The Akron Story Circle Project
Rethinking Race in Classroom and Community
Carolyn Behrman Bill Lyons Patricia Hill James Slowiak
9781629220543
225 pages
University of Akron Press
Overview
Cultures around the world have long employed storytelling to transmit important values and beliefs and to build community. Further, some research has indicated that individuals retain more from stories than other forms of information transmission like lectures. The pedagogical use of storytelling might have even more relevance in our digital society in which communication is shorter and less personal.Using ideas and practices generated by John O’Neal and Theresa Holden through their Color Line Project, several faculty members at the University of Akron began a storytelling project coinciding with Akron’s “Rethinking Race” event. The project brought together an intergenerational and intercultural group of students, community members, and other parties on an equal playing field, allowing participants to operate as co-creators of a community’s consciousness. The interactions brought a level of understanding about race that could not have been achieved in isolation. Moreover, the conversations, the stories, resulted in rich new avenues of academic engagement and extended artistic projects.This book is part user’s manual and part users’ stories. Mostly, it is the tale of a journey. Unlike a traditional classroom, in which an instructor has control, stories can veer anywhere, which can be a risky proposition. However, the results in understanding and learning cannot be denied. As one of the Akron faculty members put it: “we likely fail as teachers if our lesson plans do not generate hot moments, difficult dialogues, of both the foreseeable and the unanticipated variety.” The Akron Story Circle Project has initiated a process of lifetime learning and reassessment. One student was quite direct: “While we may look different on the outside, come from different cities or towns, grow up in different kinds of family, we all are participating in the same world and we all are trying to find what’s right, do what’s right, or simply survive this crazy thing we call life.”Author Bio
Carolyn Behrman is associate professor of anthropology and codirector of the Active Research Methods Lab at the University of Akron. A methods junkie who believes “data are everywhere,” Dr. Behrman works with her undergraduate students in a variety of community-based research and service-learning contexts. Her broad research interests are power and poverty in urban communities. Current research foci include a study of gender and family health in neighborhood with decaying infrastructure and a study of diet, health, and culture change among South Asian refugees.
Bill Lyons is a professor of political science who has directed the Center for Conflict Management at the University of Akron for the past fifteen years. His major publications include The Politics of Community Policing: Rearranging the Power to Punish (1999) and Punishing Schools: Fear and Citizenship in American Public Education (with Julie Drew, 2006). Bill is a life-long Red Sox fan, who loves to hike and body surf, play basketball, ping-pong, volleyball, ultimate and more. He owns a round house on the RI shore with his partner Julie Drew.
Patricia Hill earned her PhD from Bowling Green State University with an emphasis in interpersonal and intercultural communication. She was an associate professor in the School of Communication at the University of Akron from 1999 until her retirement in 2014. During her tenure, her research interests included gender, race, and critical pedagogy. Her research was published in Women and Language, The Gerontologist, Journalism History, and The Electronic Journal of Communication and she has presented her work in numerous local, national, and international settings. Currently she contributes to the community as a communication consultant and guest lecturer.
