Table Of ContentMapping the Affective Turn
in Education
Passions are high in education, and this edited volume offers bold new ways
to conceive of the affective intensities shaping our present historical moment.
Concerns over school practices deemed “ineffective,” “disruptive,” “irrational,”
or even “promising” are matters modulated by and through feelings, such as,
optimism, shame, enhanced concentration, or empathy. The recent turn to
affect offers vibrant methodological and theoretical material for an educational
present marked by high stakes rhetoric, heated debate, teacher and student
vulnerabilities, and extreme educational measures. Affect studies are a part of
new materialist and post-humanist turns, and this volume connects these new
theoretical directions within education. This comprehensive volume on affect
crosses educational subfields and responds to the transdisciplinary interest in
thinking through pedagogy, education, and feeling.
This comprehensive reader addresses affect in education from a wide range
of styles, topics, and perspectives. This collection offers an introduction to
theory, empirical research studies, interviews with affect studies scholars, and an
assessment of the current and future significance of affect studies in education.
Contributors utilize a range of theoretical and interpretive approaches to thinking
with and through schooling phenomena. Interviews with affect scholars in the
humanities and social sciences address affective dimensions of teaching. The
editors’ introduction, different foci, and interdisciplinary genres of writing help
readers feel their ways into what affect studies in education does and might do.
This field-defining collection will be of interest to a range of readers—from
graduate students to established scholars—with varying levels of expertise and
familiarity putting affect theories to work in education. All the contributions are
accessible to those new to the theory, methods, and debates in this vibrant area
of educational studies.
Bessie P. Dernikos is Assistant Professor in the Department of Teaching and
Learning at Florida Atlantic University, US.
Nancy Lesko is Maxine Greene Professor in the Department of Curriculum and
Teaching at Teachers College, Columbia University, US.
Stephanie D. McCall is Assistant Professor in the Professional and Secondary
Education Program at East Stroudsburg University of Pennsylvania, US.
Alyssa D. Niccolini teaches courses in the Department of Curriculum and
Teaching at Teachers College, Columbia University, US.
Routledge Research in Education
This series aims to present the latest research from right across the field of
education. It is not confined to any particular area or school of thought
and seeks to provide coverage of a broad range of topics, theories and
issues from around the world.
Recent titles in the series include:
Legacies of Christian Languaging and Literacies in American Education
Perspectives on English Language Arts Curriculum, Teaching
and Learning
Edited by Mary M. Juzwik, Jennifer C. Stone, Kevin J. Burke,
and Denise Dávila
Critical Explorations of Young Adult Literature
Identifying and Critiquing the Canon
Edited by Victor Malo-Juvera and Crag Hill
Dance, Professional Practice, and the Workplace
Challenges and Opportunities for Dance Professionals, Students,
and Educators
Edited by Angela Pickard and Doug Risner
Pedagogy in the Novels of J.M. Coetzee
The Affect of Literature
Aparna Mishra Tarc
Integrative and Interdisciplinary Curriculum in the Middle School
Integrated Approaches in Teacher Preparation and Practice
Edited by Lisa M. Harrison, Ellis Hurd, and Kathleen Brinegar
The Generation of Utopia
Decolonizing Critical Curriculum Theory
João M. Paraskeva
For a complete list of titles in this series, please visit www.routledge.
com/Routledge-Research-in-Education/book-series/SE0393
Mapping the Affective
Turn in Education
Theory, Research, and Pedagogies
Edited by Bessie P. Dernikos,
Nancy Lesko, Stephanie D. McCall,
and Alyssa D. Niccolini
First published 2020
by Routledge
52 Vanderbilt Avenue, New York, NY 10017
and by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon, OX14 4RN
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
© 2020 Taylor & Francis
The right of Bessie P. Dernikos, Nancy Lesko, Stephanie D. McCall,
and Alyssa D. Niccolini to be identified as the author[/s] of the
editorial material, and of the authors for their individual chapters,
has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the
Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or
reproduced or utilized in any form or by any electronic, mechanical,
or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including
photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or
retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.
