Barndt, Deborah

Professor and Coordinator of Community Arts Practice Certificate Program
BA (Comprehensive Social Studies and French) Otterbein College, MA (Social Psychology), PhD (Sociology) Michigan State

Email: dbarndt@yorku.ca

 

Quote

"Embrace the contradictions...
...and find within them the possibilities for moving forward."

-Naming, Making and Connecting, p. 51

Areas of Academic Interest

• Popular education and social/environmental justice;
• community and activist art;
• global food systems and local alternatives;
• postcolonialism and cultural studies;
• critical feminist, Indigenous and anti-racist methodologies;
• collaborative research;
• transnational alliances;
• photographic practices;
• Latin America.

Brief history and reason for joining FES

When I entered the world of FES in 1993, I found a place where I could draw on many dimensions of my life journey: experiences as a student of the 60s in the U.S. civil rights, anti-war, and women's movements; studies in comparative sociology in the U.S., France, and Peru; 25 years of social justice activism in popular education programs in Nicaragua, the U.S., and Canada; teaching at universities in the U.S., Quebec, and Ontario; my passion for the arts and my work as a photographer.

I felt at home in the interdisciplinary and praxis-oriented Faculty because I had always rebelled against the borders imposed by discipline, the split between body, mind and spirit reinforced in many academic contexts, and untheorized practice as well as theory devoid of practice. I have often described my own form of engagement in the world as playing with the tensions between the academic, the activist and the artist, all integral parts of who I am.

I feel privileged to be able to work with colleagues whom I genuinely like and respect, with students who bring rich experiences and diverse knowledges into our mutual inquiry, and in a context that honours the whole person as well as the community of learners.

Current environmental thought

FES has offered me frameworks for exploring the relationship between political, economic, social, and cultural dimensions of globalization, which I chose to investigate, as a popular educator, by tracing the trail of a corporate tomato from a Mexican field to a fast food restaurant, with a focus on the women workers who plant, pick, pack, scan and slice the food we eat. This interdisciplinary inquiry into the global food system examined the dynamic relationship between production and consumption, biodiversity and cultural diversity, work and technology, and health and environment. An interlocking analysis of power that takes into account the differences among women workers (based on race, class, age, nation, etc) was critical for this study, challenging Environmental Studies to integrate social justice concerns within the struggle for environmental sustainability.

I am increasingly drawn to the underlying epistemological debates within Environmental Studies and issues of knowledge, power and identity within a diverse, diasporic population. My own research on, practice in, and teaching of popular education allows me to continue this search and to imagine - building on students' histories and interests - what new ways knowledge and culture can be created. I have consistently used photographs as research tools to stimulate collective analysis, to make visible marginalized groups and processes, and to communicate to a broader public.

Background

I completed a BA in comprehensive social studies at Otterbein College in Ohio which included a year abroad at the Université de Strasbourg in France. My work on an MA in social psychology (on the time consciousness of Guatemalan peasants) and later a PhD in comparative sociology at Michigan State University led me, ironically, out of the academy. After completing participatory research for my doctorate on the ground-breaking theory and practice of the Brazilian educator, Paulo Freire, in Peru in the mid-70s, I chose to work in the field of popular education rather than just study it. Nonetheless, over the next 20 years as a community-based educator, I kept one toe in the academic world, teaching psychology at a U.S. community college, community development at Concordia, adult education at OISE, and photography and society at the University of Toronto.

Integral to my teaching at York has been my involvement in developing the Wild Garden Media Centre at FES and the annual Eco Art and Media Festival, which nurture the creativity of students who increasingly integrate the arts and media into their course work, research, and activism. We will be celebrating the tenth anniversary of the festival this year as an event that builds community, stimulates public consciousness about environmental issues, and feeds our spirits at the end of a long winter

At York, I have also been involved as a board member of the Centre for the Support of Teaching, the Centre for Research on Latin America and the Caribbean, and a member of the Equity Committee of the York University Faculty Association and the Senate Committee on Teaching and Learning.

Personal interests/pursuits

Photography has been my passion for thirty years, and the camera an extension of my arm and eye. I am also involved in a community choir, Common Thread, where I join 69 other voices in singing social justice music in many of the languages represented in Toronto. I try to keep sane by swimming and working an organic garden in my back yard.

Major research projects

My current research interests complement two projects I have been engaged in over the past few years. One is the development of a Community Arts Practice Certificate, a joint cross-disciplinary undergraduate program to be co-administered by FES and the Faculty of Fine Arts. The second is a Curriculum Diversity/Equity Project which has involved faculty, staff, and students in examining our own curriculum content and teaching practices in terms of select equity areas (disabilities, sexual diversity, Aboriginal ways of knowing, class and poverty, race and ethnicity, and gender), acknowledging the intersectionality of these dimensions of power.

I have begun a new cross-border research project that explores the dynamic and contested development of community arts in Toronto, and opens up an exchange with people engaged in popular communications and popular education in Central America. I see the arts, and in particular, community arts and activist art, as perfect sites for examining the creative tensions of process/product, aesthetics/ethics, cultural reclamation/cultural reinvention, and the spiritual/political. This project will also open up international field experience opportunities for York students.

