Freire Forty Years Later
Paulo Freire’s Pedagogy of the Oppressed was published in Portuguese in 1968 and translated into English two years later, coinciding with his visiting professorship at Harvard University. The book has remained in print across the world and in many languages since, and has had significant impact on university and community pedagogy, theory, theatre, and activism. 2010 will mark the fortieth anniversary of the English translation, providing an opportunity to highlight its continued relevance and importance. The Alice Kaplan Research Workshop, “Freire Forty Years Later,” honors this significant contribution to pedagogy, but also recognizes and hopes to explore the work within the changing social, cultural, economic, and political environments of the past forty tumultuous years.
Strongly influenced by Franz Fanon, Freire wrote Pedagogy of the Oppressed while in exile from the Brazilian dictatorship. The work is a thoughtful meditation on oppression and how it is overcome through a collective, educational process. Freire believes that freedom – a crucial part of “human completion” – is the result of praxis, a balance of theory and practice. He advocates for critical pedagogy, a process wherein both student and teacher are mutually completed in the process of education and a dialogic approach as an approach to free the colonized and oppressed. As his body of work grew – Pedagogy of the City, Pedagogy of Hope, Pedagogy of the Heart – so too did his influence. Freire has had significant impact on critical theatre, consciousness raising movements, and liberation theology.
The workshop series will bring together graduate students and faculty from the Rhetoric and Public Culture program, the Performance Studies department, the School of Education, as well as interlocutors from across the humanities at Northwestern University for an ongoing forum to discuss Freire’s contribution to pedagogy, the humanities, and academic activism. The workshop series will read contemporary work in ethnography, rhetorical studies, and transnational studies with and against Freire’s conceptions of pedagogy, oppression, and hope. The fields of communication, education, and the humanities at Northwestern all share a common concern with civic engagement and empowerment through education. Freire’s work undergirds such work, but enriches it by applying a critical lens through which to view relations between the university and the wider community.
In light of the last forty years, however, young and future academics must update Paulo Freire’s work. How do we read Pedagogy of the Oppressed after the collapse of the Soviet Union and the disillusionment with communism? How can we think theoretically about the concepts of “oppression” and “freedom”? How can we engage Freire within the current global economic, political, and cultural flows of transnationalism, NGOs, capitalism, and privatization? How do we read Pedagogy of Hope following the national success of Barack Obama but also in light of continuing global economic crises?
Over the course of the Winter and Spring 2010, the workshop series will consist of three student-led discussions, one open table community meeting, and one conference. Each of these formats offers the possibility of alternative explorations and readings of Paulo Freire while retaining an academically rigorous approach to the issues and concerns he raises.
The three discussions will allow selected graduate students to present their current work in the context of Paulo Freire’s Pedagogy of the Oppressed, illuminating the ways the book both addresses and fails to address contemporary global issues. Discussions will involve careful readings of Freire’s thought as it is reflected in or refuted by current civic engagement projects both locally and globally. Proposed topics include investigations of political movements in Central America, critical pedagogy in South Side Chicago, and NGO distribution of technology in the Global South. These workshops will benefit graduate work by kindling cross-disciplinary conversations as well as providing and developing common topoi needed for productive discussion toward multiple careful and critical readings of Freire.
Current presenting graduate students include Megan Bernard (Rhetoric and Public Culture), Jesse Baldwin-Philippi (Rhetoric and Public Culture), Lisa Biggs (Performance Studies), Sage Morgan-Hubbard (Performance Studies). We are also expecting graduate student presenters from the Screen Cultures program, and the interdisciplinary program in Theater and Drama. The conference workshop format will give graduate students the chance to present a 45-minute working paper and receive constructive and supportive feedback in a professional setting. Creating such an environment on campus is beneficial for graduate students in multiple ways: it is a chance to present a full-length paper, and, through Freire, it aids in building civically engaged public scholars.
The culmination of the workshops will be the “Freire Forty Years Later” open table dinner and conference, 09-10 April 2010, which will bring together a variety of humanities scholars to address the theme of the program: to both recognize and honor Freire’s incredible contribution while suggesting readings and uses of the text that make it applicable to the drastically different cultural circumstances in which it must currently be read. The list of scholars currently includes, but is not limited to: Wahneema Lubiano, professor of African and African American studies and literature at Duke University; Della Pollock, professor of performance studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill; Al’Hassan Adam, a human rights activist working on universal water rights in Ghana; Dana Cloud, professor of rhetoric and cultural studies at the University of Texas at Austin; and Melissa Wade, who directs an urban debate league from the forensics program at Emory University. These scholars and others will add contemporary complexity to what will have been a fruitful and ongoing discussion across the humanities.
This discussion is crucial for humanities scholars and teachers. Freire reveals the possibility and importance of civic engagement and empowerment through humanities education. Scholars and teachers have increasingly critical roles to play in global and local systems and communities of education. Reading Paulo Freire today illuminates the necessity of academic engagement and activism, but also the new global economic, political, cultural, and social contingencies that make his work altogether more urgent.
Workshop Events
Please join us for the preliminary meeting of the
Freire Forty Years Later Alice Kaplan Research Workshop
Monday, 02 November, 6:30-8:30pm
Kresge 2-370
We will have an informational session about the workshop and conference series, as well as a preliminary discussion of Paulo Freire’s Pedagogy of the Oppressed. Food will be provided.
All are welcome! We hope to see you there.
For more information, contact Daniel Elam at jdelam@u.northwestern.edu.
If you can’t make it to this meeting, you’re welcome to attend any of the workshops throughout the year.
19 January 2010, 5-7pm (Kresge 2-370)
Graduate Student Workshop
Megan Bernard (Rhetoric & Public Culture)
Lisa Biggs (Performance Studies)
16 February 2010, 5-7pm (Kresge 2-370)
Graduate Student Workshop
Anne Kelly & Stacey Mann (Learning Sciences)
Jesse Baldwin-Philippi (Rhetoric & Public Culture)
09 April 2010 (Annie May Swift Black Box)
5pm: Welcome & Opening Comments
5-7: Community Workshop in Praxis: TBA (Sage Morgan-Hubbard, Performance Studies)
7-9: Open dinner and discussion
Saturday 10 April 2010 (Annie May Swift Auditorium)
9am: Coffee
9:30-10:45: Speaker: Dana Cloud (Rhetoric, UT-Austin)
11-12:15pm: Della Pollock (Performance Studies, UNC-Chapel Hill)
12:15: Lunch
1:15-2:30: Wahneema Lubiano (African & African American Studies & Literature, Duke U)
2:45-4: Al'Hassan Adam (Civic Response, Ghana)
4:15-5:30: Melissa Wade (Forensics, Emory U)
5:30: Reception
7:30: Dinner
