Browsing by Author "Hanson, Aubrey Jean"
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- ItemOpen AccessAnxious Femininity: Rethinking Womanhood in Modernist Women’s Writing(2020-07-08) Lypka, Celiese Tamara; Vandervlist, Harry; Bennett, Susan; Coates, Donna; Hanson, Aubrey Jean; Medoro, DanaAffect, as an impersonal force, opens subjects, objects, and spaces to the intensities that surround us. As a future-orientated theoretical approach, affect is often considered in relation to its propensity for engendering “potential liberations, escapes, and freedoms” (Cooppan, “Memory’s Future” 56). But to be open to the future is to be vulnerable in the present, not only to potential positive encounters but also to harmful or dangerous ones. As Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari note in A Thousand Plateaus, the lines of affective relations between bodies and spaces are susceptible to both creation and destruction: “There is a danger that these vibrations traversing us may be aggravated beyond our endurance” (197). But what if these unknown encounters, which produce vibrations that could traverse us beyond endurance, offered space for potentially powerful acts of resistance that could create modes of being that reject hegemonic social orders? What if the politics of bodies that are affected by aggravation, anxiousness, and unease as they move through the world, were to be mobilized into affective confrontations with normative prescriptions of life, happiness, and success? In this reading, sites of potential destruction can generate a movement towards a self-indifference to normative rhythms of life (dictated by gender, race, class, etc.) rather than an act of social (or physical) annihilation. In choosing to ignore, displace, or obliterate the aggravations that saturate the lived experience of existing in conflict with dominant social structures, employing self- indifference reframes the aim of living outside of the pursuit of normative ideals on happiness and success. In this way, the affective impulses of anxious and uneasy aggravations could also push individuals past their endurance under social regulations into resistance and revolt. The focus of this dissertation re-examines early-twentieth-century women’s writing, correlating as a study in the proliferating affect of anxiousness in the formulation of feminine subjecthood after the turn of the twentieth century. Analyzing Nella Larsen’s Passing (1928); Jean Rhys’s After Leaving Mr Mackenzie (1931), Voyage in the Dark (1934), and Good Morning, Midnight (1939); and Virginia Woolf’s Mrs Dalloway (1925) and To the Lighthouse (1927), I examine the ways that anxiety as affect transmits between bodies and spaces, focusing on how feelings of unease can either constrain or release feminine potential. I argue that the writers dismantle the overwhelming sense of feminine anxiousness and unease that saturates their texts by creating ambiguous women who come to recognize their position as a misaligned with feminine ideals, exploring different orientations to the world and creating new worlds through their movements. This intervention into feminist scholarship shifts how we approach representations of the feminine, its production as performative femininity, and the potential of womanhood in modernist studies.
- ItemOpen Access“Going Native”: Indigenizing ethnographic research(Canadian Journal of Native Studies, 2018) Hanson, Aubrey JeanThis article focuses on the possibilities for shaping Indigenous approaches to ethnographic research: it examines what Indigenous researchers are asking of themselves as they devise their research methodologies. Based on a review of literature on Indigenous research methods, it assembles a collection of elements to characterize an Indigenizing approach to ethnography: elements such as respecting distinct cultures and nations; rooting method in culture; understanding the importance of story, language, place, and relationality; and committing to ethics and reciprocity. In gathering these guidelines, this articles promoted accountability to the rapidly growing pool of scholars and their body of scholarship on Indigenous knowledges, cultures, and perspectives.
- ItemOpen AccessHolding home together: Katherena Vermette’s The Break(Canadian Literature, 2019-03-05) Hanson, Aubrey JeanThis article reads Métis writer Katherena Vermette’s 2016 novel The Break in order to examine urban Indigenous women’s resilience in relation to understandings of home. As the women in this text gather around young Emily, who has endured a violent sexual attack, they embody a strength that resides in their kinship as well as in interconnected conceptions of home. This reading is significant given the issue of violence against Indigenous women and girls in Canada, as well as the growing numbers of Indigenous people finding home in cities. As a Métis woman, I also read this text through my own experience. Through these analyses, this paper contends that portrayals of strong Indigenous women can help to shift dominant understandings of Indigenous people, making space for Indigenous women’s well-being in urban spaces. This article offers a timely and Métis-focused consideration of Vermette’s novel.
