Review of Mapping Queer Space(s) of Praxis and Pedagogy, edited by Elizabeth McNeil, James E. Wermers, and Joshua O. Lunn (Palgrave Macmillan)

Aerial photo of Euphrates River, 2009. Courtesy of NASA.

In this edited collection, Elizabeth McNeil, James E. Wermers, and Joshua O. Lunn draw together cutting-edge thinkers on queer pedagogy and queer activist praxis in an effort to dismantle the historical underpinnings of education as a tool of oppression. As an alternative to normative education, the editor offer up queer pedagogy as a methodology for “challenging accepted hierarchies, binaries, and hegemonies that have long dominated pedagogy and praxis” (5). The collection features the queering of traditionally normative classroom and academic spaces alongside queer approaches towards less commonly acknowledged sites of learning, such as social media websites, community advocacy meetings, and prisons.

Beyond Crisis: College in Prison through the Abolition Undercommons

This thread explores inter-relationships among institutions of higher education and prisons. We focus in particular on teaching and learning – the hallmarks of college in prison programs – as they relate to research and administration within and across universities/colleges and prisons. Our aim is to contribute to broader structural thinking about how we can work in college in prison programs most ethically and in ways that contribute to prison abolition within and across campus and prison settings.