Dwelling in/on the Drive: Life Writing in a Mixed and Mixing Commons

Authors

  • Nane Jordan
  • Erika Hasebe-Ludt

Abstract

Through the literary practice of métissage, two educators situated within a West Coast Canadian urban neighbourhood braid different strands of stories that explore notions of migration, home, place, and familial relations. The authors draw from their own and others’ lived experiences while working with life writing of teachers and students in this mixed and mixing cosmopolitan site. They create dialogues with the multiple local issues and identities in this commons through narratives and images. Through and in these dialogues, they investigate the significance of life writing in creating new curricular and literacy theories and practices that seek to reshape education towards more inclusive and just schools and communities.

Author Biographies

Nane Jordan

Nané Jordan completed her PhD in Curriculum and Instruction at the University of British Columbia (2012). Her dissertation explores the educational and life experiences of seven women who are faculty or student alumni of a graduate degree program in Women’s Spirituality. Nané is a practicing artist in photography and textile arts, and has taught textile studio arts to teacher candidates. She has an educational and working background in pre-regulation Canadian midwifery, attending home and hospital births, and providing post-partum care for women and babies. She pursues narrative, arts-based, life writing research methodologies and collaborative artistic practices, and has published widely. Her recent research focuses on lived experience, spirituality, mothering, birth, and eco-social justice. She received the UBC Ted T. Aoki Outstanding Dissertation Prize for curriculum inquiry.

Erika Hasebe-Ludt

Erika Hasebe-Ludt teaches and researchers in the Faculty of Education, The University of Lethbridge, Alberta, Canada in the areas of teacher education and curriculum studies in connection with language, literacy, and culture. Her research focuses on literacy curricula in cosmopolitan Canadian schools, life writing, and languages and cultures in transnational contexts. In addition to various journal articles and book chapters, her publications include the co-edited anthologies Curriculum Intertext: Place/Language/Pedagogy and A Heart of Wisdom: Life Writing as Empathetic Inquiry, as well as the co-authored book Life Writing and Literary Métissage as an Ethos for Our Times.

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Published

2013-03-08