Journal article
Reckoning with White Empathy: Toward a Critical Arts Pedagogy of Racialized Emotions
Harvard educational review, Vol.95(3), pp.349-373
10/01/2025
DOI: 10.17763/K7M9R5X2P
Abstract
In this conceptual article, Tyler Denmead and Allison Rowe present an arts-based pedagogic framework that offers teachers and students the opportunity to engage critically with the role of emotions in reproducing and contesting societies that are structured by racial dominance. In recent years, social and emotional learning (SEL) has become a flashpoint in the American culture wars against critical race theory. Rightwing conservatives have claimed that SEL discriminates against white children by teaching them to feel bad about themselves and the nation's racist past. While this debate has not engaged with the politics and practice of SEL in good faith, the recent controversy has, nonetheless, challenged us to consider what exactly a critical pedagogy of racialized emotions might entail. How might educators teach students to recognize the ways in which emotions are deeply embedded in the production of a racially ordered society? In this article, Denmead and Rowe make the case that carefully chosen artworks have the pedagogic potential to illuminate how, through emotions, people come to inhabit structural positions within racially ordered societies. They use Kara Walker's 2019 artwork Fons Americanus to work toward a framework for a critical arts pedagogy of racialized emotions, examining how the work casts a light on the role of white empathy in perpetuating antiblack racism. Through this analysis, Denmead and Rowe work toward a critical arts pedagogy that attends to the politics of race and emotion and contributes to the formation of antiracist political solidarities.
Details
- Title: Subtitle
- Reckoning with White Empathy: Toward a Critical Arts Pedagogy of Racialized Emotions
- Creators
- Tyler DenmeadAllison Rowe
- Resource Type
- Journal article
- Publication Details
- Harvard educational review, Vol.95(3), pp.349-373
- DOI
- 10.17763/K7M9R5X2P
- ISSN
- 0017-8055
- eISSN
- 1943-5045
- Publisher
- Harvard Education Press
- Language
- English
- Date published
- 10/01/2025
- Academic Unit
- Center for Social Science Innovation; School of Art, Art History, and Design; Teaching and Learning
- Record Identifier
- 9985027354002771
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