Timothy J Lensmire
Biographic Data
| ID | 734458 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Timothy J Lensmire |
| GIVEN NAMES | Timothy J |
| FAMILY NAME | Lensmire |
| SIGNATURE | LENSMIRE T J |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Minnesota |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-0762-7012 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 21 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 66 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 20 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 1 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1993 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2022 |
| H-INDEX | 4 |
Doesn't Your Work Just Re-Center Whiteness: The Fallen Impossibilities of White Allyship
Our purpose is to engage performative dialogue incorporative of currere on a central question in critical White studies (CWS). After precautionary notes and positionalities, we frame our dialogue within second-wave CWS. As its main section, six CWS scholars respond to the central question: Doesn’t research on White identities re-center whiteness? Analyzing the scholars’ responses, the performative dialogue is followed by an analytical discussion …
How white supremacy is reproduced in the relations of white people to other white people, with some notes on what this means for antiracist education
In this essay, I draw on two black theorists of whiteness—W.E.B. Du Bois and the Reverend Thandeka—to examine how white supremacy and white racial identities emerge from and are fortified in the relations of white people to other white people. I use stories told by two white people from a rural, white farming community in Wisconsin—William and Delores—to flesh out and complicate Du Bois’s and Thandeka’s ideas. Unfortunately, antiracist efforts in…
Mammies, brute Negroes, and white femininity in teacher education
In this article, we examine two stories about white femininity. The first, written by Danielle, was an assignment in a pre-service teacher education course. The second story is of the fictional Lily—the main character of an internationally best-selling novel. In our analyses, we pay special attention to how enduring racist images and caricatures of black people function in the complex social construction of white femininity. We conclude that teac…
Parallel polemics
My commentary on this special issue reflects on experiences I have had in which critical knowledges, and the people who produce them, were marginalized. I congratulate the editors and authors of this special issue for creating a space for such knowledges and for refusing to be marginalized
White Folks: Race and Identity in Rural America
"What does it mean to be white and American? White Folks moves beyond the dominant critical methodologies of examining 'whiteness,' to conceptualize white people in a way that is unafraid to confront, head on, the violence at the core of white racial selves, but that also that illuminates conflicts and complexities there. The book focuses on the the authors' own experience of growing up in a small, rural community in northern Wisconsin, and the s…
White Folks: Race and Identity in Rural America
White Folks explores the experiences and stories of eight white people from a small farming community in northern Wisconsin. It examines how white people learn to be ‘white’ and reveals how white racial identity is dependent on people of color—even in situations where white people have little or no contact with racial others. Drawing on in-depth interviews with Delores, Frank, William, Erin, Robert, Libby, and Stan, as well as on his own experien…
Second-Wave White Teacher Identity Studies: A Review of White Teacher Identity Literatures From 2004 Through 2014
In this study of White teacher identity literatures, we historicize, define, and advance second-wave White teacher identity studies in education research and teacher education. First, we provide a discussion of methodology used to conduct this study called the synoptic text. Second, we provide an historical account of White teacher identity studies that situates our review of literatures. Third, using the methodology of the synoptic text, we prov…
Second-wave white teacher identity studies: Toward complexity and reflexivity in the racial conscientization of white teachers
In this article, we introduce our special issue, ‘Second-Wave White Teacher Identity Studies: Toward Complexity and Reflexivity in the Racial Conscientization of White Teachers.’ We characterize white teacher identity studies as a developing field with important implications for education research and teacher education. Early work in this field focused on documenting, how white teachers denied and evaded the significance of race and white privile…
McIntosh as Synecdoche: How Teacher Education's Focus on White Privilege Undermines Antiracism
In this article, members of the Midwest Critical Whiteness Collective argue that Peggy McIntosh's seminal “knapsack” article acts as a synecdoche, or as a stand-in, for all the antiracist work to be done in teacher education and that this limits our understanding and possibilities for action. The authors develop this argument by questioning the lack of critique of McIntosh's 1988 classic “invisible knapsack” article and sharing two narratives by …
Ambivalent white racial identities: Fear and an elusive innocence
This article examines the complex social production of white racial identity. Specifically, the author theorizes white people's fear of people of color and make a case for conceiving of white racial identities as profoundly ambivalent. Drawing from a larger ethnographic interview study conducted in a small, rural, white community in the Midwest of the United States, and grounded in critical whiteness studies, this article explores how Delores, an…
What Teacher Education Can Learn From Blackface Minstrelsy
Research on the racial identities of White future teachers has assumed and circulated an overly simplified, and ultimately unhelpful, conception of White racial identity. An alternative is needed, which the authors develop with reference to scholarship that explores White people’s participation in blackface minstrelsy. They argue that at the core of White racial selves is a profound ambivalence that must be accounted for if future research is to …
