Performing America: Using Mimesis, Poiesis, and Kinesis to Consider Curriculum as Performance

• In Event: Roundtable Session 6
  In Roundtable Session: Curriculum Beyond Policy and Practice: A Symposium on Research in Curriculum for Postqualitative Times

Abstract

This paper presents research from a yearlong study of how teachers and students in both an urban and rural high school located in the Midwest express competing versions and visions of America in their required social studies courses. The purpose of this paper is to work out contingent occurrences of teachers and students in these schools in which they construct and express America as a performance. Using theories and methods from Performance Studies (Schechner, 2012, 2002; Bial, 2007; Carlson, 2004; Denzin, 2003), the contributions of this study seek to inform curriculum theorists on the possibilities for rethinking curriculum as performance. Examples from the research study informing this paper include: (1) a presentation to students in a school assembly from a local Vietnam War veterans group; (2) a series of public court cases held in a school auditorium by a judge who wanted students to see “justice, up close and personal”; (3) and a culminating project for a civics course in which students participated in a mock hearing in front of a panel of their town’s elected officials.

The study of curriculum that forms the content of this paper is animated by my desire to elucidate what theories of performance invite researchers to consider on/for/about curriculum. I use a definition of performance from Schechner (2002), who defines performance as a continuum of expressions ranging from “family scenes, professional roles” to “sports, dance, ceremonies” and more (p. x). This approach regards performances as “ongoing systems of social and aesthetic life” that include “not only the narratives but the bodily actions of drama” that express, among other things, “crisis, schism, and conflict” (p. xi). The examples detailed in this paper each consider how learning about America becomes a performance of crisis, schism, and conflict for students and teachers. I consider these performances through a framework offered by Conquergood (1992; 2002) that distinguishes moments of performances as mimesis (by which performances act as mirrors or imitations of experiences); poiesis (by which performances are reflexive, creative, and put culture into motion); and kinesis (by which performances evoke intervention and change, producing a disruption that plays on decentering meaning). Thinking of curriculum as mimetic, poetic, and kinetic performance can prompt educators to consider how what we do in school is, like all performances, “usually subjunctive, liminal, dangerous, and duplicitous” (Schechner, 2002, p. xi).

Following Schechner’s assessment of performance, and using the three examples from case studies outlined above, I suggest educators view curriculum as a performance to interrogate how curriculum performed in school proceeds in a seemingly innocent fashion through “ways of making the places, the participants, and the events somewhat safe” (p. xi). The commitment of critical approaches to curriculum studies can be renewed with the theoretical purchase of Performance Studies in calling attention to the “relatively safe make-believe precincts” of schools in which curriculum is performed (p. xi).

Author

• Mark Helmsing, George Mason University