The Subaltern School

Brown will introduce her new research project, The Subaltern School, in which she proposes a global socio-historical examination of segregated schooling and its intergenerational effects in this integrated, post racial era. Operationalizing the construct of “the subaltern” to include indigenous, black, and intermediary racialized peoples she asks:

1. What was the “Subaltern School” as both a legal and cultural organizational form?
2. Situating the school as a key site of identity formation, what types of racialized subjectivities emerged from these segregated institutions?
3. What legacies does the social rupture of integration, i.e. Brown vs. Board of Education, the suspension of forced American Indian and Aboriginal schools, and the fall of Aparthied have on non-whites’ relationship with the public school system today (i.e. parental involvement, perception of the role of the school, cultural transmission, educational ideals etc.)?

The study focuses three settler colonial nations as its sites of analysis; namely the U.S., Australia, and South Africa. In this talk, Brown will share her preliminary research in the U.S. and South Africa.