CALL FOR PAPERS

The Arts as White Property: Interrogating Racism within Arts in Education

CO-EDITORS

Amelia M. Kraehe, University of North Texas, Department of Art Education and Art History

Rubén Gaztambide-Fernández, Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, Department of Curriculum, Teaching and Learning

B. Stephen Carpenter, II, Pennsylvania State University, School of Visual Arts

PROPOSAL SUBMISSION DEADLINE: April 15, 2015

OVERVIEW

Despite strong rhetoric to the contrary, arts in education scholars and practitioners have been remarkably silent regarding how dynamics of race and racial oppression manifest both explicitly and implicitly through the assumptions, practices, and frameworks that define the field. While there are many examples of arguments and approaches for the arts as a means for addressing racial violence, the ways in which racism and white supremacy shape the field have largely remained unspoken. This book is a response to such persistent silences and omissions about race and racial injustice in and through the arts in education. Such gaps continue even as patterned instances of racial violence and exploitation play out in the media and society. This book thus mobilizes the conceptual tools of Critical Race Theory to examine how whiteness and white supremacy manifest, and are legitimated, through discourses, visual representations, and practices of the arts in education. This work explores wide-ranging questions about the arts as white property while maintaining a focus on the ways in which white identity and the racial frames of whiteness take hold and contribute to inequality.

As the title suggests, this book takes its inspiration from critical legal theorists Derrick Bell (1989) and Cheryl Harris's (1993) treatment of the concept of whiteness as property, where property serves a central role in structuring and justifying the hierarchical economic, social, and political relationship between whites and nonwhites. As property, whiteness bestows advantages and assets that carry material, aesthetic, epistemological, and psychological consequences, among which include the making of white and nonwhite subjectivities. Whiteness constructs "White" as good, beautiful, and innocent and simultaneously relies on its oppositional construction of "Black" (nonwhite) as abject, threatening, and Other. Though racial identifications are widely understood as shifting from one historical era to another with no stable essence, white property is nonetheless continuously and fiercely guarded. Whiteness is a seductive, invisible center from which one perceives and makes sense of one's self and the world as well as a productive mode of power constituted through assumptions, knowledge, and performative actions and gestures that sustains and benefits whites individually and institutionally (Yancy, 2004).

Taking these ideas as a starting point, the contributions to this collection build on and extend knowledge of the arts as white property. As an important step toward building an anti-racist and decolonial approach to the arts in education, the proposed volume will include essays and research that describe, name, and denormalize white hegemony in and through the arts from various disciplinary, methodological, and institutional perspectives. This book is tentatively organized into three thematic sections.

ORGANIZATION

Inherited Legacies:

This section will exhume the ghosts of whiteness in the histories of music, visual art, theater, and dance education. In what ways have past events, ways of thinking, and practices of the arts contributed to the production and animation of the arts as white property? What historical and philosophical records perpetuate and mask racial domination? How is whiteness and white supremacy written into the historiography of the arts in education? What counter-histories expand recognition and knowledge of agency among nonwhite artists, arts educators, and artistic movements?

Discursive Materials:

This section will explore white property in relation to visual, performance, and textual artifacts in or about the arts and arts education, including arts educational policies. How do racial frameworks influence the production and use of curriculum materials in K-12 arts education and teacher preparation? How does whiteness orient dominant re-presentations of the arts and artistic talent in the public imaginary? How is whiteness produced through the rhetoric of the value of the arts for practices of parenting, childrearing, and community involvement? How do arts educational policies generate and regulate the property interest in whiteness? What barriers to change must be overcome if public arts policies are to help transform racialized inequities in both quantity and quality of arts experiences?

Lived Practices:

This section will focus on how the arts are organized and experienced as white property. What role does whiteness play in the process of becoming an artist? In what ways do aesthetics, art interpretation, artmaking, performance, arts curriculum or pedagogies assume and reinforce racist stereotypes and hierarchies? How do visual and performing arts learning environments reflect and protect a white supremacist value system? What alternatives exist for anti-racist and decolonizing arts practices?

SUBMISSION DETAILS

Proposal Format: Prospective contributors will submit a 400-500 word abstract with at least five references from relevant literature and a chapter title, author name, affiliation, and contact information (phone, e-mail and mailing address).

Procedures: Please submit the proposal as a Word file e-mail attachment to CRTartsed@gmail.com by April 15, 2015. All submitters will be notified by April 30, 2015 of the status of their proposal. Authors of selected proposals will receive chapter guidelines and will be invited to submit full chapters for consideration by September 30, 2015. Editors will review submitted chapters for final selection and make recommendations for revisions by October 30, 2015. Final submissions will be due by November 30, 2015. This volume is anticipated to be released in 2016. The editors welcome queries.

IMPORTANT DATES

April 15, 2015: Proposal Submission Deadline

April 30, 2015: Notification of Proposal Acceptance and Invitation to Submit Chapters

September 30, 2015: Full Chapter Submission

October 30, 2015: Notification of Acceptance and Revisions Returned

November 30, 2015: Final Chapter Submission