Performing Diversity: Strategies for Engaging Critical Analysis of Diversity Programming

• In Event: 25.039 - Critical Explorations of the Discourses Shaping "Diversity Work" at Historically and Predominantly White Public Institutions

Abstract

The final two panelists have been conducting critical discourse analyses of diversity representations in performing arts programming at their university, which was among those critiqued in Iverson’s initial (2007) analysis. By using Iverson’s themes (2007) as codes for deductive analysis of data collected through document analysis of marketing materials and participant observation at events, we found that the university’s diversity discourses continue to strongly invoke the themes of Insider/Outsider (Whiteness as Criteria) and Commodification/Exchange. Additional inductive analysis (informed by ongoing review of diversity literature) also revealed the relevance of the themes of Exoticization and Willful Amnesia (Mills, 1997; Applebaum, 2010; Malewski and Jaramillo, 2011).
In addition to critiquing these discourses through empirical analysis, we met regularly with event planners as part of an action research component of the study. Our goal was to assist practitioners in developing new “equity-minded” discourses and programming. This step was taken because Iverson’s (2007) criticisms apparently had negligible effect. The damaging themes identified by her over a decade earlier resounded in contemporary institutional discourse. This demonstrated to us that additional research strategies were necessary to motivate institutional change.
For the interactive component, audience members will receive a handout with images from the marketing materials of the performing arts series analyzed by the researchers. These will be analyzed in small groups using a worksheet (an excerpt of which appears in Appendix A. The full worksheet will have additional themes and blank rows for audience members to add other themes). As we come back to whole group, report outs from small group discussion will generate a critical discourse analysis with a variety of interpretations. These audience interpretations will necessarily be partial and preliminary, given the nature of the exercise, and we expect to see our findings challenged and extended thanks to the diversity of perspectives offered by audience members. To create coherence in the symposium design, the other two panelists will participate in the small group activity and also offer their own interpretations of the sample materials.
As a large group we will then discuss the junction between critical discourse analysis and action research (Kemmis & McTaggart, 2005). The presenters will describe several action steps they have taken, and invite audience members to critique or offer extensions to those steps. This aspect of the symposium builds on prior studies in which action researchers utilized “equity-minded” document and data analysis strategies in collaboration with teams of practitioners at college campuses. These teams were guided by participatory critical action researchers (PCAR) (Kemmis & McTaggart, 2005) in the analysis of multiple forms of media (see e.g., Dowd & Bensimon, 2015; Dowd, Bishop, Bensimon, & Witham, 2012; Dowd, Bishop, & Bensimon, 2015; Dowd & Liera, 2018; Felix, Bensimon, Hanson, Gray, & Klingsmith, 2015; Harris III & Bensimon, 2008). In these studies, once participants identified deficit discourses, they acted to change institutional policies and practices that were minoritizing traditionally excluded racial groups and reproducing White majoritarian narratives. Our goal is to stimulate and enable similar institutional agency for change.

Authors

• Alicia C. Dowd, The Pennsylvania State University

• Ali Watts, The Pennsylvania State University