A A A The product of 13 curriculum projects that involved several hundred educators nationwide, this volume provides faculty and administrators with a guide to multicultural curricular change-especially with respect to women. While womenA represent over halfA of the college students on campus, they are still represented only minimally in the allegedly "mainstream" curriculum. Women of color are far less visible in the curriculum than white women. A A A Both the process and the results of a Ford Foundation funded project are presented here in a format that allows browsing and promotes reading straight through. The volume is divided into three major sections, the first of which highlights the actual process of faculty transformation and administrative support essential to curricular changes as it occurred on two of the participating campuses, U.C.L.A. and George Washington University. Extensive multidisciplinary faculty development syllabi are provided. A A A Section Two conatins 37 transformed undergraduate course syllabi for courses in sociology, American history and literature, and more, with brief essays describing professors' encounters with teaching the new texts. Section Three is an invaluable interdisciplinary guide to teaching about Puerto Rican women, prepared by a team of scholars at SUNY, Albany. It provided information about Puerto Rican women inside and outside Puerto Rico, as well as teaching strategies for integrating such information into the traditional curriculum. A A A This volume shows that essential educational change-to meet the diversity of U.S. students-may be somewhat slower than one would wish, and more difficult, but it is complex, challenging, and intellectually exciting.

The legendary Greek figure Orpheus was said to have possessed magical powers capable of moving all living and inanimate things through the sound of his lyre and voice. Over time, the Orphic theme has come to indicate the power of music to unsettle, subvert, and ultimately bring down oppressive realities in order to liberate the soul and expand human life without limits. The liberating effect of music has been a particularly important theme in twentieth-century African American literature. The nine original essays in Black Orpheus examines the Orphic theme in the fiction of such African American writers as Jean Toomer, Langston Hughes, Claude McKay, James Baldwin, Nathaniel Mackey, Sherley Anne Williams, Ann Petry, Ntozake Shange, Alice Walker, Gayl Jones, and Toni Morrison. The authors discussed in this volume depict music as a mystical, shamanistic, and spiritual power that can miraculously transform the realities of the soul and of the world. Here, the musician uses his or her music as a weapon to shield and protect his or her spirituality. Written by scholars of English, music, women's studies, American studies, cultural theory, and black and Africana studies, the essays in this interdisciplinary collection ultimately explore the thematic, linguistic structural presence of music in twentieth-century African American fiction.

Connecting multicultural education with political issues of power and struggle, this book explores what multicultural education means to white people, given the unequal racial power relations in the U.S. and worldwide. It examines connections between race, gender, and social class, particularly as these connections play out for white women. While taking a feminist perspective, the author is also wary of the power white middle class women exercise in defining what counts as gender issues. Throughout the book, Sleeter argues that multicultural education was born in political struggle and can never meaningfully be disconnected from politics. Ultimately the quest for schooling for social justice is a political quest rather than a technical issue.

Mahiri argues that multicultural education needs to move beyond racial categories defined by the social, political, and economic forces of white supremacy. Exploring contemporary and historical scholarship on race, the emergence of multiculturalism, and the rise of the digital age, Deconstructing Race investigates micro-cultural practices and provides a framework for understanding the diversity of individuals and groups.

Race, Gender, and Curriculum Theorizing: Working in Womanish Ways recognizes and represents the significance of Black feminist and womanist theorizing within curriculum theorizing. In this collection, a vibrant group of women of color who do curriculum work reflect on a Black feminist/womanist scholar, text, and/or concept, speaking to how it has both influenced and enriched their work as scholar-activists. Black feminist and womanist theorizing plays a dynamic role in the development of women of color in academia, and gets folded into our thinking and doing as scholar-activists who teach, write, profess, express, organize, engage community, educate, do curriculum theory, heal, and love in the struggle for a more just world.