Abstract
In this chapter, Travis describes an account of a racialized experience in an elementary school art classroom. Using the concept of (dis)orientation as theorized by Sara Ahmed (Queer Phenomenology, 2006), Travis describes an experience teaching with the work of African American artist Faith Ringgold. In response to the reading by African American actress Ruby Dee of Ringgold’s children’s book, Tar Beach, a group of white students responded with (dis)orienting laughter. Travis describes the experience of this insidiously hostile laughter and considers the ways in which this embodied response functions as a microaggression that is both orienting and disorienting.
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Ahmed, S. (2006). Queer phenomenology. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
Reading Rainbow. (1992, October 5). Tar beach [Television series episode].
Ringgold, F. (1991). Tar beach. New York, NY: Crown Publishers.
Related Further Reading
Applebaum, B. (2006). Race ignore-ance, colortalk, and white complicity: White is … white isn’t. Educational Theory, 56(3), 345–362.
Brooks, J. G. (2011). Bearing the weight: Discomfort as a necessary condition for “less violent” and more equitable dialogic learning. Educational Foundations, 25(1/2), 43–62.
Kraehe, A. M. (2015). Sounds of silence: Race and emergent counter-narratives of art teacher identity. Studies in Art Education, 56(3), 199–213.
Mills, C. W. (2007). White ignorance. In S. Sullivan & N. Tuana (Eds.), Race and epistemologies of ignorance (pp. 11–28). Albany, NY: State University of New York Press.
Pollock, M. (2009). Colormute: Race talk dilemmas in an American school. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
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Travis, S. (2018). (Dis)orienting Laughter. In: Travis, S., Kraehe, A., Hood, E., Lewis, T. (eds) Pedagogies in the Flesh. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-59599-3_15
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-59599-3_15
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