Whose "American" Story? Two Self-Studies of Critically Unsettling Civic Identities in University Classrooms

• In Event: 43.078 - MTCC Roundtable Session 16
  In Roundtable Session: 43.078-5 - Educational Justice in Higher Education

Abstract

In this dual self-study, authors unsettle understandings of what constitutes “America”, who counts as an “American,” and how university students engage with critical pedagogies that interrogate national myths and civic identities associated with being “American.” Authors analyzed their teaching in education and transdisciplinary courses to better understand how they and their students deconstruct and reconstruct specific ways of thinking and teaching about variously constructed identities (mythohistorical “American” identities, settler colonial identities, and national subjects of the United States). Authors share vignettes including: 1) how choosing to name settler colonialism and white supremacy revealed resistance to ideas about violences of various “American” identities, and 2) how unsettling national myths exposed uncomfortable tensions related to teaching and learning “American” history.

Authors

• Mark Helmsing, George Mason University

• Sarah B. Shear, The Pennsylvania State University - Altoona