| dc.description.abstract | “A Connected Idea of the Lesson”: Teaching and Learning in African American Literature, examines depictions of the classroom in African American literature in order to understand how well-known writers and activists from Ida B. Wells and Kiese Laymon also offer important pedagogical lessons that foreshadow contemporary theories of culturally relevant, responsive, and sustaining pedagogies. I argue that Black teachers have long used literacy to develop students’ sense of agency while simultaneously helping students to recognize their obligation to one another as part of a mutually constitutive learning community. This research intervenes in the fields of African American literature and pedagogical praxis, as I demonstrate that the teachers I study are the forerunners of contemporary theorists of culturally relevant, responsive, and sustaining pedagogy, and that their writings represent a critical trove of knowledge for preservice and inservice educators today.
My dissertation moves roughly chronologically through the twentieth century, with each chapter centering a particular text or author central to the history of critical pedagogy in the United States. In my first chapter, I argue for the importance of connection and care to the work of nineteenth century teacher-authors Fanny Jackson Coppin and Frances E.W. Harper, both of whom depict the revolutionary potential of the classroom for helping students to find their individual voices in order to speak back to power. Also in that chapter, I discuss why their contemporary Ida B. Wells came to such a different assessment of the political potential of classroom teaching and what her more pessimistic perspective might teach teachers and policy makers today. In chapter two of my project, I argue that Septima Poinsette Clark and her contemporary, Mamie Garvin Fields, drew upon Black musical traditions to bring improvisation into the classroom in furtherance of their students’ projects of emancipation. Chapter three analyzes student-produced poetry and song from the Mississippi Freedom Schools. In these lyrical texts, I argue that students navigate their complex and often contradictory understandings of the pedagogies they gleaned from teachers such as Charlie Cobb and Stokely Carmichael. In chapter four, I delve into the relationship between masculinity and pedagogy in Ernest Gaines’ A Lesson Before Dying (1993) and J. Saunders Redding’s Stranger and Alone (1950), arguing that these novels show the importance of unlearning a heteropatriarchal conception of masculinity in order to teach for freedom. Finally, chapter five examines Kiese Laymon’s recent memoir Heavy (2018) in order to explicate how Black students of the late twentieth century revised deficit discourses in order to affirm each other’s sense of self. Far from a linear progress narrative, these chapters depict the extraordinary and sometimes futile efforts of Black students and teachers to succeed at effecting politically consequential acts of self- and collective transformation in a context of extreme violence and constraint.
This project examines representations of teaching and learning in African American literature, arguing for the existence of a Black radical pedagogical tradition which foreshadows contemporary theories of culturally relevant, responsive, and sustaining pedagogies (CRP/CSP). The educators whom I discuss help students to actualize their transformative potential, heightening students’ sense of individual agency while simultaneously helping students to recognize their obligation to one another as part of a mutually constitutive community.
In my first chapter, I discuss the depiction of connection and care in the works of teacher-authors Fanny Jackson Coppin and Frances E.W. Harper. I also discuss why their contemporary Ida B. Wells came to a different assessment of the political potential of classroom teaching and what her more pessimistic perspective might teach teachers and policy makers today. In Chapter Two, I argue that Septima Poinsette Clark and her contemporary, Mamie Garvin Fields, drew upon Black musical traditions to bring improvisation into the classroom in furtherance of their students’ projects of emancipation. Chapter Three analyzes student-produced poetry and song from the Mississippi Freedom Schools and the Children’s Development Group of Mississippi in which students navigate their complex and often contradictory understandings of the freedom, subjection, and subjectivity. In Chapter Four, I delve into the relationship between masculinity and pedagogy in Ernest Gaines’s A Lesson Before Dying (1993) and J. Saunders Redding’s Stranger and Alone (1950). Finally, Chapter Five examines Kiese Laymon’s recent memoir Heavy (2018) in order to explicate how Black students of the late-twentieth century revised deficit discourses in order to affirm each other’s sense of self. My project concludes with the results of my research study, in which I worked with an interdisciplinary team of MAT candidates at Vanderbilt’s Peabody College to qualitatively measure changes in their pedagogy after reading works by Clark, Gaines, and Laymon. | |
