Posthumanism and Higher Education: Reimagining Pedagogy, Practice and Research

This book explores ways in which posthumanist and new materialist thinking can be put to work in order to reimagine higher education pedagogy, practice and research. The editors and contributors illuminate how we can move the thinking and doing of higher education out of the humanist cul-de-sac of individualism, binarism and colonialism and away from anthropocentric modes of performative rationality. Based in a reconceptualization of ontology, epistemology and ethics which shifts attention away from the human towards the vitality of matter and the nonhuman, posthumanist and new materialist approaches pose a profound challenge to higher education. In engaging with the theoretical twists and turns of various posthumanisms and new materialisms, this book offers new, experimental and creative ways for academics, practitioners and researchers to do higher education differently. This ground-breaking edited collection will appeal to students and scholars of posthumanism and new materialism, as well as those looking to conceptualize higher education as other than performative practice.

Carol A. Taylor is Professor of Higher Education and Gender at the University of Bath, UK. Her research draws on feminist, new materialist and posthumanist approaches to generate experimental methodologies and transdisciplinary theories for exploring gender, space, power and participation in higher education. She co-edits the journal Gender and Education and is an Editorial Board member of Teaching in Higher Education and Critical Studies in Teaching and Learning. Annouchka Bayley is Programme Lead in Creative Education at the Royal College of Art, UK. Her research incorporates posthumanisms and new materialisms for 21st century higher education development; practice-as-research in the academy; and creating new approaches to the practice and critique of contemporary live performance.

Chapter 1. Unfolding: Con-conspirators, contemplations, complications and more: Carol A. Taylor.- PART I. Entangled Pedagogic Provocations.- Chapter 2. Sounds of scissors: Eventicising Curriculum in Higher Education; Bente Ulla, Ninni Sandvik, Ann Sofi Larsen, Mette Røe Nyhus, Nina Johannesen.- Chapter 3. Theatre for a changing climate: A Lecturer's portfolio; Evelyn O'Malley.- Chapter 4. A manifesto for teaching qualitative inquiry with/as/for Art, Science and Philosophy; Candice Kuby and David Aguayo.- Chapter 5. Posthuman encounters in New Zealand early childhood teacher education; Sonja Arndt and Marek Tesar.- Chapter 6. Putting Posthuman theories to work in educational leadership programmes; Kathryn J. Strom and David Lupinacci.- Chapter 7. Re-vitalizing the American Feminist-Philosophical classroom. Transformative academic experimentations with diffractive pedagogies; Evelien Geerts.- Chapter 8. Undoing and doing-with: Practices of diffractive reading and writing in higher education; Sarah Hepler, Susan Cannon, Courtney Hartnett and Teri Peitso-Holbrook.- PART II. Inventive Practice Intra-ventions.- Chapter 9. Staying with the trouble in Science Education: Towards thinking with nature; Marc Higgins, Maria F.G. Wallace, Jesse Bazzul.- Chapter 10. Complex knowing: Promoting response-ability within music and science teacher education; Carolyn Cooke and Laura Colucci-Gray.- Chapter 11. Dramatizing an articulation of the (p)artistic researcher's posthumanist pathway to 'slow professorship' within the corporate university complex; johnmichael rossi.- Chapter 12. A Posthuman pedagogy for childhood studies (Viewpoint); Amanda Hatton.- Chapter 13. Disruptive pedagogies for teacher education: The power of Potentia in Posthuman times; Kay Sidebottom.- Chapter 14. Textual practices as already-posthuman: Re-imagining text, authorship and meaning-making in higher education; Lesley Gourlay.- Chapter 15. Body as transformer: 'Teaching without teaching' in a teacher education course; Karin Murris and Cara Borcherds.- PART III. Experimental Research Engagements.- Chapter 16. Playful pedagogy: Autoethnography in the Anthropocene; Clare Hammoor.- Chapter 17. Refiguring presences in Kichwa-Lamista territories: Natural-cultural (Re)storying with Indigenous place; Marc Higgins and Brooke Madden.- Chapter 18. Indigenous education in higher education in Canada: Settler re-education through New Materialist theory; Jeannie Kerr.- Chapter 19. Posthuman methodology and pedagogy: Uneasy assemblages and affective choreographies; Jennifer Charteris and Adele Nye.- Chapter 20. Response-able (Peer) reviewing matters in higher education: A manifesto; Vivienne Bozalek, Michalinos Zemblyas and Tamara Shefer.- Chapter 21. How did 'we' become human in the first place? Entanglements of Posthumanism and critical pedagogy for the 21st century; Annouchka Bayley.