Thesis advisor: Jon M. Wargo / Recent critical literature on science and art education highlights a shift from engagement with disciplinary canons toward expansive, equity-oriented disciplinarity. Efforts to integrate the science and art disciplines, especially under the acronym STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Art and Math), have not sufficiently engaged with such within-discipline critique. Left unchallenged, proposals for disciplinary integration cannot meet the transformative potential to which they aspire. Therefore, this 3-paper dissertation adopts an anti-colonial lens to explore conceptualizations of art and science inter- and transdisciplinarity as a collection of interconnected stories of disciplinary reimaginings. Drawing from multiple theories and methods, this dissertation aims to demonstrate the possibilities of transdisciplinarity conceptually, methodologically, practically, and personally. The first paper critically examines current discourse trends that mention transdisciplinarity efforts in K-12 schools, specifically in curricular activity that seeks to expand science learning through the arts. It offers a critique against flattened ways of being and knowing present in schooling and aims to put forward considerations for critical and creative transdisciplinary curriculum development. The second paper presents a vertical case study that investigates how the purposes of art and science transdisciplinarity are defined by multi-level actors: from the macro national and city policy level to that at the microlevel of an art and science museum. Using critical discourse analysis alongside Bakhtin’s concepts of centrifugal and centripetal forces, this study identifies how the purpose of transdisciplinary learning is reproduced and reimagined through discourse at multiple scales. Tensions arose in the pull of how transdisciplinarity was conceptualized, particularly between board members and staff who felt different responsibilities for aligning with national discourse. Finally, the third paper is an autoethnographic study weaving together personal narrative, theory in the arts and cultural studies, and student work from one summer art and science program. Grappling with the art/science disciplinary dichotomy, this last paper troubles framings of the human-nature divide through material inquiry into place. In the discourse of critique and iterative making, the class community follows one student’s movement in a relational encounter with an ant as a disruption of enduring dualisms that signify Cartesian logic. / Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2022. / Submitted to: Boston College. Lynch School of Education. / Discipline: Teacher Education, Special Education, Curriculum and Instruction.

Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior / O presente trabalho tem por objetivo entender a História e a Teologia da Tradição de Matriz Africana estruturada no estado do Rio Grande do Sul e chamada de Batuque. Busca compreender como o Batuque sofreu a sua destituição epistemológica; atribui sentidos e propósitos aos rituais dessa tradição a partir de uma reflexão teológica fundamentada numa epistemologia interdisciplinarizada afrocentrada e pós-colonializada; dá-nos a conhecer a história dessa tradição, desde suas origens africanas até a reestruturação local; auxilia tanto pesquisadores sobre o tema quanto profissionais na área de educação, sobretudo no campo da Teologia, das Ciências da Religião e do Ensino Religioso; assim como municiar os vivenciadores do Batuque, os batuqueiros, que, devido à perseguição histórica, acabaram por ter seus saberes ancestrais destituídos com o epistemicídio engendrado pelo colonialismo do homem branco. Esta dissertação ocupa quatro capítulos. No primeiro tratamos da tradição africana na sua relação com sua história e cultura. No segundo falamos dos africanos traficados para o Brasil durante o sistema escravista, como se deu o processo diaspórico e a estruturação no Rio Grande do Sul. No terceiro esmiuçaremos a perseguição sistemática a essa tradição: o epistemicídio. O quarto capítulo versará sobre a Afroteologia, seus pressupostos metodológicos e tentativa de sistematização. / The goal of this paper is to understand the history and the theology of the Traditions of African Origin structured in the state of Rio Grande do Sul and called Batuque. It seeks to comprehend how Batuque underwent it epistemological destitution; it attributes meanings and purposes to the rituals of this tradition based on a theological reflection founded on an interdisciplinary, Afrocentric and post-colonial epistemology; it grants us knowledge of this tradition from its African origins up to the local restructuring; it helps researchers on the theme as well as professionals in the area of education, especially in the fields of Theology, Sciences of Religion and Religious Education; it also gives tools to those who live out Batuque, the batuqueiros, who, due to historical persecution, had their ancestral knowledge destitute with the epistemicide devised by the colonialism of the white man. This thesis has four chapters. In the first we deal with the African tradition in its relation with its history and culture. In the second we talk of the Africans who were trafficked to Brazil during the slave system, about how the diaspora process took place and the restructuring in Rio Grande do Sul. In the third we detail the systematic persecution of this tradition: the epistemicide. The fourth chapter will discourse about Afrotheology, its methodological presuppositions and attempts at systematization.

