Critical Performative Pedagogical Encounters

Critical Performative Pedagogical Encounters Critical Performative Pedagogical Encounters Project title: Critical Performative Pedagogical Encounters Project description. At the intersections of critical communication pedagogy, performance studies, and critical/cultural studies lies what Elyse Lamm Pineau (2002) termed critical performative pedagogy. As critical pedagogues, we maintain the classroom is an always and already politicized site animated by competing ideologies. Critical performative pedagogy positions the student-and/as-teacher as active co-performers capable of intervening in the performative sedimentation of cultural power. As critical pedagogues, we deliberately put our bodies on the line, working our privilege against intersectional powers animating the communication classroom and beyond. This area of pedagogical potential, informed by an interventionist spirit, is undertheorized. In this project, we propose to investigate and establish a multi-pronged and sustained cross-institutional disciplinary conversation and movement as it pertains to liberatory ends in pedagogical contexts and beyond. First, this is a multi-pronged project that includes the following ends: 1. Establishing an Annual Digital Critical Pedagogy Workshop featuring cutting-edge approaches to performative pedagogies that work in service of humanization and liberation. This workshop will be geared specifically to communication educators seeking ongoing development in their critical pedagogical skills and capacity beyond their own training in graduate school. Graduate students who are teaching will be especially encouraged to join; 2. Editing a special issue of an NCA journal (ideally Communication Education) that features cutting-edge, brave, and liberatory pedagogies in both thought and action. We will title this special issue Critical Performative Pedagogical Encounters. This special issue will work to develop the theory undergirding performative pedagogical interventions. By the close of the funding period, we propose to have the workshop planned, scheduled, and successfully executed. This workshop will be held online enabling broader participation while securing safety in light of COVID-19. Our second goal, the special issue, has a slightly different trajectory. By the close of the funding period, we propose to have secured a special issue slot with calls for submissions circulating throughout the discipline. This project is important for a number of reasons. One, it provides much needed space to learn cutting-edge, brave pedagogical approaches that work in service of liberation. In light of rising global fascism and US-borne white nationalism both in and out of our communication classrooms, there is no time better than now to develop and support our communication educators looking for better ways to intervene and to model anti-oppressive communication through our pedagogies. Two, this project develops the theoretical ground animating critical performative pedagogies as interventionist performances that require full embodied engagement. Such pedagogical labor centers performance as embodied means to, in the words of Augusto Boal (1993), rehearse for the revolution (p. 122). And three, this project ends with a point of departure for sustained critical pedagogical engagement through the annual digital pedagogy workshop. This workshop will provide professional space for developing educators to model liberatory possibilities in pedagogical contexts. Speaking directly to NCAs strategic plan, this project directly responds to Goals 1-4. First, it cultivates communication research across multiple institution and among researchers of communication pedagogy. Second, it enhances communication teaching and learning particularly with regard to developing critical pedagogy curriculum from graduate educators seeking support with critical approaches to pedagogy. Third, it disseminates knowledge about communication both through the annual digital pedagogy workshop and through the proposed co-edited journal special issue. And fourth, the project facilitates professional development through ongoing pedagogy training and support via the annual workshop. The workshop will be free and open to the public, with invitations directed to the communication membership. Given recent calls for antiracism in the discipline, we imagine this project will draw many interested pedagogues throughout the discipline.