- ItemOpen AccessHow do International Students Reconstruct their Identity as Readers when they Transition into Canadian Post-Secondary Education?(2019-01-22) Chen, Danni; Hanson, Aubrey Jean; Lund, Darren E.; Xie, ShaoboWith increased numbers of Chinese international students in the Canadian higher education system and their growing needs to transition into a new cultural reading environment, this study endeavours to explore the difficulties that four Chinese students encountered, and figure out how they experienced, responded to, and transformed to a new cultural reading environment. With data from semi-structured interviews and journal entries, this study brings each individual participant’s experiences, perceptions, and feelings of reading in English to the fore. I analyzed participants’ unique experiences in order to understand their reading difficulties and readers’ identities. Through these examinations, this study shows that participants’ identities as readers are reconstructed in a new cultural reading environment, based upon their Chinese culture, academic fields, a new English cultural background, and their personalities. Moreover, data analysis reveals that, while reading in English, participants constructed the meaning of different language reading materials through the different lens of their identities as readers. Based on my findings, second language reading is discussed regarding the second language reader’s cultures and identities. The present study highlights the importance of social dimensions in second language reading. It concludes that readers’ identities reflect readers’ different cultural memberships. As Chinese international student cross cultural boundaries, their identities as readers shape how they interpret and understand the meaning of reading materials. When readers apply different reader’s identities while reading, they have the potential to interpret reading materials differently.
- ItemOpen AccessHow do international students reconstruct their identity as readers when they transition into Canadian post-secondary education?(Language & Literacy, 2023-08-19) Chen, Danni; Hanson, Aubrey JeanRecognizing the cultural transitions Chinese international students undergo as readers in the Canadian higher education system, this study explores the difficulties encountered by four Chinese students and uncovers how they experienced, responded to, and transformed in a new cultural reading environment. Focusing on the notion of a reader’s identity, this study uses narrative inquiry to show how participants’ readers identities are reconstructed in a new cultural reading environment. It concludes that readers’ identities reflect readers’ different cultural memberships. As international students crossing cultural boundaries, their identities as readers shape how they interpret and understand the meaning of reading materials.
- ItemOpen AccessIndian Residential Schools: Perspectives of Blackfoot Confederacy People(2021-03-02) Fox, Terri-Lynn; Louie, Dustin William; Lenters, Kimberly A.; Hanson, Aubrey Jean; Poitras Pratt, Yvonne; Burke, SusanThis qualitative research project explored two main themes: the Indian residential school (IRS) settlement agreement for survivors of federally funded and church-run institutions, and the participants’ perspectives (N = 16) on the apology to the survivors and subsequent generations that have been affected. I focus on the First Nation population of southern Alberta, specifically the Blackfoot Confederacy (Siksikaitsitapi). I use a Siksikaitsitapi lens and methodology on their experiences at an IRS, the IRS settlement, the Canadian government’s apology to former students, and the status of reconciliation as a whole. Criteria for participant inclusion were being an IRS survivor and a member of the Blackfoot Confederacy. Semistructured interviews revealed that receiving the IRS compensation led to survivors reliving their trauma and that money did not buy happiness or foster healing. Themes related to the IRS apology included its lack of positive reception and lack of sincerity; some stated they did not watch it, whereas others shared it was emotional for them to view. Other common factors that affected participants while in an IRS were loneliness, pain, abuse, and being unable to speak Blackfoot or engage in Blackfoot cultural practices. Learning from our shared past, Canadians must lean towards trusting and respectful acts of reconciliation, and respectful relationships, which form strong partnerships for all. A Siksikaitsitapi framework is provided as a starting point for relearning, rebuilding, renewing, and restorying after 500 years of decolonization. Using the framework, all stakeholders can begin to understand and heal issues relating to overall health and well-being from within an Indigenous lens and methodology. This approach respectfully honours the 7 generations before us and the 7 generations that will come after us.
- ItemOpen AccessInvestigating the Ontario FSL High School Curriculum: An Exploratory Case Study of Non-Native French-Speaking Teachers’ Cultural Practices(2020-07-03) Guida, Rochelle; Roy, Sylvie; Hanson, Aubrey Jean; Lenters, Kimberly A.; Kassan, Anusha; Bangou, FrancisFollowing a qualitative social constructivist research paradigm, this exploratory case examined how Ontario non-native French-speaking teachers approached French cultures with beginner level French as a second language (FSL) students of the high school Grade 9 Core French (CF) program. Ontario FSL educators often teach CF and students typically pursue CF in lieu of other FSL programs (Canadian Parents for French, 2017; Masson, 2018). Grade 9 is the final FSL course required for high school graduation (Masson, 2018; OME, 2014). CF students lack confidence speaking and interacting in French (Rehner, 2014) despite many years of language exposure (Masson, 2018) and often abandon FSL studies after Grade 9 (LANG, 2014). This inquiry investigated the cultural practices of ten Ontario CF Grade 9 non-native French-speaking educators from autumn 2018 to January 2019. The teachers participated in an online questionnaire, two semi-structured interviews, an online focus group, and shared cultural resources. Based on a theoretical framework that I developed, thematic analysis revealed that the teachers who recently travelled to French-speaking communities, and who maintained their French linguistic and cultural proficiencies, reflected more of the social constructivist orientation to pedagogy (Cummins, 2001, 2009; Cummins et al., 2007). Participants also modelled some elements of the neurolinguistic approach (Netten & Germain, 2012) to help students retain and reuse cultural content with growing confidence in oral communication. The teachers introduced French cultures using cuisine, music, travel, and ICT resources through CEFR-inspired practices (Council of Europe, 2001) in day-to-day practices. The participants were ambitious cultural learners and pedagogues, which supported the positive characteristics of Ontario non-native French-speaking teachers. Participants also experienced various challenges, such as ICT access issues, lack of teacher-training, and lack of student interaction with native French speakers. Therefore, the findings raised important funding and teacher-training considerations for cultural learning and interaction in Grade 9 CF.
