Carmen L. Medina

Media as nexus of practice: remaking identities in What Not to Wear

In this conceptual piece, we examine media as a nexus of a traditional schooling pedagogy and performance pedagogy to make visible how their overlapping elements produce medias pervasive educative force but also to gain a deeper understanding of the complexities of using media in educational contexts. Nexus analysis examines a fashion makeover television program – What Not to Wear (WNTW) – as an embodied lesson that produces identity revision but also disjunctures and slippages that enable critical responses and productive remakings. WNTW is a dramatization of remediation of one womans (portrayed) lived practices and clothing choices which are read on her body as personal expression of fashion trends. These globalized lessons with body texts require new ways of reading and responding that allow learners/viewers to see the power relations that construct particular identity performances as errors and cultural practices and ethnicities as unacceptable.

Critical Literacies and Glo/Cal Citizenry: Constructing Reflective Spaces Through Critical Performative Pedagogies

“I really engage my whole being, not just the cognitive and the physical self, but also the spiritual and emotional part of me that allows me to appreciate the material in a deeper realm.” (Nancy, Kindergarten teacher)

Global Markets/Global Englishes: Drama and Discourses in Colonial Spaces

Through this study, we examined the intricacies embedded in viewing drama as a space to explore the sociocultural/sociopolitical complexities of English-language education. In this piece, we share selected qualitative data from a larger project collected during a 2-year period from courses in intermediate English and business English education from Spanish-dominant students enrolled at the University of Puerto Rico. Our emphasis in this article is on the business English education course. Traditionally in Puerto Rico, business English education courses are aimed at Spanish-speaking students acquiring technical skills in English, such as writing a memo, resume, or letter, with the idea of providing the necessary language tools to compete in an English-dominant global market. In our analysis of previous approaches to the course, we noticed that business English courses were presented as neutral and mechanical without any or little emphasis on the politics of English-language acquisition for business purposes. As educators grounded in the traditions of critical inquiry through drama, we were interested in how we might use drama to subvert the traditional skill-based curriculum to engage students in a critical examination of the mechanism of power that accompanied the introduction of English-language learning.

Deconstructing Global Markets Through Critical Performative Experiences in Puerto Rico

Critical Performative Pedagogies, the idea that “The nature of drama as a once removed creative experience turns non-critical implicit classroom identity formation into explicit identity performance as it asks participants to actively reflect upon how identity is created and engaged within fictional social interactions.” (Weltsek and Medina, 2007) is used to explore English language learning as a political act. Using critical ethnographic research conducted with and on two different groups of students in Puerto Rico, one elementary and one University, as their launching point Gustave Weltsek and Carmen Lillian Medina struggle with the ways in which personal, community and institutionalized literacy education is negotiated within colonial spaces. IN this Water Cooler chat they explain that “When students see themselves as actively involved in the creation/performance of any communicative event, especially one situated as ‘educational’, aware of how they construct their actions the opportunity exists for them to take a more conscious ownership of their education. When applied to literacy learning ‘literacy’ becomes the way multiple sign systems are used to outwardly perform emergent identities. Drama then become an ideal way to observe and articulate how personal, community and institutional literacies are negotiated and created within the performance of self. It is this observation and articulation which ultimately empowers and drives student learning.”

Latinx* popular culture imaginaries: examining Puerto Rican children’s social discourses in interpreting telenovelas

Abstract In this paper, we present a collaboration project within one urban Puerto Rican classroom, focused on constructing a critical literacy inquiry curriculum grounded in the students’ out-of-school literacy practices in their communities, including their experiences with media and popular culture. We focused on a critical literacy and media inquiry unit centered on the students’ self-selected subject of the telenovela. Here, we examine one student’s work to highlight two overarching findings: (1) the visibility of the students’ complex understanding of the media landscapes in telenovelas, particularly the construction of dominant social discourses across telenovela worlds, and (2) the ways that bringing children’s mediatized cultural imaginaries in their creative work supports an approach to literacy in classrooms, where explorations of discourses of power emerge from the students’ knowledge. In order to articulate how children actively examine and construct discourses across multiple social worlds, we examine these findings using the Four Resource Model, and elements of discourse analysis, as theoretical and analytical frameworks, focusing on the construction of identities, worlds and meanings in relation to the social discourses of telenovelas.

Critical Fictions of Transnationalism in Latinx Children's Literature

In this essay, we provide an overview of the theories of transnationalism and critical fictions as they relate to children and children’s literature. We define “critical fictions of transnationalism” as texts that position readers across locations and times, making visible contemporary overlapping politics of border crossing, global markets, and cultural production across spaces and its implications for transmigrant communities. We then apply key theoretical elements of transnational literacies in literature to discuss the book Cafecito Story (2001) by Latina feminist author Julia Alvarez. Her books depict children and families whose lives are impacted by transnational markets and international borders.