Curriculum of the Eye/I

Abstract

I propose that sensory-based curriculum theorizing centered on inquiries of mothering in academia moves in at least two interconnected directions. First, it brings the senses of everyday experiences into the formal academic conversation where it currently lacks representation and thus marginalizes the significance of those experiences in our inquiries. Secondly, sensory-based theorizing moves the language of the senses in the everyday experiences of mothering away from the oft times limited spaces of theorizing and  reaches out in a more accessible manner toward a wider community about which, and for whom, we theorize. Curriculum theories of mothering, as well as the influences that mothering has on my theorizing in general, are both in and of the senses. It is the sensual language of mothering that situates the narrative of experiences "lost" from the discourse of dominant scholarship and knowledges of what matters. To understand the process of theorizing about mothering as a curriculum of the senses is to address issues of body, of language, and of place. Such sense-level theorizing re prioritizes and re configures what we might consider to be important to the curricular conversation, to whom, and why.