Bretton A Vargas
Biographic Data
| ID | 934686 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Bretton A Vargas |
| GIVEN NAMES | Bretton A |
| FAMILY NAME | Vargas |
| SIGNATURE | VARGAS B A |
| AFFILIATIONS | California State University, Chico |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-6367-4123 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 22 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 10 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 22 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2018 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 2 |
Holding water: An index of affectual possibilities and “shuttling intensities” across the social studies
This article theorizes how affect—conceptualized as an embodied intensity of feeling distinct from emotion—can open up alternative pathways of inquiry in social studies classrooms. After discussing prior connections between social studies education research and affect, emotion, and feeling, we focus our analysis on media texts covering two historically significant events: the boat evacuation of Manhattan on September 11, 2001 and the U.S. Capitol…
Inquiring Artlessly: Encounter(ing)s With Monstrous Materialities From/Through the Threshold
This article takes up the suggestion of artless inquiry as an extension for artful ways of doing, thinking, and be(com)ing. Specifically, each author/artist used discarded items—materialities we position as monstrous—to visually articulate how/what artless inquiry produces in the context of (post)qualitative research. Drawing inspiration from artists Mierle Laderman Ukeles, Theaster Gates, Yam Chew Oh, and Shani Nottingham, each work of art(less/…
Friendships Without Friendships: Traversing the Contours of Relationality Through Reading/Writing
This article engages with the intersections of reading, writing, and friendship (between the two authors). Specifically, we (re)trace conversations, presentations, notes, and text messages that have emerged since we (e.g., authors) have become thinking-friends and how we think about reading and its irrevocable relationship to writing. Using a range of books and a suite of theories associated with post-qualitative research, this article tempts rea…
Flows of anti-colonialism: (Re)configurations and emplotments of more-than-witness(es/ing) in the an(thropo/glo)cene
This paper leans into alterlife (Murphy, 2017) and connectivity ontologies (Harrison, 2015) to consider the implications of more-than-witness(es/ing) (our term) on social studies education. Taking a narrative approach, we engage with three more-than-human bodies (e.g., Boulder, Forest, Document(s)) in an effort to expand how act(or/ion)s of coloniality are registered, conceptualized, and disrupted. By opening our learning to the agency of more-th…
The dirtiness of clean: Unearthing settler logics that sustain spatial woundings in the Capitalocene
In this article, we first (re)trace the presence and absence of mining, metals and extractionary practices, what we call MMEs, from environmental and sustainability curricular frameworks United Nations’ Act Now Framework. Then, we critique the swelling markets, mentalities, and mastermindings used to develop and produce “clean” and “renewable” energy sources/solutions. As one of many examples, there is increasing skepticism among Indigenous commu…
Bear(ing) Down: Encountering Posthuman Critical Media Studies through the (Re)tracing of Object and Embodiment
This paper explores the how of posthuman theory by a collaborative and conversational visual reading of FX’s The Bear. In both the shared and individual encounters with the show, we consider how objects produce relational affects across characters, objects, time, and space. We insist that unique shows like The Bear, expand beyond a “use” orientation of objects, instead producing objects as central to the narrative. Some objects become, in one way…
(Con)spirituality as a curriculum of immortality
If we are listening to marketing hype, it seems that—with enough money—we can live longer, healthier lives. These products, however, are often no more than consumerist swindling steeped in pseudo-science and pseudo-spirituality. When viewed through the lens of terror management theory (TMT), mitigating the harms of (con)spiritual grifts is more than a problem of a lack of scientific literacy, anti-consumer education, and media literacy. Those who…
Material and Affective (Re)shapings within Unspeakable/Uninterrupted Territories of Violence
How might we refuse historically censored, sustained, and whitewashed frames and forms of quotidian violence that drag our attention towards registers of inevitability and predictability? This conceptual article considers assemblages of violence in the context of historical and ongoing reverberations of antiblack racism in the United States. Specifically, the authors consider various material and affective intersections that produce movements wit…
Embodiments and the Open/ness of Kinship: Ma(r)king Curriculum Through Material Abstractness and Counter-Cartographies
