RADICAL FOUNDATIONS

Saturday September 30^th (online)
1pm New York | 2pm Rio de Janeiro | 7pm Johannesburg

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The Radical Books Collective will be hosting a masterclass on Pedagogy of the Oppressed by Brazilian educator Paulo Freire convened by Dr. Antonia Darder in collaboration with the Paulo Freire Institute at the University of KwaZulu-Natal. An enduring, extraordinary and profoundly influential work, the book was written in 1968 and published first in Spanish, then in the original Portuguese in 1972. Freire's own life story punctuated by struggle and exile becomes an important context for the book itself.

The seminar will start with a short session convened by Anne Harley and Firoze Manji who will speak about Paulo Freire in Africa. It will be followed by a longer session from Dr. Darder who will offer an introduction to the general arc of Freire's life and work as well as a chapter by chapter analysis of Pedagogy of the Oppressed. We will then have one hour for comments and questions from the seminar participants.

About Dr. Antonia Darder

Antonia Darder is an internationally recognized scholar, artist, poet, songwriter, activist, and public intellectual, and is the recipient of the Paulo Freire Social Justice Award. She has worked tirelessly for more than three decades to fiercely counter social and material inequalities at work in schools and communities. Her scholarship focuses on issues of racism, political economy, education, social justice, and society. More recently, she has worked to articulate a critical theory of leadership for social justice and community engagement. For more than a decade, she held the Leavey Presidential Endowed Chair in Ethics and Moral Leadership in the School of Education at Loyola Marymount University, Los Angeles, USA. She is a Professor Emerita of Education at LMU and a Professor Emerita of Educational Policy, Organization, and Leadership at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Formerly, she also held a Distinguished Visiting faculty post at the University of Johannesburg, in South Africa.

In the late 80s and early 90s, Darder studied and worked with renowned Brazilian educator, Paulo Freire, whose ideas profoundly influenced the direction of her life's work. Her book Reinventing Paulo Freire: A Pedagogy of Love focused on Freire's important contributions to education, particularly from the standpoint of oppressed communities. More recently, her book Freire & Education was released in both English and Portuguese. In 2016 she was also awarded the Paulo Freire Democratic Project award, given to individuals who embody the life and legacy of Paulo Freire and who are characterized by intellectual excellence, ethical concern and deep commitment to the creation, nurturing, and sustainability of fair and just communities. In 2018 (the 50th anniversary of Freire’s Pedagogy of the Oppressed), she published The Student Guide to Freire’s Pedagogy of the Oppressed.

Darder is the author of Culture and Power in the Classroom (the 20th anniversary edition of which was released in 2012) and Reinventing Paulo Freire: A Pedagogy of Love, named outstanding book in curriculum for 2001-2002 by the American Educational Research Association. She is also co-author of After Race: Racism After Multiculturalism. She is the editor of Culture and Difference and co-editor of Latinos and Education; The Latino Studies Reader: Culture, Economy and Society, and The Critical Pedagogy Reader. A Dissident Voice: Essay on Culture, Pedagogy, and Power, a twenty-year retrospective of her writings, was released in 2012. The book is a compilation of 21 essays and seven poems published from 1991 to 2011.

Over the years, Darder has collaborated on numerous social justice projects with students. In 2009, Darder's documentary, Breaking Silence: The Pervasiveness of Oppression, was awarded the second-place prize at the Central Illinois Women's Film Festival. The film was produced with a team of graduate students and community members involved in the Diversity and Technology for Engaging Communities research team, a study examining issues of power, privilege, and racism on the UIUC campus. In 2005, working with graduate students and community members, she established the Liberacion! Radio Collective, that examines politics, art, and struggle through the nexus of local/global connections.

Apart from the awards already mentioned above, Prof. Darder has received numerous other awards, including the Scholars of Color Lifetime Distinguished Career Contribution Award by the American Education Research Association; the Eminent Scholar Award from Southern Queensland University, Toowoomba, Australia; a Thinker in Residence Distinguished Faculty Fellowship from Victoria University, Melbourne, Australia; and a Rains Award for Excellence in Research, Scholarship, and Creative Work. She has also been the recipient of a Distinguished International Research Fellow Award from New Castle University, Callaghan, Australia; and a Heroes Award from the Sisters of Saint Joseph for Reconciliation and Justice awarded to individuals who exemplify justice and reconciliation in their lives. Along with a national Kellogg Foundation Fellowship, she has also received the Social Justice in Education Award from the University of New Mexico, and recognition for her Outstanding Service to the Latino Community from El Centro de Acción Social. Darder was one of 72 women chosen to appear in Victoria Alvarado's book, Mujeres de Consciencia/Women of Conscience, a tribute to U.S. Latinas who have made a definite and long-standing contribution to the Latino community and the nation at large. Darder is a visual artist and poet. Writing and performing in English and Spanish, her poetry and songs speak of love, struggle, and freedom.

About the co-conveners

Anne Harley is a senior lecturer in adult education at the University of KwaZulu-Natal (Pietermaritzburg) in South Africa. Prior to joining the university as a researcher in 1994, she did research work for an anti-apartheid women’s organization and a land rights NGO. Working within the radical adult education tradition, she is particularly interested in informal adult education/learning in/through/with struggle, and her work focuses on counter-hegemonic learning and theorizing, particularly in subaltern social movements, and is thus related to issues of emancipatory politics, the notion of civil society, and discourses of ‘development’ in South Africa and beyond. She has published numerous academic articles and chapters, and produced a number of popular publications. As part of her work, she heads up the Paulo Freire project, an affiliate of the Paulo Freire Institute in Brazil, which runs projects to further the thinking and work of the Brazilian educationist. She is also a member of the Popular Education Network, an international network of people involved in popular education.

Firoze Manji is a writer, publisher and activist with more than 40 years’ experience in international development, health, human rights, teaching, publishing and political organizing. He is the founder and publisher of Daraja Press which describe their mission thus: "We seek to build upon, develop and support interconnections between emancipatory struggles of the oppressed and exploited across the world. In a phrase, our aim is to nurture reflection, shelter hope and inspire audacity." He has published several books and articles, the most recent including African Awakenings, The Emerging Revolutions (2011) and China's New Role in Africa and the South: A Search for a New Perspective (2008). He is the recipient of the 2021 Nicolás Cristóbal Guillén Batista Lifetime Achievement Award from the Caribbean Philosophical Association.

Radical Books Collective

Radical Books Collective creates an alternative, inclusive and non-commercial approach to books and reading. We organize virtual book clubs, book and author events and immersive seminars on foundational radical books.

A community of readers from around the world come together to discuss bold and politically progressive books across a range of genres. Corporatized, profit-oriented publishing structures make it harder for us to find books and writers that don't fit the mainstream awards, praise, and review criteria. We are curating an alternative canon through a collective that includes publishers, bookstores, authors and book lovers everywhere. Book clubs meet online to discuss a recently published radical book and to meet the writer.

Let's change how books are read, circulated, reviewed and talked about. Let's read slowly, deeply, collectively. The Radical Books Collective is an independent initiative and are not supported by institutional funding. We rely on you to create progressive programming and to invigorate engaged reading communities. If you like the work we do, please support us in any way you can: https://radicalbookscollective.com/pages/support-us