Sounds of Silence Breaking: Women, Autobiography, Curriculum (Complicated Conversation)
«This insightful and beautifully written book is not just autobiographical; it intertwines interpretations of educational theories, events, and practices throughout private and public dimensions of Janet L. Miller’s life. It has been and is a fluid life, a life of resistance to fixity, to notions of an essential or predetermined self. She recounts the drama of an identity in the process of creation, of a voice in search of its own authentic sound. The drama is presented in the contexts of Janet’s undergraduate and graduate education, of her academic interests and projects, of her experiences with the founding of the Bergamo curriculum conferences and the journal that sponsors them. Not incidentally, then, the text deals in-depth with the author’s participation in the development of that influential curriculum movement called ‘reconceptualism’, a far-ranging revision of theories and practices too long taken for granted, in spite of their avoidance of new currents in the social sciences and humanities. Janet’s writing and teaching, her close engagement with classroom teachers, and her sophisticated explorations in qualitative research and the literature of feminism make this book a remarkable contemporary statement for educators and students of the human sciences. Imaginative and probing, Janet L. Miller opens a range of possibilities for both theory and practice.» (Maxine Greene, William F. Russell Professor in the Foundations of Education (Emerita), Teachers College, Columbia University)«One of the giants of the curriculum Reconceptualist movement, Janet Miller revisits classic writings through which she helped to define this radical departure from mainstream curriculum studies. Focusing on women, autobiography and curriculum, she juxtaposes recent pieces with earlier ones, and narrativizes the re-situating - producing a stunning theoretical portrait of a curriculum theorist who refuses to stop re-inventing herself and her field of study.» (Jean Anyon, Professor of Social and Educational Policy, Doctoral Program in Urban Education, The Graduate Center of CUNY, Author of the forthcoming ‘Radical Possibilities: Public Policy, Urban Education, And A New Social Movement’)«Janet Miller offers her recollected storylines, retold, reimagined, renarrativized. She does so in bold and courageous ways, and, in so doing, she once again creates spaces for unheard voices. She shatters silences, allowing curriculum scholars, both new and established, to imagine other possibilities for engaging in the «always-in-the-making labor» of curriculum making.» (D. Jean Clandinin, Professor and Director, Centre for Research for Teacher Education and Development, University of Alberta, Canada, Co-Author of ‘Narrative Inquiry: Experience And Story In Qualitative Research’)«Located in autobiography and curriculum studies, this book registers the major cultural and intellectual movements of the last 30 years. Miller’s ‘woman-teacher-academic’ guides the reader through the relational and conceptual histories that might lead toward the reinvention of our selves and our fields of study and practice.» (Patti Lather, Professor, Cultural Studies in Education, The Ohio State University, Author of ‘Getting Smart: Feminist Research And Pedagogy Within/In The Postmodern’ and coauthor of ‘Troubling The Angels: Women Living With Hiv/Aids’)