New Books in Education

Race and Gender in the Western Music History Survey: A Teacher’s Guide provides concrete information and approaches that will help instructors include women and people of color in the typical music history survey course and the foundational music theory classes. This book provides a reconceptualization of the principles that shape the decisions instructors should make when crafting the syllabus. It offers new perspectives on canonical composers and pieces that take into account musical, cultural, and social contexts where women and people of color are present. Secondly, it suggests new topics of study and pieces by composers whose work fits into a more inclusive narrative of music history. A thematic approach parallels the traditional chronological sequencing in Western music history classes. Three themes include people and communities that suffer from various kinds of exclusion: Locales & Locations; Forms & Factions; Responses & Reception. Each theme is designed to uncover a different cultural facet that is often minimized in traditional music history classrooms but which, if explored, lead to topics in which other perspectives and people can be included organically in the curriculum, while not excluding canonical composers.Dr. Horace J. Maxile, Jr. is Associate Professor of Music Theory at Baylor University. His primary interests are the concert music of Black composers, music semiotics, and gospel music. His research has appeared in scholarly journals such as Perspectives of New Music, American Music, the Journal of the Society for American Music, and Black Music Research Journal.Dr. Kristen M. Turner is a Lecturer in the music and honors departments at North Carolina State University. Her work centers on issues of race, gender, and class in American popular culture at the turn of the twentieth cen­tury. Her research has appeared in collected editions and scholarly journals including the Journal of the American Musicological Society, the Journal of the Society for American Music, American Studies, and Musical Quarterly.Emily Ruth Allen (@emmyru91) holds a Ph.D. in musicology from Florida State University. Her current research is about parade musics in Mobile, Alabama’s Carnival. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/education

Carla Chamberlin and Mak Khan speak with Ingrid Piller about linguistic diversity and social justice.We discuss whether US native speakers of English can teach English ethically; how migrant parents can foster their children’s biliteracy; what the language challenges of the Covid-19 pandemic are; whether multilingualism researchers have a monolingual English-centric blind spot; and how the research paradigms of World Englishes and multilingualism connect.First published on November 19, 2020.“Chats in Linguistic Diversity” is a podcast about linguistic diversity in social life brought to you by the Language on the Move team. We explore multilingualism, language learning, and intercultural communication in the contexts of globalization and migration. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/education

With its signature "DARE to keep kids off drugs" slogan and iconic t-shirts, DARE (Drug Abuse Resistance Education) was the most popular drug education program of the 1980s and 1990s. But behind the cultural phenomenon is the story of how DARE and other antidrug education programs brought the War on Drugs into schools and ensured that the velvet glove of antidrug education would be backed by the iron fist of rigorous policing and harsh sentencing.Max Felker-Kantor has assembled the first history of DARE, which began in Los Angeles in 1983 as a joint venture between the police department and the unified school district. By the mid-90s, it was taught in 75 percent of school districts across the United States. DARE received near-universal praise from parents, educators, police officers, and politicians and left an indelible stamp on many millennial memories. But the program had more nefarious ends, and Felker-Kantor complicates simplistic narratives of the War on Drugs. In DARE to Say No: Policing and the War on Drugs in Schools (UNC Press, 2023), he shows how policing entered US schools and framed drug use as the result of personal responsibility, moral failure, and poor behavior deserving of punishment rather than something deeply rooted in state retrenchment, the abandonment of social service provisions, and structures of social and economic inequality.Jeffrey Lamson is a PhD student in world history at Northeastern University. His research focuses on the history of police technology, its relationship to the history of police reform, and its place at the intersection of U.S. domestic policing and global counterinsurgency. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/education

The postwar migration of Puerto Rican men and women to Chicago brought thousands of their children into city schools. These children's classroom experience continued the colonial project begun in their homeland, where American ideologies had dominated Puerto Rican education since the island became a US territory. Mirelsie Velázquez tells how Chicago's Puerto Ricans pursued their educational needs in a society that constantly reminded them of their status as second-class citizens. Communities organized a media culture that addressed their concerns while creating and affirming Puerto Rican identities. Education also offered women the only venue to exercise power, and they parlayed their positions to take lead roles in activist and political circles. In time, a politicized Puerto Rican community gave voice to a previously silenced group--and highlighted that colonialism does not end when immigrants live among their colonizers.A perceptive look at big-city community building, Puerto Rican Chicago: Schooling the City, 1940-1977 (U Illinois Press, 2022) reveals the links between justice in education and a people's claim to space in their new home.Mirelsie Velázquez, PhD, is an associate professor of Latina/o Studies. As an interdisciplinary scholar, her work centers history of education, women's history, Puerto Rican studies, gender and sexuality, and teacher education.Max Jacobs is a PhD student in education at Rutgers University. He currently sits on the Graduate Student Council for the History of Education Society. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/education

The podcast explores the relationship between modern scholarship and the ethos of Enlightenment. It discusses disciplinary boundaries, access to research, academic labor, form and content, and stewardship of scholarship. The guest argues for the formulation of a New Enlightenment. Other topics include the impact of the Enlightenment on scholarly communication, interdisciplinary research, open access, and balancing research and teaching priorities in academia.