(Re)imaging curriculum as world(ing)s, this article explores what was produced by pre-service teachers when tasked with creating a counter-cartography (i.e., an abstract and material representation of two or more coordinates) that reflects specific (curricular) moments that have shaped their teaching identity/ies. This work argues that despite the nefarious ways in which maps have been used, they can also be(come) territories that promote healing…
A constellation of (artistic) voices: Assembling historically provocative artwork and (e)merging racial perceptions
This paper reports on the use of historically provocative artwork (i.e., artwork that challenges master narratives of history) created by Titus Kaphar and graduate students learning about leading with a socio-political consciousness about racism. The authors provided 17 students a series of prompts, based on Critical Race Theory (CRT) and critical art analysis, to instigate reflection, dialogue, and artistry in response to a painting by Kaphar. T…
Wu-Tang for the Children: Swarming Elsewhere for Aesthetic (Re)Imaginings of Community, Theory, & Praxis
The work in this article (re)traces the nuances embedded within the aesthetics of the Wu-Tang Clan to draw attention to two theoretical, Wu-based concepts: Shaolin and swarming. This article leans into fugivity and critical race theory (CRT) to demonstrate how hip-hop music can be a capacious avenue for theorizing alternate ways to disrupt hegemonic, oppressive, and racist educational structures and master narratives. In particular, we use two Wu…
Theorizing mimesis across social studies contexts of mimicry, imitation, and simulation
Social studies education (SSE) commonly uses copying pedagogies (e.g., simulations) to help students develop a deeper understanding of self, others, curriculum, and society. This article argues that simulations are eminently mimetic (i.e., a theoretical orientation concerned with understanding the entangled relationships between originals and copies) and abound with overlooked opportunities to engage with double logics that traverse academic disc…
Theorizing necropolitics in social studies education
This article engages with three commonly traversed social studies topics—depictions of violence and death from the French Revolution, during the Vietnam War, and regarding U.S. histories of racial segregation—through the lens of Achille Mbembe’s necropolitics (i.e., political and social machinations of power that determine who lives and who dies). In particular, this article theorizes how specific necropolitical concepts (e.g., necropower, the li…
D032 N07 C0MpU73: Exploring (Post)Human Bodies and Worlds with/in Droidial(ity) and Narrative Contexts
This article focuses on droidial bodies in children’s literature to explore how speculative literacies foster necessary spaces for thinking about (non)human and more-than-human connectivity. Specifically, we share what was produced when we applied a framework underpinned by posthumanist concepts to three children’s books centering robots. Using Jackson and Mazzei’s thinking with theory to plug into these books, this article raises (re)new(ed) que…
Snatching Bodies, Snatching History/ies: Exhuming the Insidious Plundering of Black Cemeteries as a Curriculum of Postmortem Racism
This article engages in curriculum work regarding the theft of Black bodies and history/ies, the plundering of Black cemeteries, and sustained hegemonic efforts to use and reuse Black bodies for white/settler onto-epistemological advancements. In particular, this article draws from assemblages of violence and necropolitics to explore implications of postmortem racism on curriculum studies. By tracing the history of body snatching, we identify and…
Metallurgic Matter(ing)s: Mirrored Mandalorian Metal-Scapes, Mining(s), and Mimesis
This paper traverses the relationship between wo/man, metal, and the more-than-human world. Drawing for new materialisms, specifically Bennett’s (2004, 2009) notion of (metallurgic) thing-power and IJsseling’s (1997) conceptualization of mimesis, we entangle our (posthuman) perspectives with scenes from a popular science fiction show, The Mandalorian. Specifically, we are interested in how a fictional metal with extraordinary vibrant properties, …
Posthuman figurations and hauntological graspings of historical consciousness/thinking through (re)photography
This article draws on data collected from a secondary school in Florida to explore how temporally disjointed aesthetics (e.g. (re)photographs) impact constructions of historical knowledge. Using posthuman concepts (e.g. assemblage, rhizome, spacetimematter(ing), hauntology), this study relied on visual methodologies—specifically photo-elicitation—to attend to the question: How do engagements with (re)photographs contribute to the development seco…
The Use of Music to Connect the Past, Present, and Future
Artists have long addressed social injustices within popular music. As teachers consider how to deconstruct and teach the events of 2020 (and beyond) with an eye toward the future, we offer a novel pedagogical approach to incorporating music into the social studies classroom: the set-list. The set-list can be understood as containing temporal conditions insofar that all traditional demarcations of time (e.g., past, present, and future) are implic…
Ma(r)king The Unthinkable: Cultural and Existential Engagements of Extreme Historical Violence
