ABSTRACT
NATASHA A L E X A N DE R , A M I R B I L A L B I L LU P S , YASM I N E B L A N DI NG , E M I LY G E NAO, E L I NOR M A R B OE ,
TA HA N I S A L A H , A N D K E N DR A U R DA NG
Maxine Greene writes on the possibilities of teaching, the provocation of aesthetics and the capacity to “join with others and transform.” We have had the privilege of learning with and from Maxine, and we take her teachings seriously in our participatory action research (PAR) with youth, a form of activist pedagogy. We write this chapter as a very diverse collective of (once) high school students, college faculty, artists, poets, writers, graduate students, and college students. We form a collective interested in activist research designed to challenge the injustices of public education and the prison industrial complex. In our work, we add a dimension that is typically not discussed in PAR; that is, we seek to open up a conversation about PAR inside a contact zone.