- ItemOpen AccessThe Life and Politics of Passing: Gender, Professionalism and the Queer Teacher(2020-04-20) Anderson, Jamie Lyle; Callaghan, Tonya D.; Bridel, William; Hanson, Aubrey JeanThere is a dearth of research that considers how discourses of professionalism intersect with gender and sexual diversity for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and intersex (LGBTI) teachers in a Canadian context. The Alberta Teachers’ Association released its first resource aimed to support LGBTI teachers in early 2018, suggesting that gender and sexually diverse teachers are just starting to gain visibility within their professional organization. Through autoethnography, Institutional Ethnography, and Critical Discourse Analysis, this thesis examines how LGBTI teachers experience and perform their gender in response to conceptualizations of teacher professionalism that dictate queerness—particularly “visible” queerness—as contrarian to the neutral subjectivity that teachers are expected to uphold. With the growing relevance of queer-affirming spaces in school, such as Gay-Straight or Queer-Straight Alliances, it is necessary to examine possibilities of a queer professionalism and changing expectations for professional practice in queer spaces. LGBTI teachers in Alberta need more than recognition from their professional organization and this research begins to conceptualize a queer professionalism for teachers that breaks the bounds of heteronormativity in order to support and celebrate gender and sexual diversity broadly within Canadian schools.
- ItemOpen AccessReading for reconciliation? Indigenous literatures in a post-TRC Canada(English Studies in Canada, 2017-06) Hanson, Aubrey Jean
- ItemOpen AccessRelational encounters with Indigenous literatures(McGill Journal of Education, 2019) Hanson, Aubrey JeanThis paper makes a case for attending to the resurgence of Indigenous literary arts in taking up the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada’s Calls to Action in teacher education. I argue that Indigenous literary arts can help to foster relational understandings between readers and Indigenous communities: stories have the capacity to open up processes of relationship and responsibility. To develop this argument, I draw upon perspectives from teachers and from Indigenous writers, with whom I shared conversations on the question of why Indigenous literatures matter. Through an interpretive process of interweaving these perspectives, this article shows that Indigenous literatures can inspire and motivate educators to take on this work and learning despite its attendant challenges.
- ItemOpen AccessStories from Inside the Circle: Embodied Indigeneity and Resurgent Practice in Post-secondary Institutions(2022-11-01) Cunningham, Shawna Marie; Field, James Colin; Hanson, Aubrey Jean; Pidgeon, Michelle ElizabethThe call for reconciliation through education (Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada, 2015a) has compelled public post-secondary institutions in Canada to engage in meaningful and sustainable acts of reconciliation through systemic transformation. While the Final Report of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada (2015a) has brought to the forefront the urgency for reconciliation, individual and collective acts of decolonization and indigenization have been unfolding in the small corners and shadows of public post-secondary institutions in Canada since the early 1970s (Pidgeon et al., 2014; Pidgeon, 2014). For decades, Indigenous student service centres have had a visible presence in public post-secondary institutions across Canada, symbolizing a cultural touchstone for Indigenous students and serving as long-standing beacons of welcome for Indigenous community members. Indigenous leaders and associated staff of the centres have been actively engaged in the decolonization and indigenization of public post-secondary institutions in Canada as a distinct community of practice, laying much of the initial groundwork for transformative reconciliation in higher education. Through the storied experience of nine Indigenous leaders of the centre, this study offers insight into their role, experiences, and perspectives on decolonization and indigenization unfolding in public post-secondary institutions across Canada, now responsive to the call for reconciliation through education (Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada, 2015a). This research study is concerned with how Indigeneity as embodied presence (Meyer, 2008) gives rise to a cultural resurgent practice (Burrows & Tully, 2018; Simpson, 2017) in a neocolonial educational system poised for transformative reconciliation (Burrows & Tully, 2018). The study employs an Indigenous storytelling methodology (Kovach, 2009) reliant on the seven principles of storywork (Archibald, 2008) as an ethical framework for gathering stories, and Indigenous métissage (Donald, 2012) as a thematic analytical framework for making meaning. The study is further informed by theoretical concepts of trans-systemic space, pedagogy, and practice (Battiste, 2013; Battiste & Henderson, 2021, Henderson, 2009; Styres, 2017), the ethical space of engagement (Ermine, 2007) and ethical relationality (Donald, 2016).
