Marc D. Rich

“Why Are You Shoving This Stuff Down Our Throats?”: Preparing Intercultural Educators to Challenge Performances of White Racism

Abstract In general, white students respond intensely to explorations of racism. Intercultural educators are often unprepared for the challenges white students assert during conversations about racism and are unsure how to reply appropriately. Herein, we offer examples of student responses to critical race pedagogy in order to assist teachers in addressing similar stories told in their own classrooms. Based on data collected from over 300 student assignments collected between fall 2003 and fall 2006, we present a typology that categorizes patterns of white student resistance, including acknowledgement of racism, white self-preservation, diversion from structural power, and investment in white supremacy.

Assessing the Impact of Augusto Boal's “Proactive Performance”: An Embodied Approach for Cultivating Prosocial Responses to Sexual Assault

Although performance studies practitioners remain committed to body-centered pedagogy and sociopolitical issues such as racism, homophobia, and sexism, there is little empirical evidence to suggest the efficacy of this work. This essay presents a comparative assessment of a sexual assault intervention model influenced by Augusto Boals work to a more traditional, didactic lecture and a standard control condition in the college classroom. After discussing various interactive and proactive performance models, quantitative evidence is introduced to suggest the efficacy of the intervention model.

The interACT model: Considering rape prevention from a performance activism and social justice perspective:

Although a number of rape prevention programs exist, the interACT Troupe is distinguished by their commitment to social justice pedagogy and proactive performance. Influenced by critical pedagogy and Theatre of the Oppressed, interACT uses embodied techniques aligned with feminist pedagogies to raise awareness, promote empathic responses, challenge (hyper)masculinity and encourage bystander interventions.

Painful stories from camp anuenue: Enactment and reenactment

This essay draws on narratives collected from young people with cancer and ethnographic observations at cancer camps to challenge medical definitions of pain and to explore the distinction between narrative reenactment to performative enactment. While health care professionals consistently define cancer pain as minimal or manageable, stories from young people with cancer provide a different interpretation. Because the performer in an enactment of pain frequently lacks the ability to be reflexive, these enactments problematize the construal of performance as twice-behaved behavior.

Memory Circles The Implications of (Not) Grieving at Cancer Camps

Each summer, Camp Anuenue is in session. Billed as an opportunity for young people with cancer to have a “normal” camping experience, this camp provides a sense of community and a needed break from hospital stays. Despite increasing survival rates for young people with cancer, a number of children and teenagers die each year. However, because Camp Anuenue is designed as a place to have fun, discussions of death and dying are often marginalized. Following a social drama and outpouring of communal grief in 1992, camp administrators implemented a grieving ritual. During the next four years, there was a struggle regarding where and how grief should be enacted. As the objective of the ritual gradually shifted from communal grieving to sharing favorite moments from camp, young people found more informal and individual ways of processing grief.

B(l)acklash: Tamera, Tia, and the “white man’s whore”

ABSTRACT Tamera Mowry-Housely and Tia Mowery-Hardrict first gained popularity with their 1990s sitcom Sister Sister and re-entered the limelight in 2011 with the Tia & Tamera reality show. During the opening scene of season one, Tamera disclosed that she was referred to as a “white man’s whore” on social media. By using critical discourse analysis, we examine how producers on Tia and Tamera and Oprah: Where Are They Now? employ this trope to construct Tamera in a particular way and reinforce postracial storylines.

Inviting the breach: confronting homophobia in the name of social justice.

In 2008 California was divided over Proposition 8, a measure designed to prohibit same-sex marriage. In this article, we focus on a university classroom setting to explore how discussions about Proposition 8 and homophobia led to what Turner (1986) termed a social drama. Drawing on student personal narratives as they moved through the stages of social drama, we provide a poignant example of the conflict that may erupt when homophobia and heteronormativity are part of the curriculum. After documenting the social drama, we offer pedagogical strategies and note the strategic ways Christian, hegemonic discourse is utilized during discussions about homophobia.

Seeing, Channeling, and Weaving: Coming to Christie Logan

Three texts by individual authors, each created about unique experiences, are offered as a polyvocal, diversely textured collection to be read alongside, with, and through each other. Our aim is to render a multi-faceted view of one particular moment in the pedagogical history of our discipline. We were members of the same cohort of graduate students at California State University, Northridge, and this collection charts how we each came to performance studies under the guiding hand of Christie Logan and how when we left her, she never really left us.

Sacked for the Sabbath: Narrative, Trauma, and the (Jewish) Body

Although performance studies scholars have considered enactments of race and gender, there has been less focus on the ways that religion is embodied and hidden in educational settings. By using an auto-ethnographic and performative writing approach, I link my personal experiences as a Jewish student and professor to anti-Semitism. I conclude the essay by considering the difficulties of connecting personal stories to somatic experiences and challenging educators to add stories of Jewish resistance to their anti-oppression curriculums.