed ability to intervene in these realities. Focused on teaching and anchored in concrete examples, articles may concern an entire course, a unit within a course, or a project that takes place outside the traditional classroom. Possible topics might include:
- courses focused on the production and/or discussion of radical art
- teaching an activist art unit within a course
- internships and apprenticing in the arts with radical individuals and/or groups
- analysis of activist art work
- activism as performance // performance as activism
- controversies in the classroom regarding activist art
Inquiries, proposals, and drafts should be sent to jentin@brooklyn.cuny.edu
Joseph Entin and Linda Dittmar, editors. Completed submissions are due March 15, 2010
Essays for Radical Teacher should be approximately 4,000 to 5,000 words and written in accessible prose. For more information, see "Submission Guidelines," www.radicalteacher.org
Radical Teacher is published by the University of Illinois Press.
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Teaching Notes
Is there a book, film, essay, poem, or story that you've found particularly useful in the classroom and want to share with other Radical Teacher readers? We are especially interested in Teaching Notes on new materials not widely known, but we would also like to hear about newly rediscovered older works, as well as new ways of teaching familiar ones.
Or has something challenging, encouraging, or frustrating happened in class? If you think our readers can learn from your experience—whether you handled things well, handled them badly, or are still trying to decide—we’d like to hear about it.
Contributions should run about 500 words. If you’d like to see some sample Teaching Notes, check out "Recent Issues" on our web site.
Please send a hard copy of your Note to Bob Rosen, Department of English, William Paterson University, 300 Pompton Road, Wayne, New Jersey 07470—and also an e-mail, with the header "Teaching Note," to: bobrosen@radicalteacher.org
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News for Educational Workers
Is there a news item, call for papers, upcoming conference, resource, teaching tool or other information related to progressive education that you would like to share with other Radical Teacher readers? Conference announcements and calls for papers should be at least six months ahead of date. Items, which will be used as found appropriate by Radical Teacher, cannot be returned. Send hard copy to Leonard Vogt, Department of English, LaGuardia Community College (CUNY), 31-10 Thomson Avenue, Long Island City, New York 11101—or email items to: nfew@radicalteacher.org.
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