Submitted by Jorge Silva (jorgelmsilva@ufrrj.br) on 2017-11-01T18:04:06Z No. of bitstreams: 1 2015 - Jalber Luiz da Silva.pdf: 1694584 bytes, checksum: b5150f88c573af2e6a10fb0fb41c57c9 (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2017-11-01T18:04:06Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 2015 - Jalber Luiz da Silva.pdf: 1694584 bytes, checksum: b5150f88c573af2e6a10fb0fb41c57c9 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2015-05-20 / CNPq / This text aims to present my interest in the occurrence of research and identification of forms of prejudice and discrimination against the knowledge and ability of Brazilian religions of African origin in school units of basic education. Of particular interest to analyze episodes of discrimination, directly or indirectly, by the denial, silencing and exclusion that knowledge in teaching practices and syllabus of basic education, especially knowledge inherent to its manifestations and religious knowledge. In the search field, the maroon community of Santa Rita do Bracu? in Angra dos Reis, Rio de Janeiro; I follow a process of continuing education of teachers of a public school, discussions of Education of Etnicorraciais Relations. Debating, investigated the Quilombo, the "death" of the religious knowledge of Cumba Master3 and Jongo wheel and can evaluate the various forms of discrimination existing in this community and in your school. / Este texto tem como objetivo apresentar meu interesse na investiga??o de ocorr?ncia e identifica??o das formas de preconceito e discrimina??o contra os conhecimentos e saberes das religi?es brasileiras de matriz africana em unidades escolares da educa??o b?sica. Interessa especialmente analisar epis?dios de discrimina??o, de maneira direta ou indireta, mediante a nega??o, o silenciamento e a exclus?o desse conhecimento nas pr?ticas de ensino e conte?dos program?ticos da educa??o b?sica, principalmente conhecimentos inerentes ?s suas manifesta??es e saberes religiosos. No campo de pesquisa, a comunidade quilombola de Santa Rita do Bracu?, em Angra dos Reis-RJ, acompanho um processo de forma??o continuada de professores de uma escola municipal, as discuss?es sobre Educa??o das Rela??es Etnicorraciais. Problematizando, investiguei no Quilombo, a ?morte? dos conhecimentos religiosos do Mestre Cumba2 e da Roda do Jongo, podendo avaliar as diversas formas de discrimina??o existentes nessa comunidade e na sua escola.

[pt] Este estudo tem por objetivo analisar as relações entre o poder constituinte e a escravidão no Brasil. Na tentativa de compreensão substantiva do poder constituinte no Brasil, bem como da operacionalização do direito enquanto elemento central à hierarquização e violência raciais neste solo, mobilizou-se as ferramentas metodológicas ofertadas pelo direito em pretuguês e as chaves analíticas derivadas do conceito de dispositivo de racialidade, também intencionando a promoção de reflexões sobre alternativas de práticas jurídicas e programas de ensino antirracistas. Objetivando-se a realização de uma leitura do fenômeno a partir de chaves epistêmicas que fissuram o colonialismo jurídico, adota-se como premissa a insuficiência do Direito diante do racismo incrustado nas instituições e estruturas brasileiras. Assume-se que a resposta às cisões promovidas pelo Direito, sobremaneira as raciais, não residem na atuação do sistema de justiça, o qual aponta para avanços pontuais e intencionalmente insólitos e frágeis diantes dos grandes tensionamentos, constrangimentos e interpelações intra institucionais promovidos. Para a realização da pesquisa, foram investigados os periódicos da imprensa negra e abolicionista oitocentista, compreendendo-se as etapas de levantamento, catalogação, sistematização e estudo qualitativo das informações alcançadas. Empreendeu-se, ainda, a revisão bibliográfica de temas atinentes ao problema, com vistas à proposição de novos paradigmas à análise do poder constituinte no Brasil, desde as autoinscrições negras rumo a um novo projeto de nação brasileira e as propostas de ampliação das dimensões de liberdade, cidadania, igualdade e povo. / [en] The aim of this study is to analyze the relationship between constituent power and slavery in Brazil. In an attempt to gain a substantive understanding of constituent power in Brazil, as well as the operationalization of law as a central element of racial hierarchization and violence on this soil, the methodological tools offered by law in Pretuguês and the analytical keys derived from the concept of a raciality device were mobilized, also with the intention of promoting reflections on alternative legal practices and anti-racist teaching programs. With the aim of reading the phenomenon from epistemic keys that break down legal colonialism, the premise is that the law is insufficient in the face of the racism embedded in Brazilian institutions and structures. It is assumed that the answer to the divisions promoted by the Law, especially racial ones, does not lie in the actions of the justice system, which points to occasional and intentionally unusual and fragile advances in the face of the great tensions, constraints and intra-institutional interpellations promoted. In order to carry out the research, the periodicals of the nineteenth-century black and abolitionist press were investigated, comprising the stages of surveying, cataloging, systematizing and qualitatively studying the information obtained. We also undertook a bibliographical review of issues related to the problem, with a view to proposing new paradigms for the analysis of constituent power in Brazil, from black self-inscriptions towards a new project for a Brazilian nation and proposals for expanding the dimensions of freedom, citizenship, equality and people.

