TY - JOUR
T1 - “Why Do We Need to Know About This?”
T2 - U.S. Imperialism, Persepolis, and Knowledge Production on Iran in the Classroom
AU - Shirazi, Roozbeh
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© 2022 American Association of Colleges for Teacher Education.
PY - 2022
Y1 - 2022
N2 - Contributing to a growing body of research on acknowledging U.S. imperialism within teacher education, this article explores how knowledge production on Iran—and U.S.-Iran relations more broadly—in secondary education represents a site of what Britzman has called difficult knowledge. Here, the difficulty of classroom engagements with the theme of U.S. imperialism is highlighted in several epistemic stumbling blocks, notably notions of White epistemic authority, neoliberal multiculturalism, and imperial feeling. Drawing upon data collected during a 9-month ethnographic study, the analysis presents classroom scenes from a high school world literature unit on Marjane Satrapi’s Persepolis, selected by the teacher to explore themes of colonialism, imperialism, and revolution. Despite these intentions, classroom engagements with the text often reproduced Orientalist understandings. These findings inform the concluding argument that mobilizes contrapuntal reading as a generative technique for teacher education research and practice to identify and confront the epistemic bases that normalize systems of oppression.
AB - Contributing to a growing body of research on acknowledging U.S. imperialism within teacher education, this article explores how knowledge production on Iran—and U.S.-Iran relations more broadly—in secondary education represents a site of what Britzman has called difficult knowledge. Here, the difficulty of classroom engagements with the theme of U.S. imperialism is highlighted in several epistemic stumbling blocks, notably notions of White epistemic authority, neoliberal multiculturalism, and imperial feeling. Drawing upon data collected during a 9-month ethnographic study, the analysis presents classroom scenes from a high school world literature unit on Marjane Satrapi’s Persepolis, selected by the teacher to explore themes of colonialism, imperialism, and revolution. Despite these intentions, classroom engagements with the text often reproduced Orientalist understandings. These findings inform the concluding argument that mobilizes contrapuntal reading as a generative technique for teacher education research and practice to identify and confront the epistemic bases that normalize systems of oppression.
KW - contrapuntality
KW - critical theory/critical pedagogy
KW - empire and imperialism
KW - ethnography
KW - social justice
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85124629068&partnerID=8YFLogxK
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U2 - 10.1177/00224871221075281
DO - 10.1177/00224871221075281
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85124629068
JO - Journal of Teacher Education
JF - Journal of Teacher Education
SN - 0022-4871
ER -