Boal, Augusto. Theatre of the Oppressed. Theatre Communications Group. New York, 1985.
Theatre of the Oppressed is an ongoing project, originating in South America, which uses theatre exercises to encourage a participatory environment in a community and seeks to reveal the social and political realities of life. This book explores many of Boal's projects conducted around the world and articulates the necessary revolution of Western theatre. He argues for equal and active spectator engagement, unlike the usual, passive spectators seeking catharsis. A reconsideration of these roles in the theatre can be equally applicable to an analysis of the dichotomy of teacher and student. His work is more focused on transformations in the theatre in order to bring social relevance to the art form, but many of his theories are relevant when considering the need for social relevance in education.
This work serves broadly as a foundation for the applied component of my project. I am interested in exploring how Boal's liberating framework of the theatre can be in conversation with Freire's ideas of liberatory education. The games and workshops explored in this book offer one entry point into difficult dialogues, through the facilitation of communal, embodied learning. I am interested in engaging these ideas in practice and expanding on them to conceptualize their application within the creation of a feminist classroom.
Bresler, Liora, ed. Knowing Bodies, Moving Minds: Towards Embodied Teaching and Learning. Kluwer Academic Publishers, Netherlands. 2004.
This collection of essays explores a wide spectrum of embodied education. Various art forms, educational levels, curricula, theories and cultures are analyzed to understand the link between the mind and the body in education. Each essay investigates the different access points to knowledge and discusses both the knowledge of the body and the knowledge acquired through cognition. They seek to understand the performative nature of our bodies in order to articulate the consequences of isolating mind and body in education. The various articles offer a diverse analysis of embodiment in education, but ultimately support the approach of simultaneous inclusion because the negative consequences of this current approach are inhibiting the development of educational reform which can truly transform the future.
This work is a crucial contribution to my thinking because it approaches embodiment through various artistic, athletic, and communal practices and offers multiple, intersecting discussions about "alternative knowledges." I will engage these ideas when thinking about ways to access and nurture embodied knowledges and will structure my workshops within a framework of the mutually constitutive powers of mind and body. My process will maintain simultaneous acknowledgement and interaction between mind and body and will attempt to highlight the necessity of transcending the imposed hierarchy when considering the knowledges produced by each.
Freire, Paulo. Pedagogy of the Oppressed. Continuum. New York, 2007.
This book focuses on the nature of oppression and the quest for liberation through a radical evaluation and transformation of education. Freire first focuses on the relationship between the oppressed and their oppressors in order to articulate the role of liberation in the lives of both. Once this dialogue on oppression is established, he explores the challenges and flaws in mainstream educational practices--specifically the pedagogical techniques which maintain practices of domination and hinder true liberation through education. As a solution, he argues for the inclusion of people in their own process of education and thus development through the creation of "pedagogy of the oppressed." This approach to education is organic, coming from within the community, and challenges the relationship between teacher and student, oppressor and oppressed, in order to re-envision education, liberation, and development.
I am particularly interested in Freire's discussion of the "banking model of education" and seek to explore ways the creation of a feminist classroom space can challenge such a model. I also intend to focus on his discussion of our "vocation to become fully human," which is grounded in educational practices. In doing so I hope to begin the process of recognizing and naming the educational practices which stifle this process of becoming in order to consider how transformations of these practices can nurture us towards our ultimate goal of becoming fully human.