[pt] O Projeto UNESCO (1950) colocou o Brasil no centro das discussões sobre relações raciais no mundo. Visto a partir do prisma da democracia racial, orgulho nacional, o Brasil foi tema de pesquisas sociológicas e antropológicas acerca das formas de harmonia social e racial que poderiam ser um elemento chave contra conflitos étnicos-raciais, como o Holocausto Judeu durante a II Guerra Mundial. Contudo, a realidade interna brasileira em nada se relaciona com a pretensa democracia racial propagada pelo mundo, negando, desumanizando e exterminando a população negra em todo o país. Com isso, essa pesquisa aborda o pensamento internacional em torno da democracia racial brasileira em contraposição com a realidade doméstica do país de genocídio do povo negro. Esse fato coloca em evidência a falácia da leitura das Relações Internacionais do Estado como ator unitário e racional no Sistema Internacional. Da mesma forma, esforça-se por demonstrar como o mito de democracia racial e o epistemicídio contra intelectuais afrodiaspóricos tende a negar sua participação na interpretação do lugar do Brasil no mundo na construção do curso de Relações Internacionais no país. Para tal, divide-se este artigo em três distintas seções: a primeira aborda os conceitos de raça, branquitude e colonialidade como inerentes ao Brasil e academia de RI. A segunda seção apresenta o Projeto UNESCO, seus debates e conflitos, como possibilidade de lançar luz sobre a realidade racial não democrática brasileira. Por fim, a terceira seção se interessa em conectar o Projeto UNESCO com a academia de RI no país, a fim de expressar como a disciplina ignora a realidade doméstica em nome da unidade e racionalidade estatal. / [en] The UNESCO Project (1950) placed Brazil at the center of discussions on race relations in the world. Seen from the perspective of racial democracy, national pride, Brazil was the subject of sociological and anthropological research on forms of social and racial harmony that could be a key element against ethnic-racial conflicts, such as the Jewish Holocaust during World War II. However, the Brazilian internal reality has nothing to do with the alleged racial democracy propagated by the world, denying, dehumanizing and exterminating the black population across the country. In doing so, this research approaches the international thought around the Brazilian racial democracy in opposition to the domestic reality of the country of genocide of the black people. This fact highlights the fallacy of reading the State s International Relations as a unitary and rational actor in the International System. Likewise, it strives to demonstrate how the myth of racial democracy and the epistemicide against afrodiasporic intellectuals tends to deny its participation in the interpretation of Brazil s place in the world in the construction of the International Relations course in the country. To this end, this article is divided into three distinct sections: the first addresses the concepts of race, whiteness and coloniality as inherent to Brazil and the IR academy. The second section presents the UNESCO Project, its debates and conflicts, as a possibility to shed light on the Brazilian non-democratic racial reality. Finally, the third section is interested in connecting the UNESCO Project with the IR academy in the country, in order to express how the discipline ignores domestic reality in the name of state unity and rationality.