- ItemOpen AccessTeaching Indigenous literatures for decolonization: Challenging learning, learning to challenge(Alberta Journal of Educational Research, 2020-06-15) Hanson, Aubrey JeanThis paper examines the significance of colonial contexts that influence the teaching of Indigenous literatures. It draws upon conversations I held with Indigenous writers and with secondary educators, in which we discussed the relationships between Indigenous communities, Indigenous literatures, and classroom teaching in Canada. In dialogue with teachers’ and authors’ perspectives, this paper argues that, when Indigenous stories are told and taught, readers are invited to challenge colonial understandings and are implicated into challenging classroom experiences. The pedagogical experiences precipitated by Indigenous literatures can be difficult for teachers and students, leading to unsettling dynamics, but are importantly decolonizing.
- ItemOpen AccessWayfinding for the Continuation of Life: A Curriculum Inquiry to Enrich Experiences and Renew Relations in Outdoor Education(2022-08) MacDonald, Jennifer Catherine; Field, James Colin; Donald, Dwayne Trevor; Hanson, Aubrey Jean; Norris, Julian AlexanderThis research addresses the crucial concern that dominant cultural values, naturalized in curriculum and pedagogy, support experiences that reinforce a type of human being who has lost their way within an ecological web. Deep separations exist between humans and wider kinship relations which reinforces human-centric individualistic understandings of wellness. In outdoor education, this tradition often makes place-based ecologies a passive backdrop to human pursuits. This inquiry is committed to a deeper learning process—wayfinding—to enliven places as living curriculum and to attend to healthier, more ethical, relationships with what gives and sustains life. As a non-Indigenous, Canadian, researcher and educator coming into relationship with Indigenous wisdom teachings, wayfinding is framed by tenets of hermeneutic philosophy and nuanced by teachings of sacred ecology and being a good treaty relative. Kindled through visits with nêyihaw Elder, Bob Cardinal, holistic understandings come into dialogue with two curriculum-linked outdoor education programs, including three different trips. With 16 secondary school students, this inquiry involved eight-days canoeing in Killarney Provincial Park, seven-days backpacking in the Adirondack High Peaks, and 28-days sea kayaking along the coastline of Anticosti Island. Embodying the process alongside students, by way of humbly enacting teachings from Elder Cardinal, practices of narrative mapping, group conversations, observations and field notes, and interviews gathered understandings of how students perceive and interact with the more-than-human world. The immersion surfaced distinct yet layered pedagogical insights: understanding the problem of relationship denial, coming to recognize relations, experiencing the flow of kinship relationality, and sustaining good relations. This dissertation responds to the question: What is the curricular and pedagogical significance of wayfinding as an experience in outdoor education? By reflecting on the learning with students, and connecting it to wider curricular conversations, principles for wayfinding are offered to inspire renewed relations and to support more balanced ways of experiencing toward the continuation of life.
- ItemOpen AccessWomen Elders and Grandmothers Storytelling: Co-Creating a Collective Wisdom Bundle for Indigenous Women Survivors of Child Sexual Abuse(2023-08-25) St-Denis, Natalie; Walsh, Christine Ann; Leason, Jennifer Lynn; Bennett, Marlyn Loretta; Allan, Billie; Hanson, Aubrey JeanThe prevalence of child sexual abuse in Indigenous communities is not an isolated phenomenon but rather a symptom of historical and intergenerational traumas resulting from centuries of colonial violence and residential schools. Child sexual abuse can lead to long-term mental health impacts including depression, addiction, and suicide and is correlated with higher incidences of physical and sexual violence throughout the lifespan. Indigenous women in Canada are seven times more likely to be murdered and three times more likely to be a victim of severe violence or sexual assault compared to non-Indigenous women. This inquiry invited 10 Algonquian women Elders and Grandmothers to share survivance stories and teachings to support wholistic lifeways for Indigenous women survivors of child sexual abuse. This dissertation offers insights for: anti-colonizing narratives of child sexual abuse; reframing healing/trauma-based narratives to wholistic lifeways; a working definition of Indigenous sexual health; culturally informed Indigenous sexual health education; coming to know stories as medicine as an Indigenous storytelling methodology; a relational living collective wisdom bundle holding stories and teachings from 10 Algonquian women Elders and Grandmothers; as well as offering guidance for anti-colonizing social work practice and education. Outcomes from this dissertation seek to guide and inform Indigenous and non-Indigenous social service agencies – social workers, health care practitioners, policy makers and funders – serving Indigenous women survivors of child sexual abuse in their programs and services to improve the wellbeing of Indigenous women, their families and communities.