Culture is an integral part of social studies education, and is a generative line of inquiry when placed in conversation with existential concerns. This post qualitative study engages with terror management theory (and its inspiration, the writing of Ernest Becker) to think about culture in the context of extreme historical violence. In particular, the authors re/read accounts from the Nazi massacre of Jews in Jedwabne, Poland (1941) and the Hutu…
Material counter-c art ographies: (Un)mapping (in)justice, spatial wounding, and abstract reticulations
This article takes an arts-based approach to unmasking the (wounded) naming histories of public schools within a 20-miles radius of a university in central Florida. It applies an artistic methodology that was inspired by the abstract artwork of Mark Bradford. Through the application of this methodology (e.g. research, layer, excavate), the authors created two maps—counter-cartographies—to accentuate the problematic undertow of schooling through n…
Celebrating Stonewall at 50: A Culturally Geographic Approach to Introducing LGBT Themes
July 28, 2019, marks the 50th anniversary of a police raid on the Stonewall Inn. During this raid, police verbally, and in some cases, physically accosted patrons of the Stonewall Inn. Events from this encounter eventually set off a series of protests by members and allies of the LGBT community. These protests came to be known as the Stonewall Riots. On June 24, 2016, the Stonewall Inn became the first U.S. National Monument dedicated to LGBT his…
The Manifestation of Campbell's Law: Consequences of Eliminating of Social Studies From the Curriculum
The manifestation of Campbell's Law is examined in light of the current era in American public schools of high stakes testing inclusive of narrowed curriculums and teaching to the test. The decades-long practice of reducing instructional time of non-tested subjects, which includes social studies fundamentals, has resulted in a less informed citizenry. Social studies instruction promotes citizens who are able to make informed decisions that are in…
Posthuman figurations and hauntological graspings of historical consciousness/thinking through (re)photography
This article draws on data collected from a secondary school in Florida to explore how temporally disjointed aesthetics (e.g. (re)photographs) impact constructions of historical knowledge. Using posthuman concepts (e.g. assemblage, rhizome, spacetimematter(ing), hauntology), this study relied on visual methodologies—specifically photo-elicitation—to attend to the question: How do engagements with (re)photographs contribute to the development seco…
Theorizing necropolitics in social studies education
This article engages with three commonly traversed social studies topics—depictions of violence and death from the French Revolution, during the Vietnam War, and regarding U.S. histories of racial segregation—through the lens of Achille Mbembe’s necropolitics (i.e., political and social machinations of power that determine who lives and who dies). In particular, this article theorizes how specific necropolitical concepts (e.g., necropower, the li…
Metallurgic Matter(ing)s: Mirrored Mandalorian Metal-Scapes, Mining(s), and Mimesis
This paper traverses the relationship between wo/man, metal, and the more-than-human world. Drawing for new materialisms, specifically Bennett’s (2004, 2009) notion of (metallurgic) thing-power and IJsseling’s (1997) conceptualization of mimesis, we entangle our (posthuman) perspectives with scenes from a popular science fiction show, The Mandalorian. Specifically, we are interested in how a fictional metal with extraordinary vibrant properties, …
The Use of Music to Connect the Past, Present, and Future
Artists have long addressed social injustices within popular music. As teachers consider how to deconstruct and teach the events of 2020 (and beyond) with an eye toward the future, we offer a novel pedagogical approach to incorporating music into the social studies classroom: the set-list. The set-list can be understood as containing temporal conditions insofar that all traditional demarcations of time (e.g., past, present, and future) are implic…
Celebrating Stonewall at 50: A Culturally Geographic Approach to Introducing LGBT Themes
July 28, 2019, marks the 50th anniversary of a police raid on the Stonewall Inn. During this raid, police verbally, and in some cases, physically accosted patrons of the Stonewall Inn. Events from this encounter eventually set off a series of protests by members and allies of the LGBT community. These protests came to be known as the Stonewall Riots. On June 24, 2016, the Stonewall Inn became the first U.S. National Monument dedicated to LGBT his…
The Manifestation of Campbell's Law: Consequences of Eliminating of Social Studies From the Curriculum
The manifestation of Campbell's Law is examined in light of the current era in American public schools of high stakes testing inclusive of narrowed curriculums and teaching to the test. The decades-long practice of reducing instructional time of non-tested subjects, which includes social studies fundamentals, has resulted in a less informed citizenry. Social studies instruction promotes citizens who are able to make informed decisions that are in…