In post-colonial Africa, conceptions of the nature and purposes of development as well as the theories and strategies for achieving them have remained a territory traversed predominantly by non-African social scientists. In this context, social scientists studying Africa's development proclaimed, at the dawn of the 1990s, a "paradigmatic crisis" and embarked on a quest for new paradigms . In advancing this quest, a number of "homegrown" development strategies have emerged. This work argues that these are mere adaptations and reconstructions of dominant Eurocentic paradigms that exaggerate the value of economic goods and wealth creation founded on a competitive marketplace by making them immutable features of development. Yet the ethic of competition theoretically condones a trajectory of killing in the quest for wealth accumulation. In this way, internalist epistemologies perpetuate epistemicide and valuecide in Africa's strides towards development. The stranglehold of internalist epistemologies has resulted in the impasse of rationality. By this we mean that Reason, apotheosized since the Enlightenment, has advanced humanity out of barbarism to "civilization" but has now placed humanity on the brink of unredeemable barbarism. Reason, through its manifestations in the philosophy of Mutual Assured Destruction and global warming, has condemned humanity to willful but avoidable suicide. Since the subjects and objects of development must be one and the same, development is necessarily culture-derived and culture-driven, with the preservation and improvement of human dignity and welfare as its ultimate aims. Accordingly, we defend the thesis that it is necessary for a framework meant for Africa's development to be founded on indigenous knowledge and values, if it is to succeed. And at this moment of impasse reached by Reason, an African ethics-based development paradigm, predicated on humaneness and "life is mutual aid", can restore Reason to sober rationality and liberate Africa's development efforts from the intoxicating prison of profit making. Hence the institutions and frameworks devoted to Africa's development, such as the Constitution and Strategic Plan of the African Union as well as NEPAD, must incorporate salient features of the philosophic ethic emanating from the knowledge and ontological systems of indigenous Africa into visions of the African future. / Philosophy / D. Phil. (Philosophy)

In post-colonial Africa, conceptions of the nature and purposes of development as well as the theories and strategies for achieving them have remained a territory traversed predominantly by non-African social scientists. In this context, social scientists studying Africa's development proclaimed, at the dawn of the 1990s, a "paradigmatic crisis" and embarked on a quest for new paradigms . In advancing this quest, a number of "homegrown" development strategies have emerged. This work argues that these are mere adaptations and reconstructions of dominant Eurocentic paradigms that exaggerate the value of economic goods and wealth creation founded on a competitive marketplace by making them immutable features of development. Yet the ethic of competition theoretically condones a trajectory of killing in the quest for wealth accumulation. In this way, internalist epistemologies perpetuate epistemicide and valuecide in Africa's strides towards development. The stranglehold of internalist epistemologies has resulted in the impasse of rationality. By this we mean that Reason, apotheosized since the Enlightenment, has advanced humanity out of barbarism to "civilization" but has now placed humanity on the brink of unredeemable barbarism. Reason, through its manifestations in the philosophy of Mutual Assured Destruction and global warming, has condemned humanity to willful but avoidable suicide. Since the subjects and objects of development must be one and the same, development is necessarily culture-derived and culture-driven, with the preservation and improvement of human dignity and welfare as its ultimate aims. Accordingly, we defend the thesis that it is necessary for a framework meant for Africa's development to be founded on indigenous knowledge and values, if it is to succeed. And at this moment of impasse reached by Reason, an African ethics-based development paradigm, predicated on humaneness and "life is mutual aid", can restore Reason to sober rationality and liberate Africa's development efforts from the intoxicating prison of profit making. Hence the institutions and frameworks devoted to Africa's development, such as the Constitution and Strategic Plan of the African Union as well as NEPAD, must incorporate salient features of the philosophic ethic emanating from the knowledge and ontological systems of indigenous Africa into visions of the African future. / Philosophy, Practical and Systematic Theology / D. Phil. (Philosophy)

