By Dr. Denise Taliaferro Baszile, Miami University of Ohio

These are tough times in educational spaces across the world as they continue to be haunted by policies and practices entangled in unjust and inequitable relations that evoke feelings of alienation, fear, and distrust. As a community of educators, researchers, activists, and learners who are trying to imagine and engage education beyond these dynamics and in ways that promote equity, sustainability, diversity and wellbeing for all stakeholders, we talk surprising little about the role of love in the work that we do or the better world that we are collectively reimagining and remaking. And yet many who have worked tirelessly and even died trying to make the world a better place have engaged love as a radical theory/practice. Among the many who have engaged the revolutionary power of love, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s work and legacy continue to loom large. In one of his most notable works Where Do We Go from Here: Chaos or Community?, King contends that one of the major issues under girding injustice is our construction of love and power as polar opposites, where love indicates the resignation of power and power the denial of love. Ultimately, he believed that in order to envision and enact a more just world, we need to reimagine love and power as positively connected and reinforcing of one another. Though cultivating such a vision must be taken up as important work in a variety of societal institutions, none are more pressing than our institutions of higher education. How, then, might we embrace love-power as a transformational principle in higher education?

Presenter: Dr. Denise Taliaferro Baszile, Miami University of Ohio 

When: Tuesday, January 21, 2020 from 3:30 pm - 4:45 pm 

Where: Morris University Center, Hickory Hackberry Room

Denise Taliaferro Baszile (Ph.D.  Louisiana State University) is Associate Dean of Diversity and Student Experience and Professor of Curriculum & Cultural Studies in the College of Education, Health & Society at Miami University of Ohio.Her work focuses on understanding curriculum as racial/gendered texts that (re)produce racialized/gendered subjects, with a particular interest in disrupting traditional modes of knowledge production. Her scholarship draws on curriculum theory, Black feminist theory, critical race theory and decolonial studies and seeks a fuller understanding rather than simply a legitimate understanding of the dynamic relationship between race, gender, knowledge and power. Denise has published in various journals including Journal of Curriculum Theorizing, Curriculum and Pedagogy, Educational Foundations, Race Ethnicity and Education, Urban Education, Qualitative Inquiry and Knowledge Cultures, and Educational Studies. She has also published several book chapters in key texts, such as Education and Epistemologies of Ignorance, Curriculum Studies the Next Moment, and the Guide to Curriculum in Education. Her latest contribution to the field are two co-edited volumes entitled Race, Gender and Curriculum Theorizing: Working in Womanish Ways (Lexington Books) and Black Women Theorizing Curriculum Studies in Colour and Curves (Routledge). Denise is currently VP for AERA Division B Curriculum Studies.