Some Strange Magic: Whiteness, Castles, and Improvisation in Early Childhood

• In Event: 56.034 - Second-Wave White Teacher Identity Studies: Toward Whiteness Pedagogies in Teaching and Learning About Race

Abstract

The purpose of this presentation is to both 1) conceptualize the symbol of the castle as an interrogated symbol of racism and 2) suggest the use of improvisation as a promising pedagogical tool with elementary age children that can be used to challenge those constructions directly by teaching children to take on new, non-racist meanings as they imagine and play with castles.

Our analysis of the castle as an artifact in childhood play (through literature, television shows, toys, etc.) reveals how whiteness constructed through particular symbols such as the castle contributes to interior worlds of those who endure structural evil (Townes, 2006). We include white people in white supremacist societies as people who endure (and simultaneously enforce) structural evil. Our analysis of the improvisational pedagogy that Author 1 and Author 2 devised in relationship with the artifacts of childhood play reveals a potentially potent form of whiteness pedagogy that allows participants to exist in social worlds that are not fixed by symbols such as the castle. Artifacts, discourses, and texts such as the castle can become fluid during improvisation; participants enter a space where re-negotiation is facilitated. An unfixed disposition – a way of being or identity that can resist normalized hegemony (such as the castle as a fixture of the white imagination or subsequent participation in white supremacy) – can be gleaned from unpacking practices of long-form, theatrical improvisation.

Our conceptualization of improvisational pedagogy in relation to the castle as a symbol of white supremacy is significant because, in our theorizing of the castle, improvisation emerged as a logical, dispositional and theoretical counter to the fixed hegemony of white supremacy because it can facilitate a dispositional stance that resists reification of hegemonic ideals—in this case, white supremacy. Thus, while we see the castle as a cultural artifact that fixes white supremacy, we argue that long-form improvisational pedagogy can help us work to unfix white supremacy. This research drives much needed, novel research on second wave whiteness pedagogy for young children.

References

Townes, E. M. (2006). Womanist Ethics and the Cultural Production of Evil. Black Religion, Womanist Thought. Social Justice. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.

Authors

• Erin Till Miller, University of North Carolina - Charlotte

• Samuel Jaye Tanner, The Pennsylvania State University - Altoona