Celebrating Stonewall at 50: A Culturally Geographic Approach to Introducing LGBT Themes
July 28, 2019, marks the 50th anniversary of a police raid on the Stonewall Inn. During this raid, police verbally, and in some cases, physically accosted patrons of the Stonewall Inn. Events from this encounter eventually set off a series of protests by members and allies of the LGBT community. These protests came to be known as the Stonewall Riots. On June 24, 2016, the Stonewall Inn became the first U.S. National Monument dedicated to LGBT his…
Ma(r)king The Unthinkable: Cultural and Existential Engagements of Extreme Historical Violence
Culture is an integral part of social studies education, and is a generative line of inquiry when placed in conversation with existential concerns. This post qualitative study engages with terror management theory (and its inspiration, the writing of Ernest Becker) to think about culture in the context of extreme historical violence. In particular, the authors re/read accounts from the Nazi massacre of Jews in Jedwabne, Poland (1941) and the Hutu…
Material counter-c art ographies: (Un)mapping (in)justice, spatial wounding, and abstract reticulations
This article takes an arts-based approach to unmasking the (wounded) naming histories of public schools within a 20-miles radius of a university in central Florida. It applies an artistic methodology that was inspired by the abstract artwork of Mark Bradford. Through the application of this methodology (e.g. research, layer, excavate), the authors created two maps—counter-cartographies—to accentuate the problematic undertow of schooling through n…
D032 N07 C0MpU73: Exploring (Post)Human Bodies and Worlds with/in Droidial(ity) and Narrative Contexts
This article focuses on droidial bodies in children’s literature to explore how speculative literacies foster necessary spaces for thinking about (non)human and more-than-human connectivity. Specifically, we share what was produced when we applied a framework underpinned by posthumanist concepts to three children’s books centering robots. Using Jackson and Mazzei’s thinking with theory to plug into these books, this article raises (re)new(ed) que…
Snatching Bodies, Snatching History/ies: Exhuming the Insidious Plundering of Black Cemeteries as a Curriculum of Postmortem Racism
This article engages in curriculum work regarding the theft of Black bodies and history/ies, the plundering of Black cemeteries, and sustained hegemonic efforts to use and reuse Black bodies for white/settler onto-epistemological advancements. In particular, this article draws from assemblages of violence and necropolitics to explore implications of postmortem racism on curriculum studies. By tracing the history of body snatching, we identify and…
Metallurgic Matter(ing)s: Mirrored Mandalorian Metal-Scapes, Mining(s), and Mimesis
This paper traverses the relationship between wo/man, metal, and the more-than-human world. Drawing for new materialisms, specifically Bennett’s (2004, 2009) notion of (metallurgic) thing-power and IJsseling’s (1997) conceptualization of mimesis, we entangle our (posthuman) perspectives with scenes from a popular science fiction show, The Mandalorian. Specifically, we are interested in how a fictional metal with extraordinary vibrant properties, …
Posthuman figurations and hauntological graspings of historical consciousness/thinking through (re)photography
This article draws on data collected from a secondary school in Florida to explore how temporally disjointed aesthetics (e.g. (re)photographs) impact constructions of historical knowledge. Using posthuman concepts (e.g. assemblage, rhizome, spacetimematter(ing), hauntology), this study relied on visual methodologies—specifically photo-elicitation—to attend to the question: How do engagements with (re)photographs contribute to the development seco…
The Use of Music to Connect the Past, Present, and Future
Artists have long addressed social injustices within popular music. As teachers consider how to deconstruct and teach the events of 2020 (and beyond) with an eye toward the future, we offer a novel pedagogical approach to incorporating music into the social studies classroom: the set-list. The set-list can be understood as containing temporal conditions insofar that all traditional demarcations of time (e.g., past, present, and future) are implic…
Material and Affective (Re)shapings within Unspeakable/Uninterrupted Territories of Violence
How might we refuse historically censored, sustained, and whitewashed frames and forms of quotidian violence that drag our attention towards registers of inevitability and predictability? This conceptual article considers assemblages of violence in the context of historical and ongoing reverberations of antiblack racism in the United States. Specifically, the authors consider various material and affective intersections that produce movements wit…
Embodiments and the Open/ness of Kinship: Ma(r)king Curriculum Through Material Abstractness and Counter-Cartographies
(Re)imaging curriculum as world(ing)s, this article explores what was produced by pre-service teachers when tasked with creating a counter-cartography (i.e., an abstract and material representation of two or more coordinates) that reflects specific (curricular) moments that have shaped their teaching identity/ies. This work argues that despite the nefarious ways in which maps have been used, they can also be(come) territories that promote healing…
