Social Justice Commons^™

Critical Representation: Mattering & Belonging For Students Of The Global Majority, Rebecca E. Haslam

Middle Grades Review

Critical representation in literature and curricula requires an emancipatory agenda and examination of the ways in which people of diverse racial, cultural, linguistic, and other socially marginalized identities are portrayed, an assessment of how relevant, affirming, and accurate those representations are, and a consideration of the impact on a child’s sense of self and ‘other.’ This essay includes sample audit criteria for critical representation highlighting five sections: Storyline & Sense of Justice; Affirmation & Self-Worth; Relationships Among People; Author/Illustrator Background; and Language & Terminology, all with a focus on ‘mattering’ and holistic wellbeing of students of the global majority. Audit …

Social Justice And The Us Food System: A Critical Course On The Human Dimensions Of Food, Ali Brooks

Food Systems Master's Project Reports

Our world is made up of overlapping political, environmental, and economic spheres that engender social injustice and inequality. Though separate societal issues can seem divergent and unconnected, they are all linked together by one universal necessity: food. Because everyone eats, everyone is connected to—and dependent on—food and the systems that govern it. However, the impacts of our industrial food system are not felt equally among people who hold different positions of power within it.

Today’s industrial food complex operates on the capitalist principle of profit accumulation through exploitation, commodification, and extraction. This set of relations is not defined by scale …

Higher Education And Necropolitics: Tracing Death And Violence In Higher Education, E. Jeremy Torres

The Vermont Connection

Although scholarship has inspected the role of neoliberalism in higher education, little work names higher education in the United States as an institution that perpetuates death and violence of the most marginalized communities. By engaging in a critical analysis, this research locates and explicitly names higher education as a necropolitical institution, highlighting the sites of power higher education/actors exert over marginalized populations through neoliberal tools of the state. This article makes higher education decision makers and stakeholders aware of their role in their participation in deathly and violent practices.

A Critical Phenomenology Of Whiteness In Academic Libraries, Emily Crist, Kelly Clark/Keefe

University Libraries Faculty and Staff Publications

This exploratory qualitative study examines how whiteness functions in the field of library and information science (LIS) within higher education institutions. Utilizing a critical phenomenological approach, three questions guided the inquiry: (1) How is whiteness embodied by academic librarians, (2) What perceptions do academic librarians hold that contribute to the maintenance or disruption of habits of whiteness in libraries, and (3) How and where is whiteness embedded within academic library settings and the field of LIS?

The aim was to begin understanding whiteness in libraries as an experientially-grounded and systemically reproduced phenomena. Four academic librarians participated in semi-structured interviews that …