Toward the Concrete: Our Political Moment as Curriculum of Conjuncture

• In Event: AERA Roundtable Session Friday 1:30 pm Four Seasons Ballroom 2-3
  In Roundtable Session: Utterances and Mo(ve)ments of Remedy Across Curricular Contexts (Table 11)

Abstract

This paper offers perspectives on the ways Curriculum Theory has, might, and perhaps should turn its attention toward an analysis of the current political moment or, the concrete. Grossberg (2010) suggests that the political commitments of critical work push scholars not to “high theory” but instead to take up work that “is always in the service of the concrete, enabling one to produce the concrete in more productive ways” (p.2). This paper explores Grossberg’s charge as well as an analysis of the conjuncture and its application to a curriculum in/of our political moment of anti-woke, anti-DEI, anti-CRT and divisive concepts. This work focuses attention and a cultural studies analysis on new possibilities for “the interdisciplinary study of educational experience.”

Author

• Robert J. Helfenbein, Mercer University