How I Became White While Punching de Tar Baby
Drawing on critical whiteness studies, I examine a performance I did over 25 years ago in high school, in which I told a story at an awards program. I interpret my performance as later-day blackface minstrelsy—one without blackface, but with a black folktale and with ways of speaking and moving that my audience recognized as “black.” I build up my interpretation in three layers: the first treats my performance as grounded in a rural sensibility a…
Annotated Bibliography of Research in the Teaching of English
The committee reviews important research works in the teaching of English that have been published in the last year. Committee members include Richard Beach, Peggy DeLapp, Lee Galda, Lori Helman, Timothy Lensmire, and David O’Brien, Gert Rijlaarsdam, and Tanja Janssen
Annotated Bibliography of Research in the Teaching of English
The committee reviews important research works in the teaching of English that have been published in the last year. Committee members include Richard Beach, Peggy DeLapp, Deborah Dillon, Lee Galda, Timothy Lensmire, Lauren Liang, David O’Brien, and Constance Walker
Defense of the romantic poet? Writing workshops and voice
W E HAVE LEARNED OUR LESSONS from French theorists such as Barthes, Derrida, and Foucault, about how traditional, and often Romantic, ideas of the author and writing mystify the workings of language and texts and power. And we have been laboring to revise received ideas of writers and writing in ways that would help us think about school writing and student writers more powerfully. Bakhtin and Dewey, among others, have been and continue to be esp…
The Teacher as Dostoevskian Novelist
Investigates how teaching and the teacher’s role in elementary and secondary school writing classes have been conceptualized by leading workshop advocates. Uses M. Bakhtin’s writing on F. Dostoevsky to develop a metaphor of the writing teacher as novelist. Argues that workshop visions of teaching and the teacher’s role mystify meaning-making and ignore the workings of power
Response to Angel Lin’s Review of When Children Write
I remember reading a book on the art of the novel, and remember being enraged by some of the author's comments on Steinbeck's Grapes of Wrath. He said that the book should have been the Great American Novel, but was not, because it was fatally flawed. It was fatally flawed because it was unbalanced. It was unbalanced because Steinbeck had not portrayed the rich with the same sort of detail and complexity that he had the poor. Across time, I have …
Learning Gender
The Underside of Empowerment
Appropriating others' words: Traces of literature and peer culture in a third-grader's writing
Mikhail Bakhtin's notion ofappropriationis a potentially powerful way to conceptualize discourse development in children. Typically, studies of discourse development have emphasized structural aspects of text. However, children appropriate not only forms, but also words, themes, purposes, and styles. From a developmental point of view, the concept of appropriation raises at least three questions: What is it that children appropriate? Where do the…
Following the Child, Socioanalysis, and Threats to Community: Teacher Response to Children's Texts
I brought two conceptions of teacher response to my teaching and research in a third-grade writing workshop. The first, drawn from workshop literature, emphasized following and supporting children's choices of topic and purpose for writing. Such a conception, however, ignored the problem of children pursuing questionable intentions and material in their texts, such as when children's texts affirm—even if unintentionally—gender, race, and social c…
Ambivalent white racial identities: Fear and an elusive innocence
This article examines the complex social production of white racial identity. Specifically, the author theorizes white people's fear of people of color and make a case for conceiving of white racial identities as profoundly ambivalent. Drawing from a larger ethnographic interview study conducted in a small, rural, white community in the Midwest of the United States, and grounded in critical whiteness studies, this article explores how Delores, an…
What Teacher Education Can Learn From Blackface Minstrelsy
Research on the racial identities of White future teachers has assumed and circulated an overly simplified, and ultimately unhelpful, conception of White racial identity. An alternative is needed, which the authors develop with reference to scholarship that explores White people’s participation in blackface minstrelsy. They argue that at the core of White racial selves is a profound ambivalence that must be accounted for if future research is to …
Second-wave white teacher identity studies: Toward complexity and reflexivity in the racial conscientization of white teachers
In this article, we introduce our special issue, ‘Second-Wave White Teacher Identity Studies: Toward Complexity and Reflexivity in the Racial Conscientization of White Teachers.’ We characterize white teacher identity studies as a developing field with important implications for education research and teacher education. Early work in this field focused on documenting, how white teachers denied and evaded the significance of race and white privile…
How I Became White While Punching de Tar Baby
Drawing on critical whiteness studies, I examine a performance I did over 25 years ago in high school, in which I told a story at an awards program. I interpret my performance as later-day blackface minstrelsy—one without blackface, but with a black folktale and with ways of speaking and moving that my audience recognized as “black.” I build up my interpretation in three layers: the first treats my performance as grounded in a rural sensibility a…
Mammies, brute Negroes, and white femininity in teacher education
