Potlikker Narratives for Teaching Freedom
Author | : Anne Fraioli (Ph.D.) |
Publisher | : |
Total Pages | : 0 |
Release | : 2022 |
ISBN-10 | : OCLC:1371456532 |
ISBN-13 | : |
Rating | : 4/5 (32 Downloads) |
Abstract This thesis presents and examines ways in which Black vernacular arts traditions can be applied as part of an Afrocentric, anti-racist, and emancipatory (liberatory) pedagogy in both primary and secondary school settings. Full of stories of resistance, these performative arts traditions have the capacity to serve as "counter stories," or counter narratives-those stories that push back against the "master scripts" that perpetuate dominant White ideologies about race and racism in America. As a metaphorical, theoretical, and educational framework for my thesis, the term "potlikker" serves as a literary designation for both spoken and musical Black vernacular arts traditions that have the narrative capacity to remember, tell, teach, and nourish. The Black vernacular arts traditions I present in this pedagogical framework include the antebellum ring shout and ring play traditions, Trickster tales, and spirituals, and later 20th century forms including toast ballads, the dozens, blues, jazz, rap, and spoken word. Taken together, these expressions bring into focus a constellation of educational goals and perspectives, at once historical, political, cultural, and aesthetic. They contain narratives about African heritage, about the hard history of the Black Holocaust, about African American freedoms fought for and gained, and about the rich, diverse legacy of Black musical and spoken vernacular arts traditions in America. In the broadest theoretical terms, this thesis is a transdisciplinary narrative arts project, methodologically and philosophically aligned with African heritage knowledge (King & Swartz, 2018), Folkarts in Education (FAIE), and Critical Race Theory (CRT). Within these intersecting educational theories, I present data that include stories, raps, blues lyrics, spoken word pieces, and visual art works created by students, family members, and guest artists during lessons and projects I carried out in elementary and middle schools in Milwaukee and Madison, Wisconsin, between the years 2011-2020. Each of these community participants contributed, in no small way, to my understanding of how Black arts traditions reflect and communicate a Black aesthetic that I am calling freedom.