Select prizes and awards

• FES Small Research Grant for “Community-Engaged Mural Production on Aboriginal, Ecological and Cultural Histories at Parkdale-Roncevalles in Toronto”, 2009
• KM Incentive Grant for Community Arts Practice (CAP) Project, 2008
• VPA Community Development Fund for Community Arts Practice (CAP) Certificate, 2007
• FES Small Research Grant for “Updating Tangled Routes”, 2006
• SSHRC Standard Research Grant for “Creative Tensions of Community Arts in Popular Education: A Transnational Study of the Americas,” 2004
• Internationalization of York grant for "Latin American Exchange: Popular Communications and Community Arts," 2002
• SSHRC Small Research Grant for Exchanges and Fusions of Cultural Practices, 2002
• Winner of the IPPY Independent Book Publisher Award in the category of Women's Issues as editor of Women Working the NAFTA Food Chain: Women, Food, and Globalization (Toronto: Second Story Press, 1999), 2000

Select publications

Books and monographs

2008 Tangled Routes: Women, Work, and Globalization the Tomato Trail, Second Edition. Lanham, Maryland: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 335 pp.

2007 Rutas Enmarañadas: Mujer, Trabajo, y Globalization en el Camino del Tomate, Editorial de Universidad Autonoma Metropolitana (UAM-Xochimilco), 341 pp.

2006 Editor. Wild Fire: Art as Activism. Toronto, Ontario: Sumach Press, May 2006.

2006 Rutas Enmarañadas: Mujer, Trabajo, y Globalization en el Camino del Tomate, Editorial de Universidad Autonoma Metropolitana (UAM-Xochimilco)

2002 Tangled Routes: Women, Work, and Globalization the Tomato Trail. Lanham, Maryland: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers and Aurora, Ontario: Garamond Press, 267 pp.

2001 (with Gene Desfor and Barbara Rahder). Just Doing It: Popular Collective Action in the Americas. Montreal: Black Rose, 193 pp.

Chapters in books

2008 “Community Arts as Collaborative Research” in G. Knowles and A. Cole, Handbook of the Arts in Qualitative Research; Perspectives, Methodologies, Examples, and Issues

2006 (with Christine McKenzie. “Whose Nicaragua? Popular Communications Across Eras, Regions, and Generations.” In Deborah Barndt. Wild Fire: Art as Activism. Toronto: Sumach Press.

2004 “Fruits of Injustice: women in the Post-NAFTA Food System.” In Valerie Zawilksi and Cynthia Levine-Rasky. Inequality in Canada: Intersections of Gender, Race, and Class. London: Oxford University Press.

2005 “Stories from field to table: Women in the global food system.” In P. Downe and C.L. Biggs, Gendered Intersections: A Collection of Readings for Women and Gender Studies. Halifax: Fernwood Press.

2004 “Fruits of Injustice: Women workers in the Post-NAFTA food system.” In Gerardo Otero, Neoliberal Globalism in Mexico: Impacts, Challengers, and Alternatives.

2004 “From the lungs of America - the people speak! Popular Communications on Nicaragua’s Atlantic Coast. In D. Clover (ed), Adult Learning. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

2004 “By whom and for whom? Intersections of participatory research and community arts.” In A. Cole, L. Neilsen, J.G. Knowles, T. Luciani (editors), Provoked by Art: Theorizing Arts-Informed Inquiry. Backalong Books and Centre for Arts-Informed Research, OISE.

2003 “Whose ‘Choice’? ‘Flexible’ women workers in the tomato food chain.” In J. Alexander et al (eds). Sing, Whisper, Shout, and Pray: Feminist Visions for a Just World. Edgework Books.

2000 “Naming, making and connecting: Reclaiming lost arts: The pedagogical possibilities of photo-story production.” In P. Campbell and B. Burnaby (eds.), Participatory Practices in Adult Education. Mahwah, New Jersey: Lawrence Earlbaum Associates, Inc., pp. 31-54.

Articles in refereed journals

2002 “Fruits of injustice: Women in the Post-NAFTA food system,” Canadian Woman Studies Journal, Vols. 21/22, Nos. 4/1, Spring/Summer.

2001 “Learning to listen to the wind and to dance with difference: The promise of transformatory/transformative learning,” Curriculum Inquiry, Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, Toronto, pp. 97-105.

2001 “On the move for food: Three women behind the tomato’s journey,” Earthwork: Women and Environments, D. Hope and V. Shiva (eds), Women’s Studies Quarterly, (New York: The Feminist Press at the City University of New York in cooperation with the Rochester Institute of Technology), pp. 131-143.

Vision for the future

We create the world we envision everyday in our relations and actions. I'd like to see FES (and Environmental Studies in general) be a place that nurtures the development of active citizens rather than complacent consumers, promoting engaged scholarship that contributes to social justice and environmental sustainability. A place that seeks congruence between our critical analysis and the way we work together. A place that honours the diversity among us and stimulates the creativity within us. My vision is not utopian in the classic sense; I believe, as the Chilean poet Pablo Neruda, suggested, that "out of struggle comes hope."

Current courses

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