Problematizing Discourses of Race, Gender, Aesthetics, Visuality, and the Body in Educational Curriculum Theorizing

• In Event: Roundtable Session 9
  In Roundtable Session: Explorations in Culture and Curriculum: Possibilities and Considerations

Abstract

The purpose of this presentation is to discuss how ideas of seeing, vision, and visuality have come to be elevated in producing truths & knowledges about the ‘normal’ body in curriculum, teaching, and learning discourses. The first part of the presentation gives attention to some major theories of the body—specifically through a Foucauldian lens—and its intersection with theories of visuality and surveillance. The second and last section of this paper problematizes the implications of racialized and gendered visualities within teaching, curriculum, and educational research practices and discourses. The question that guides this paper is: Why/how did discourses & instruments of vision come to be elevated in producing truths & knowledges about the ‘normal’ body in educational discourses?

Author

• Karla R Manning, University of Wisconsin - Madison