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Often, in trying to make sense of personal stories about race and racism, we simplify these stories in ways that 1) limit our ability to understand them powerfully and 2) constrain how we imagine future action.  In this workshop, we will examine and write about personal experiences with race and racism, including how we have been racialized within U.S. society and how we take up various roles and positions within it.  We will write personal narratives, explore critical concepts and questions we might use to interpret them in complex ways, and discuss the sorts of learning and anti-racist action we want to pursue in the future, given what we learn from telling and interpreting our stories together.

Bio 

Timothy J. Lensmire

Timothy J. Lensmire is a professor in the Department of Curriculum and Instruction, University of Minnesota, where he teaches courses in literacy, critical pedagogy, and race.  Lensmire grew up in north-central Wisconsin and taught 7^th grade English before doing his Ph.D. at Michigan State University. His early research focused on how the teaching of writing might contribute to education for radical democracy, and includes his books, When Children Write and Powerful Writing/Responsible Teaching.  His current scholarship examines how white people become white in U.S. society and includes his new book, White folks: Race and identity in rural America. For this book, Lensmire interviewed white people from the community in which he was born and raised. He is internationally known for his critical explorations of whiteness in the United States and has been published in Whiteness & Education, Teachers College Record, International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education, Harvard Educational Review, Journal of Curriculum Theorizing, Educational Researcher, Race Ethnicity and Education, and Curriculum Inquiry.