"No Humans Involved" Revisited: History Education and Curriculum Through the Lens of Sylvia Wynter

• In Event: AERA Roundtable Session 13
  In Roundtable Session: Curricular Textures: Theory, Reality, and Standards

Abstract

This conceptual paper explores how Sylvia Wynter’s “genres of being human” underlies many questions and concerns around history education: dominant narratives and curricular erasure, democracy and citizenship, current attacks on CRT, to name a few. Using her analyses of Columbus and the Rodney King event, I outline one of her key concerns: who is considered fully human and who is considered liminal as the foundational schema that manifests in how and what history is taught. Her understanding of Columbus--a dominant narrative--and the Rodney King event--a narrative erased--exposes how history curriculum in schools perpetuates a social order that continues to deny the humanity of many, yet obscures this reality.

Author

• Esther June Kim, William & Mary