Auto/Ethno/Graphic Bricolage as Embodied Inter/Culturalism: Dis/Locating Stories of Becoming in Encounters With the Other

Authors

  • Diane Patricia Watt

Abstract

This provocation emerges from my experience of a recent flight home from the Middle East. As our plane soars over the Persian Gulf and Iraq I stare out the window at the human and physical landscapes below. A flood of memories of lived experiences in Iran and other countries in this region soon overwhelms me – a disturbing tangle of personal stories and public histories that call into question my teaching and academic work. Dwelling in the tension-filled spaces between the writing woman and the written woman, I juxtapose texts, images, and academic theory to trouble the preponderance of binary language circulating in the mass media that closes down possibilities for inter/cultural relations both locally and globally. This auto/ethno/graphic bricolage draws upon post-reconceptualist theorizing to engage the im/possibilities of an embodied inter/culturalism as curriculum of hope, toward expanding the multicultural imagination.

Author Biography

Diane Patricia Watt

Diane Watt completed her doctoral dissertation in the Faculty of Education at the University of Ottawa, with a concentration in Society, Culture, and Literacies. Her work draws from cultural studies, post-reconceptualist curriculum theorizing, and feminist border epistemologies to open up the category “Muslim woman.” She disrupts the mass media as curriculum by juxtaposing auto/ethno/graphic narratives with stories of the high schooling experiences of Muslim females in Ontario post 9/11 and critical readings of images of Muslim women from the Canadian print news media. Her research interests include Muslim female identities, media literacies, inter/cultural education, m/othering and informal contexts of education, postmodern curriculum, and the possibilities of auth/ethno/graphic bricolage as decolonizing research. Diane teaches graduate and undergraduate courses in the Faculty of Education at U. Ottawa in curriculum and evaluation, cultural studies, literacies, and the sociology of education. She lived with her family in Pakistan, Syria, and Iran during the 1990’s and spent fifteen years doing education other/wise with her two children outside of school. She completed her undergraduate studies and teacher education at Simon Fraser University and taught at the elementary and secondary school levels in British Columbia.

Downloads

Published

2013-01-16

Issue

Vol. 28 No. 2 (2012): Journal of Curriculum Theorizing

Section

General Themes

License

In every case, copyright of work appearing in JCT is retained by the author. In accordance with its mandate to promote discussion on matters of curriculum, the Foundation for Curriculum Theory permits limited reproduction of parts of JCT. Individual articles may be reprinted for educational purposes, provided that no fees (other than copying costs) are charged.

For information regarding more extensive copying or reproduction for other purposes, contact:

editors@jctonline.org