Trademark notice : Product or corporate names may be trademarks
or registered trademarks and are used only for identification and
explanation without intent to infringe.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
A catalog record for this book has been requested
ISBN: 978-0-367-03118-3 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-1-003-00421-9 (ebk)
Typeset in Sabon
by Apex CoVantage, LLC
Contents
List of Images viii
A cknowledgements ix
I ntroduction 1
1 Feeling Education 3
BESSIE P. DERNIKOS, NANCY LESKO, STEPHANIE D. McCALL,
AND ALYSSA D. NICCOLINI
Ordinary Charges 29
2 Teaching Affectively 31
KATHLEEN STEWART
PART I: Politics 37
3 Passion, Pedagogy, and Pietas: An Interview With Rosi
Braidotti 39
4 The Ethics and Politics of Traumatic Shame: Pedagogical
Insights 54
MICHALINOS ZEMBYLAS
5 Post-Threat Pedagogies: A Micro-Materialist Phantomatic
Feeling within Classrooms in Post-Terrorist Times 69
SHIVA ZARABADI
vi Contents
PART II: Pedagogies 85
6 Affect’s First Lesson: An Interview with Gregory
J. Seigworth 87
7 Resistance Is Useful: Social Justice Teacher Education
as an Affective Craft 94
LEE AIRTON
8 Love and Bewilderment: On Education as Affective
Encounter 108
NATHAN SNAZA
9 Art Encounters, Racism, and Teacher Education 122
ASILIA FRANKLIN-PHIPPS
PART III: Materials/Bodies 141
10 Thinking through the Body: An Interview with Anna
Hickey Moody 143
11 The Fecundity of Poo: Working with Children as
Pedagogies of Refusal 149
STEPHANIE SPRINGGAY
12 Machinic Affects: Education Data Infrastructure and the
Pedagogy of Objects 164
SAM SELLAR
13 The Affective Matter of (Australian) School Uniforms:
The School-Dress That Is and Does 179
MELISSA JOY WOLFE AND MARY LOU RASMUSSEN
PART IV: Spaces 195
14 Student Viscosities: A Conversation about the Micropolitics
of Race: An Interview with Arun Saldanha 197
15 (Re)storying Water: Decolonial Pedagogies of Relational
Affect with Young Children 209
FIKILE NXUMALO WITH MARLEEN TEPEYOLOTL VILLANUEVA
Contents vii
1 6 On Learning to Stay in the Room: Notes from
the Classroom and Clinic 229
GAIL BOLDT
Coda 245
17 Intimacy and Depletion in the Pedagogical Scene:
An Interview with Lauren Berlant 247
Notes on Contributors 251
I ndex 257
Images
9.1 H ead Collage #1, right side 134
9.2 H ead Collage #2, left side 135
9.3 T hree-dimensional Head, with a thick, white substance
dripped over the top and over the eyes 136
9 .4 Many collages juxtaposed, past and present images 137
9.5 2 016 presidential election 138
1 1.1 Ask Me Chocolates (2013) by Helen Reed, Hannah
Jickling, and grade-six students from “Multiple
Elementary” 157
1 1.2 Your Lupines or Your Life (2013) by Helen Reed, Hannah
Jickling, and grade-six students 160
1 2.1 Composite image of data dashboard from the My School
website (school anonymized) 172
1 3.1 The event assemblage 181
1 5.1 Creek-waste encounters 214
1 5.2 Water song drawings 217
1 5.3 Sharing the Coahuiltecan creation story 222
Acknowledgements
We wish to acknowledge the generosity and patience of all of our con-
tributors as we navigated the fits and starts and slowdowns of this book.
We are grateful for Matthew Friberg’s belief in and excitement about this
book project and for Elsbeth Wright moving the book forward. Sarah
Gerth van den Berg’s copyediting was vital and impeccable.
We continue to be moved, uplifted, puzzled, and thrilled by affect
scholarship, and our hope is that this edited collection contributes to the
understanding of and inquiry into affective dimensions of education and
schooling. The shape of this volume was most directly inspired by the
The Affect Theory Reader (Gregg and Seigworth, 2010), which helped
contour our emergent understandings of scholarship in the field. In our
current political, environmental, and academic environments, we turn to
affect theories and studies to help us parse everyday experiences in ways
attuned to structures and to emergent edges.
Reference
Gregg, M., and Seigworth, G. J. (Eds.). (2010). The affect theory reader. Durham,
NC: Duke University Press.