Climate change and climate denial have remained largely off the radar in literacy and social studies education in the United States. How to Confront Climate Denial: Literacy, Social Studies, and Climate Change (Teachers College Press, 2022) addresses that gap with the design of the Climate Denial Inquiry Model (CDIM) and clear examples of how educators and students can confront two forms of climate denial: science denial and action denial. The CDIM highlights how critical literacies specifically designed for climate denial texts can be used alongside eco-civic practices of deliberation, reflexivity, and counter-narration to help students discern corporate, financial, and politically motivated roots of climate denial and to better understand efforts to misinform the American public, sow doubt and distrust of basic scientific knowledge, and erode support for evidence-based policymaking and collective civic action. With an emphasis on inquiry-based teaching and learning, the book also charts a path from destructive stories-we-live-by that are steeped in climate denial (humans are separate from nature, the primary goal of society is economic growth without limits, nature is a resource to be used and exploited) to ecojustice stories-To-live by that invite teachers and students to consider more just and sustainable futures.As mentioned in the podcast, From Climate Denial to Ecojustice is the accompanying website.James S. Damico is Professor of Literacy, Culture, and Language Education at Indiana University, Bloomington, U.S.A.Mark Baildon is an Associate Professor of Foundations of Education and Coordinator of International Collaborations and Partnerships in United Arab Emirates University’s College of Education.Madden Gilhooly is a public-school teacher and casual academic based on Gadigal land in so-called-Sydney, Australia. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/education

We speak with Richard Detweiler about his new book The Evidence Liberal Arts Needs: Lives of Consequence, Inquiry and Accomplishment (MIT Press, 2021). This multi-year project, which entailed interviews with a national sample of over 1,000 college graduates aged 25-64, provides convincing evidence of the benefits the liberal arts in enabling individuals to lead more fulfilling lives and successful careers. He uses an innovative definition of the liberal arts which focuses on the distinctive: 1) purpose, 2) context, and 3) content of a liberal arts education, measuring the frequency and intensity of these elements across different higher education institutions. He also shares insights from his tenure as President of Hartwick College and the head of the Great Lakes College Association.David Finegold is the president of Chatham University. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/education

Drawing from his experiences of having belonged to the faculty, administrative, and presidential circles of the university, author Nicholas B. Dirks offers his nuanced and comprehensive reflections on the solutions for the most pressing issues facing universities today. These range from issues with free speech, interdisciplinary work, budgeting costs, internal politics, and the devaluing of the liberal arts. In a time where universities face fierce attacks from the political right and left and a distrust from the general public, Dirks defends their role in society, as key institutions that guard and create new knowledge to understand the world at large and drive meaningful change. In City of Intellect: The Uses and Abuses of the University (Cambridge UP, 2024), Dirks argues for a reimagination of the university to ensure its survival and relevance in the years to come, positioning him as a visionary leader in a time where higher education needs it the most.Nicholas B. Dirks is the current president and CEO of the renowned New York Academy of Sciences, one of the oldest scientific organizations in the United States. His notable past appointments include serving as the 10th Chancellor of the University of California, Berkeley from 2013 to 2017, and as the Executive Vice President and Dean of the Faculty for Arts and Sciences at Columbia University.Ariadna Obregon is a PhD student at the School of Media and Communication at the University of Leeds. On Twitter/X: @AriadnaObregn1  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/education

Claiming Space: Performing the Personal through Decorated Mortarboards (Utah State University Press, 2023) by Dr. Sheila Bock examines the growing tradition of decorating mortarboards at college graduations, offering a performance-centred approach to these material sites of display. Taking mortarboard displays seriously as public performances of the personal, this book highlights the creative, playful, and powerful ways graduates use their caps to fashion their personal engagement with notions of self, community, education, and the unknown future.The forms and meanings of these material displays take shape in relation to broader, ongoing conversations about higher education in the United States, conversations grounded in discourses of belonging, citizenship, and the promises of the American Dream. Integrating observational fieldwork with extensive interviews and surveys, Dr. Bock highlights the interpretations of individuals participating in this tradition. She also attends to the public framings of this tradition, including how images of mortarboards have grounded online enactments of community through hashtags such as #LatinxGradCaps and #LetTheFeathersFly, as well as what rhetorical framings are employed in news coverage and legal documents in cases where the value of the practice is both called into question and justified.This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose forthcoming book focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/education

In this episode, Elizabeth and John talk with Derron Wallace, sociologist of education and Brandeis colleague, about his new book The Culture Trap, which explores "ethnic expectations" for Caribbean schoolchildren in New York and London. His work starts with the basic puzzle that while black Caribbean schoolchildren in New York are often considered as "high-achieving," in London, they have been, conversely thought to be "chronically underachieving." Yet in each case the main cause -- of high achievement in New York and low achievement in London -- is said to be cultural. We discuss the concept of "ethnic expectations" and the ways it can have negative effects even when the expectations themselves are positive, and the dense intertwining of race, class, nation, colonial status, and gender, and the travels of the concept of culture in the 20th and 21st centuries.Mentioned in the episode: The Commission on Race and Ethnic Disparities Report [the Sewell Report] (2021) The Moynihan Report (1965) Georg Lukacs, "Reification and the Consciousness of the Proletariat" (1923) Diane Reay, "What Would a Socially Just Educational System Look Like?" (2012) Bernard Coard, How the Caribbean Child is made Educationally Subnormal in the British School System Steve McQueen, Small Axe, "Education," (2020) Bernardine Evaristo, Girl, Woman, Other (2019) B. Brian Forster, I Don't Like the Blues: Race, Place, and the Backbeat of Black Life (2020) Michel-Rolph Trouillot, "Adieu Culture: A New Duty Arises" (2003) David Simon's TV show The Wire (and also Lean on Me, and To Sir, with Love and with major props from Derron, Top Boy) Stuart Hall, The Fateful Triangle (1994) Listen and Read Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/education