Volume 49, Number 2, July 2024

EN:

Social circus refers to programs that use circus arts to facilitate social intervention with people experiencing marginalization. Although some programs focus specifically on youth, little is known about how they are impacted by their participation. We examined the experiences of youth participating in a four-day social circus event. Four themes were identified that characterized participants’ experiences: (a) creating a safe social space; (b) enriching your self-understanding; (c) bolstering your expressive capacities; and (d) experiencing the world around you. This research highlights how social circus activities can create safe and enriching social spaces that are adapted to the experiences of youth.

FR:

Le cirque social réfère aux programmes qui utilisent le cirque dans un contexte d’intervention sociale. Bien qu’ils leur soient destinés, peu de données existent sur l’impact qu’ils ont sur les jeunes. Nous nous penchons sur un événement de cirque social de quatre jours. Quatre thématiques caractérisent l’expérience des participant·es : (a) la création d’un espace social sécuritaire; (b) l’enrichissement de la compréhension de soi; (c) le renforcement des capacités expressives; et (d) l’expérimentation du monde qui nous entoure. Cette recherche démontre comment le cirque social peut créer des milieux sociaux sécuritaires et enrichissants, adaptés aux expériences des jeunes.

EN:

In this article, the authors draw on feminist theorizations to examine ethnographic data, illustrating how femmephobia is enacted among boys in kindergarten. They also examine how teachers’ well-intended responses may inadvertently legitimize femmephobia when a femininity-affirmative orientation is not applied. The authors argue that intentional gender-affirming actions by education stakeholders are necessary for promoting and supporting fluid gender explorations in kindergarten, especially in terms of valuing and validating femininity among boys. Specifically, they consider the potentials of femininity-affirmative pedagogy as one approach to countering femmephobia and working towards gender inclusion and equality in early education.

EN:

This essay traces the enduring legacy of the figure of the child leading up to and at the centre of the 1982 Plyler v. Doe decision. I attempt to demonstrate the limits of the discursive deployment of the child figure for racialized subjects. This essay intervenes in education, childhood studies, and immigration literature by reading the child to understand the enduring legacy of Plyler for those who are not the central focus of the court case. I demonstrate how the necessity of matriculating into U.S. schools is implicated in politics of disposability for racialized gendered populations represented in reading the contradictions in immigration reform.

EN:

We are three Black women working in childhood and youth education research and practice in Tkaronto, Canada. In this paper we bring together our personal, research, and pedagogical inquiries into Black ecologies. We focus on foregrounding how Black ecologies can bring possibilities to (re)story Black nature relations and respond to socio-ecological injustice. Our intention is to encourage early childhood educators to think, in situated ways, with both the potential and challenges of this work. We do this by intentionally foregrounding propositions, grounded in stories and questions for inquiry, that educators can think with in their own contexts.

EN:

Photography in Children’s Literature, edited by Elina Druker and Bettina Kümmerling-Meibauer (John Benjamins, 2023) offers a transnational investigation of children’s photography spanning from the early 1870s to the late 1980s. It sets itself apart from many counterparts because of its wide range of analyzed topics, genres, and artistic techniques. This edited volume is recommended for all researchers and scholars interested in the transnationality of childhood politics and how photographs and children’s picturebooks play a vital role in promoting powerful transnational children’s images.

EN:

Children’s Cultures After Childhood (2023) is a collaborative, interdisciplinary effort by children’s literature, culture, and cognition scholars eager to go beyond the text. Inspired by Peter Kraftl’s After Childhood and informed by posthumanist and new materialist theories, this collection of essays begins the difficult work of shifting the discipline toward new ways of seeing and doing.