In this study, we employ the theory of deconstruction to challenge and reject the contention that a knowledge paradigm was non-existent among the indigenous people of Zimbabwe before the arrival of the colonisers. This is necessary because the imposition of the colonisers’ knowledge paradigm was premised on the supposed absence of an epistemology among the indigenous people. In defending the thesis that education and indeed an epistemology was in existence among the indigenous people of Zimbabwe, we submit that education is part of any given culture. In the light of this, it becomes untenable to deny the existence of education among the indigenous people of Zimbabwe before the arrival of the colonisers. Knowledge ceases to be the exclusive preserve of the colonisers. It must be noted that the imposition of the colonisers’ knowledge paradigm was accompanied by the suppression and partial destruction of the epistemology of the indigenous people. The suppression and partial destruction of the indigenous people’s epistemological paradigm is called epistemicide. The epistemicide that the colonisers inflicted on the indigenous people led to the exclusive dominance of their knowledge paradigm in the school curriculum at the expense of that of the indigenous people. In the light of this status quo, we present transformation and Africanisation as corrective to the unjustified dominance of the present day curriculum by the epistemological paradigm of the colonisers. We argue that despite the commendable proposals contained in the Report of the Presidential Commission of Inquiry into Education and Training (1999: 24) to change the curriculum so that unhu/ubuntu becomes its organising principle and to allow the co-existence of the indigenous people’s epistemological paradigm and others, in practice the dominance of the colonisers’ epistemological paradigm remains in place. We submit that the Africanisation of the curriculum is a matter of justice that demands the end of the dominance of the knowledge paradigm of the colonisers and the co-existence of the indigenous people’s knowledge paradigm and others / Philosophy, Practical and Systematic Theology / D.Litt et Phil. (Philosophy)

This thesis examines the discourse strategies used to construct initiation schools in online media and message boards. The focus is on understanding the tensions that come with enacting traditional practices in the face of modernity and its associated cultural expectations. The thesis describes the manner in which these tensions are constructed in text by the media in news reports and participants in discussion forums. While there is still debate around whether the internet will revolutionise public participation and create a digital utopia; the internet is acknowledged as one of the widest reaching sources of information and entertainment. Specifically, the internet provides a platform to challenge the traditionally top-down communication between the elite, who have privileged access to the media, and the general public, who were previously constructed as passive recipients of information. Using the male circumcision initiation rite, this thesis examines how the South African public discursively constructs the epistemic location of African traditions in South Africa. The study drew on a sample of news articles from the News24 site, the largest news site in South Africa, ranging from January 2008 to December 2013. A corpus of 62 articles were analysed using the Critical Discourse Analysis technique described by Teun van Dijk. The findings of the thesis were that the initiation rite is used as a rhetorical tool to argue for the abandonment of African cultural practices in favour of modern, Western influenced beliefs and values. The findings also indicate that the initiation rite is reduced to the act of circumcision in the media by focusing on the injury and deaths of the initiates and excluding the meaning of the rite as a meaningful cultural practice. The conclusion of the thesis challenges the epistemicide committed against the male circumcision initiation rite from within the Decolonial school of thought, which critically examines everyday interaction for universalising, normative language that aims to commit cultural epistemicide to reinforce the white, male, European, Christian traditions of masculinity. / Psychology / D. Litt. et Phil. (Psychology)

This thesis examines the discourse strategies used to construct initiation schools in online media and message boards. The focus is on understanding the tensions that come with enacting traditional practices in the face of modernity and its associated cultural expectations. The thesis describes the manner in which these tensions are constructed in text by the media in news reports and participants in discussion forums. While there is still debate around whether the internet will revolutionise public participation and create a digital utopia; the internet is acknowledged as one of the widest reaching sources of information and entertainment. Specifically, the internet provides a platform to challenge the traditionally top-down communication between the elite, who have privileged access to the media, and the general public, who were previously constructed as passive recipients of information. Using the male circumcision initiation rite, this thesis examines how the South African public discursively constructs the epistemic location of African traditions in South Africa. The study drew on a sample of news articles from the News24 site, the largest news site in South Africa, ranging from January 2008 to December 2013. A corpus of 62 articles were analysed using the Critical Discourse Analysis technique described by Teun van Dijk. The findings of the thesis were that the initiation rite is used as a rhetorical tool to argue for the abandonment of African cultural practices in favour of modern, Western influenced beliefs and values. The findings also indicate that the initiation rite is reduced to the act of circumcision in the media by focusing on the injury and deaths of the initiates and excluding the meaning of the rite as a meaningful cultural practice. The conclusion of the thesis challenges the epistemicide committed against the male circumcision initiation rite from within the Decolonial school of thought, which critically examines everyday interaction for universalising, normative language that aims to commit cultural epistemicide to reinforce the white, male, European, Christian traditions of masculinity. / Psychology / D. Litt. et Phil. (Psychology)