In this article, we examine two stories about white femininity. The first, written by Danielle, was an assignment in a pre-service teacher education course. The second story is of the fictional Lily—the main character of an internationally best-selling novel. In our analyses, we pay special attention to how enduring racist images and caricatures of black people function in the complex social construction of white femininity. We conclude that teac…
Appropriating others' words: Traces of literature and peer culture in a third-grader's writing
Mikhail Bakhtin's notion ofappropriationis a potentially powerful way to conceptualize discourse development in children. Typically, studies of discourse development have emphasized structural aspects of text. However, children appropriate not only forms, but also words, themes, purposes, and styles. From a developmental point of view, the concept of appropriation raises at least three questions: What is it that children appropriate? Where do the…
Defense of the romantic poet? Writing workshops and voice
W E HAVE LEARNED OUR LESSONS from French theorists such as Barthes, Derrida, and Foucault, about how traditional, and often Romantic, ideas of the author and writing mystify the workings of language and texts and power. And we have been laboring to revise received ideas of writers and writing in ways that would help us think about school writing and student writers more powerfully. Bakhtin and Dewey, among others, have been and continue to be esp…
Following the Child, Socioanalysis, and Threats to Community: Teacher Response to Children's Texts
I brought two conceptions of teacher response to my teaching and research in a third-grade writing workshop. The first, drawn from workshop literature, emphasized following and supporting children's choices of topic and purpose for writing. Such a conception, however, ignored the problem of children pursuing questionable intentions and material in their texts, such as when children's texts affirm—even if unintentionally—gender, race, and social c…
How white supremacy is reproduced in the relations of white people to other white people, with some notes on what this means for antiracist education
In this essay, I draw on two black theorists of whiteness—W.E.B. Du Bois and the Reverend Thandeka—to examine how white supremacy and white racial identities emerge from and are fortified in the relations of white people to other white people. I use stories told by two white people from a rural, white farming community in Wisconsin—William and Delores—to flesh out and complicate Du Bois’s and Thandeka’s ideas. Unfortunately, antiracist efforts in…
Following the Child, Socioanalysis, and Threats to Community: Teacher Response to Children's Texts
I brought two conceptions of teacher response to my teaching and research in a third-grade writing workshop. The first, drawn from workshop literature, emphasized following and supporting children's choices of topic and purpose for writing. Such a conception, however, ignored the problem of children pursuing questionable intentions and material in their texts, such as when children's texts affirm—even if unintentionally—gender, race, and social c…
Appropriating others' words: Traces of literature and peer culture in a third-grader's writing
Mikhail Bakhtin's notion ofappropriationis a potentially powerful way to conceptualize discourse development in children. Typically, studies of discourse development have emphasized structural aspects of text. However, children appropriate not only forms, but also words, themes, purposes, and styles. From a developmental point of view, the concept of appropriation raises at least three questions: What is it that children appropriate? Where do the…
Learning Gender
The Underside of Empowerment
The Teacher as Dostoevskian Novelist
Investigates how teaching and the teacher’s role in elementary and secondary school writing classes have been conceptualized by leading workshop advocates. Uses M. Bakhtin’s writing on F. Dostoevsky to develop a metaphor of the writing teacher as novelist. Argues that workshop visions of teaching and the teacher’s role mystify meaning-making and ignore the workings of power
Response to Angel Lin’s Review of When Children Write
I remember reading a book on the art of the novel, and remember being enraged by some of the author's comments on Steinbeck's Grapes of Wrath. He said that the book should have been the Great American Novel, but was not, because it was fatally flawed. It was fatally flawed because it was unbalanced. It was unbalanced because Steinbeck had not portrayed the rich with the same sort of detail and complexity that he had the poor. Across time, I have …
Defense of the romantic poet? Writing workshops and voice
W E HAVE LEARNED OUR LESSONS from French theorists such as Barthes, Derrida, and Foucault, about how traditional, and often Romantic, ideas of the author and writing mystify the workings of language and texts and power. And we have been laboring to revise received ideas of writers and writing in ways that would help us think about school writing and student writers more powerfully. Bakhtin and Dewey, among others, have been and continue to be esp…
Annotated Bibliography of Research in the Teaching of English
The committee reviews important research works in the teaching of English that have been published in the last year. Committee members include Richard Beach, Peggy DeLapp, Deborah Dillon, Lee Galda, Timothy Lensmire, Lauren Liang, David O’Brien, and Constance Walker
Annotated Bibliography of Research in the Teaching of English
The committee reviews important research works in the teaching of English that have been published in the last year. Committee members include Richard Beach, Peggy DeLapp, Lee Galda, Lori Helman, Timothy Lensmire, and David O’Brien, Gert Rijlaarsdam, and Tanja Janssen
How I Became White While Punching de Tar Baby
Drawing on critical whiteness studies, I examine a performance I did over 25 years ago in high school, in which I told a story at an awards program. I interpret my performance as later-day blackface minstrelsy—one without blackface, but with a black folktale and with ways of speaking and moving that my audience recognized as “black.” I build up my interpretation in three layers: the first treats my performance as grounded in a rural sensibility a…
