Interdisciplinary, Gender, and Ethnic Studies

This article is a study of the impact of liberalism and neoliberalism on educational policy in India. The focus is on two waves of colonial enterprise into India. The first phase occurred in the nineteenth century and was ideologically fueled by post-Enlightenment liberalism. At this time the British conspicuously and proactively colonized India and justified this colonial project on liberal, Eurocentric grounds. In this context, I examine the impact of liberalism and utilitarianism on education policy and argue that modern, secular education was uniquely an outcome of colonial ideology in India. In the second section of the article, following post-colonial and critical theorists of education, I argue that global neoliberalism is a continuation of colonialism, albeit in different form, and that this new form of global colonization is reversing educational commitment and policy in India from secular public education to privatized education and school choice in the service of global neoliberal interests.

Sustainability of resources needed to propel a global knowledge economy are common concerns in education around the world, and this is likely due to global economic concerns that directly influence education systems and curriculum (Altbach, 2015; Klees, 2017; Spring, 2015). However, cultural sustainability is increasingly at risk in our current global era where the world is consistently becoming flatter and interconnected (Friedman, 2007; Spring, 2015). Cultural sustainability is rarely central in educational aims, agendas, and curricula (Ladson-Billings, 2014). This research explores an exceptional case in Jaipur, India at a college of traditional Indian craft and design where cultural preservation and propagation are the central curricular concerns.

India and the United States are the largest democracies in the world, and since the 1990s, both countries have implemented neoliberal economic reforms into most of their social institutions— including their education systems. Even though both countries have long-established commitments to public education as a means for socio-economic equitability for all citizens, in the wake of neoliberal reforms both countries have made significant moves to privatize education. The justification for school privatization was based on policies that redefined democracy in economic terms, and the result is a very undemocratic marginalization for the majority of students who do not have the means to participate in school choice. This article explored these issues by analyzing governmental student enrollment data, funding schemes, and media reporting on school-choice initiatives.

Every year across India, families anxiously await the announcement of their children’s standard board exam results for grades ten and twelve. These high-stakes exams are at the very center of India’s education system, and they serve as the gatekeepers for future educational opportunities and life prospects. These results are generally announced in late May, and the event garners heightened media attention across media platforms on the topic of education. It was this annual event that presented the researcher the opportunity to investigate the frequency and the content of media messages for the weeks preceding and following the announcement for three consecutive years from 2017 to 2019. The data samples were drawn from newsprint media, television and film, and street signage, and data were analyzed using ethnographic content analysis as a means to intertextually triangulate emergent themes. The primary research question asked, to what extent does Jaipur’s cultural media domain expose people to market-model education initiatives, and how might these messages impact educational practices and social equitability for students across socioeconomic levels? The overarching finding is that education in India is increasing and systemically gentrified and inequitable, leaving low-income students with limited educational and life choices.

This project addressed the complex problem of passive learning in large-format general education classes. These classes are all too often taught via didactic lecture-based instruction with regurgitative assessments through high stakes testing. Over the course of three semesters, this educational innovative project implemented a novel approach to instruction where students engaged in integrative/interdisciplinary research on a topic of interest to the individual students. Students worked in peer-review teams throughout the semester, but they presented their individual research in the form of a short documentary film.

The findings of this project for a general education class in integrative studies in social science at a major Big 10 university revealed that it is indeed possible to bring meaningful innovation to large-format classes where engaged, active, team-based, and culturally responsive pedagogy results in students taking meaningful creative risks and really applying their lived experiences and interests to their education.

Many countries require that student achievement in K-12 education be assessed through high-stakes, standardized tests. Indeed, this has become a normative global educational practice, where assessments and concomitant curricula drive the entire educational system and student experiences (Ball, 2012; Spring, 2015). Ravitch (2016) has criticized such systems, arguing that high-stakes assessments are purported by proponents to reflect a true and accurate account of the merit, quality, and preparedness of students to move on to the next grade or educational track; however, in reality, such testing is inherently inequitable. This study investigates this underlying assumption as it applies to India, and it uniquely examines the entangled ways that the 2020 global pandemic has somewhat unexpectedly created space for stakeholders to challenge the current system by directly or indirectly exposing structural demerits and inequities that exist within the board exam system.

This presentation is a part of a longitudinal ethnography conducted at the Indian Institute of Craft and Design (IICD) in Jaipur, India over the last 5 years. The curriculum for craft and design students transcend the more typical educational status quo available and prescribed for higher education in India, and the findings of this project demonstrate that IICD offers a holistic educational experience that prepares students to work across sectors in today's economy. The benefits include foci on symbiotic, environmental, culturally responsive, and even global approaches and solutions to challenges in today's interconnected world. This is a component snapshot of a larger study.

This article explores the origins of the matrimonial rite "jumping the broom", and the reasons for its significant popularity among various free and enslaved communities connected by the Atlantic world. Examining the marital traditions of British Gypsies, Celts, common Anglo-Saxons, American slaves, and poor white southerners, I reveal how the folk customs of these subaltern groups illustrate the intercultural, multiracial, and transatlantic foundations of southern culture.

I argue that while jumping the broom was a documented wedding tradition in both black and white communities in the nineteenth century, events such as the aftermath of the American Civil War, the rise of Black Power, and the greater scholarly attention to US slavery adjusted the "collective memory" of the ritual in American history. In analyzing nearly two centuries of divergent folk histories that reference the custom, this article reveals how this ethnically diverse tradition evolved into a practice largely and, it seems, sometimes exclusively associated with African Americans.

This article intersects various secondary works that analyze regional memories in the US South, slave marital practices, and the intellectual history of slavery in the United States. Following a brief analysis of the “Plantation Myth,” I examine the proslavery framework established by southern apologists in the antebellum era and gauge how postbellum authors built upon these arguments. The next part critically probes memoirists’ usage of descriptive material, scrutinizing their motivations for producing the literature, the tone conveyed through their writing, and how they used the wedding ceremony as a symbol for slavery’s benignity. Following this qualitative data, I examine a research sample found in the collections of Herman Clarence Nixon, a prolific author in the early twentieth century who interviewed former slave owners for his research on slavery in northern Alabama. Finally, this article reveals how postbellum reminiscences portrayed a myth of gender solidarity that transcended racial boundaries.