Persky, Julia Christine (2018-11). Self-Authoring and Performance: Classroom Burlesque as a Strategy for Cultural and Identity Affirmation. Doctoral Dissertation.
Thesis
Children in early childhood and elementary classrooms are often marginalized due to a variety of identity markers, which create borders within learning spaces and limit access to social and academic success. Students who face marginalization are frequently subjected to systems that colonize both, bodies and minds. Such systems do not recognize the cultural identities of children and frequently misinterpret resistance to normalization and assimilation as discipline problems. Teachers exacerbate the problem because they teach from their own points of view and fail to understand the differences that exist between them and their students. Thus, when children perform their cultural identities, teachers often perceive difference as deviance. This study employed the theoretical frameworks of Postcolonial Theory and Border Theory. Additionally, burlesque, applied as symbolic frame, served as a metaphor for the subversive performances by students as they transgressed borders that negatively constructed and marginalized them. The study explored the strategies implemented by the burlesque community that have transgressed traditional social boundaries - rooted in racism, classism, and sexism - and which have served to establish a carefully cultivated and maintained community of acceptance. Results from the study revealed several strategies that could easily be modified for use in schools. Namely, the burlesque community functions as a collective, they work collaboratively, address issues as they arise, they provide adequate support for community members as needed, they are intentional about meeting community needs, and they are authentic and accessible. Similar use of these steps and strategies in schools could minimize borders and boundaries, and thus transform learning spaces so children are allowed authentic expression of identity, and classroom communities of acceptance are created. Further, results from the deconstructive analysis of several texts showed six themes of disruption employed by the burlesque community, and also implemented by children; visibility, constraint removal, voice, the returned gaze, spectacle, and pleasure in identity. Results showed that students made active use of these mechanisms to interrupt conventional social norms, and made way for performances that resisted domination and oppression through behaviors that parodied public education, made a mockery of classrooms, resisted conformity and preserved identity.