Ambivalent white racial identities: Fear and an elusive innocence
This article examines the complex social production of white racial identity. Specifically, the author theorizes white people's fear of people of color and make a case for conceiving of white racial identities as profoundly ambivalent. Drawing from a larger ethnographic interview study conducted in a small, rural, white community in the Midwest of the United States, and grounded in critical whiteness studies, this article explores how Delores, an…
What Teacher Education Can Learn From Blackface Minstrelsy
Research on the racial identities of White future teachers has assumed and circulated an overly simplified, and ultimately unhelpful, conception of White racial identity. An alternative is needed, which the authors develop with reference to scholarship that explores White people’s participation in blackface minstrelsy. They argue that at the core of White racial selves is a profound ambivalence that must be accounted for if future research is to …
McIntosh as Synecdoche: How Teacher Education's Focus on White Privilege Undermines Antiracism
In this article, members of the Midwest Critical Whiteness Collective argue that Peggy McIntosh's seminal “knapsack” article acts as a synecdoche, or as a stand-in, for all the antiracist work to be done in teacher education and that this limits our understanding and possibilities for action. The authors develop this argument by questioning the lack of critique of McIntosh's 1988 classic “invisible knapsack” article and sharing two narratives by …
Second-Wave White Teacher Identity Studies: A Review of White Teacher Identity Literatures From 2004 Through 2014
In this study of White teacher identity literatures, we historicize, define, and advance second-wave White teacher identity studies in education research and teacher education. First, we provide a discussion of methodology used to conduct this study called the synoptic text. Second, we provide an historical account of White teacher identity studies that situates our review of literatures. Third, using the methodology of the synoptic text, we prov…
Second-wave white teacher identity studies: Toward complexity and reflexivity in the racial conscientization of white teachers
In this article, we introduce our special issue, ‘Second-Wave White Teacher Identity Studies: Toward Complexity and Reflexivity in the Racial Conscientization of White Teachers.’ We characterize white teacher identity studies as a developing field with important implications for education research and teacher education. Early work in this field focused on documenting, how white teachers denied and evaded the significance of race and white privile…
White Folks: Race and Identity in Rural America
"What does it mean to be white and American? White Folks moves beyond the dominant critical methodologies of examining 'whiteness,' to conceptualize white people in a way that is unafraid to confront, head on, the violence at the core of white racial selves, but that also that illuminates conflicts and complexities there. The book focuses on the the authors' own experience of growing up in a small, rural community in northern Wisconsin, and the s…
White Folks: Race and Identity in Rural America
White Folks explores the experiences and stories of eight white people from a small farming community in northern Wisconsin. It examines how white people learn to be ‘white’ and reveals how white racial identity is dependent on people of color—even in situations where white people have little or no contact with racial others. Drawing on in-depth interviews with Delores, Frank, William, Erin, Robert, Libby, and Stan, as well as on his own experien…
Parallel polemics
My commentary on this special issue reflects on experiences I have had in which critical knowledges, and the people who produce them, were marginalized. I congratulate the editors and authors of this special issue for creating a space for such knowledges and for refusing to be marginalized
Mammies, brute Negroes, and white femininity in teacher education
In this article, we examine two stories about white femininity. The first, written by Danielle, was an assignment in a pre-service teacher education course. The second story is of the fictional Lily—the main character of an internationally best-selling novel. In our analyses, we pay special attention to how enduring racist images and caricatures of black people function in the complex social construction of white femininity. We conclude that teac…
Doesn't Your Work Just Re-Center Whiteness: The Fallen Impossibilities of White Allyship
Our purpose is to engage performative dialogue incorporative of currere on a central question in critical White studies (CWS). After precautionary notes and positionalities, we frame our dialogue within second-wave CWS. As its main section, six CWS scholars respond to the central question: Doesn’t research on White identities re-center whiteness? Analyzing the scholars’ responses, the performative dialogue is followed by an analytical discussion …
How white supremacy is reproduced in the relations of white people to other white people, with some notes on what this means for antiracist education
In this essay, I draw on two black theorists of whiteness—W.E.B. Du Bois and the Reverend Thandeka—to examine how white supremacy and white racial identities emerge from and are fortified in the relations of white people to other white people. I use stories told by two white people from a rural, white farming community in Wisconsin—William and Delores—to flesh out and complicate Du Bois’s and Thandeka’s ideas. Unfortunately, antiracist efforts in…
Sociology (19 works) · Psychology (14 works) · Pedagogy (11 works) · Critical Race Theory in Education (9 works) · Gender Studies (9 works) · Linguistics (8 works) · Philosophy (8 works) · Art (7 works) · Gender Studies (7 works) · Teacher Education and Leadership Studies (7 works)