A constellation of (artistic) voices: Assembling historically provocative artwork and (e)merging racial perceptions
This paper reports on the use of historically provocative artwork (i.e., artwork that challenges master narratives of history) created by Titus Kaphar and graduate students learning about leading with a socio-political consciousness about racism. The authors provided 17 students a series of prompts, based on Critical Race Theory (CRT) and critical art analysis, to instigate reflection, dialogue, and artistry in response to a painting by Kaphar. T…
Wu-Tang for the Children: Swarming Elsewhere for Aesthetic (Re)Imaginings of Community, Theory, & Praxis
The work in this article (re)traces the nuances embedded within the aesthetics of the Wu-Tang Clan to draw attention to two theoretical, Wu-based concepts: Shaolin and swarming. This article leans into fugivity and critical race theory (CRT) to demonstrate how hip-hop music can be a capacious avenue for theorizing alternate ways to disrupt hegemonic, oppressive, and racist educational structures and master narratives. In particular, we use two Wu…
Theorizing mimesis across social studies contexts of mimicry, imitation, and simulation
Social studies education (SSE) commonly uses copying pedagogies (e.g., simulations) to help students develop a deeper understanding of self, others, curriculum, and society. This article argues that simulations are eminently mimetic (i.e., a theoretical orientation concerned with understanding the entangled relationships between originals and copies) and abound with overlooked opportunities to engage with double logics that traverse academic disc…
Theorizing necropolitics in social studies education
This article engages with three commonly traversed social studies topics—depictions of violence and death from the French Revolution, during the Vietnam War, and regarding U.S. histories of racial segregation—through the lens of Achille Mbembe’s necropolitics (i.e., political and social machinations of power that determine who lives and who dies). In particular, this article theorizes how specific necropolitical concepts (e.g., necropower, the li…
Flows of anti-colonialism: (Re)configurations and emplotments of more-than-witness(es/ing) in the an(thropo/glo)cene
This paper leans into alterlife (Murphy, 2017) and connectivity ontologies (Harrison, 2015) to consider the implications of more-than-witness(es/ing) (our term) on social studies education. Taking a narrative approach, we engage with three more-than-human bodies (e.g., Boulder, Forest, Document(s)) in an effort to expand how act(or/ion)s of coloniality are registered, conceptualized, and disrupted. By opening our learning to the agency of more-th…
The dirtiness of clean: Unearthing settler logics that sustain spatial woundings in the Capitalocene
In this article, we first (re)trace the presence and absence of mining, metals and extractionary practices, what we call MMEs, from environmental and sustainability curricular frameworks United Nations’ Act Now Framework. Then, we critique the swelling markets, mentalities, and mastermindings used to develop and produce “clean” and “renewable” energy sources/solutions. As one of many examples, there is increasing skepticism among Indigenous commu…
Bear(ing) Down: Encountering Posthuman Critical Media Studies through the (Re)tracing of Object and Embodiment
This paper explores the how of posthuman theory by a collaborative and conversational visual reading of FX’s The Bear. In both the shared and individual encounters with the show, we consider how objects produce relational affects across characters, objects, time, and space. We insist that unique shows like The Bear, expand beyond a “use” orientation of objects, instead producing objects as central to the narrative. Some objects become, in one way…
(Con)spirituality as a curriculum of immortality
If we are listening to marketing hype, it seems that—with enough money—we can live longer, healthier lives. These products, however, are often no more than consumerist swindling steeped in pseudo-science and pseudo-spirituality. When viewed through the lens of terror management theory (TMT), mitigating the harms of (con)spiritual grifts is more than a problem of a lack of scientific literacy, anti-consumer education, and media literacy. Those who…
Friendships Without Friendships: Traversing the Contours of Relationality Through Reading/Writing
This article engages with the intersections of reading, writing, and friendship (between the two authors). Specifically, we (re)trace conversations, presentations, notes, and text messages that have emerged since we (e.g., authors) have become thinking-friends and how we think about reading and its irrevocable relationship to writing. Using a range of books and a suite of theories associated with post-qualitative research, this article tempts rea…
Holding water: An index of affectual possibilities and “shuttling intensities” across the social studies
This article theorizes how affect—conceptualized as an embodied intensity of feeling distinct from emotion—can open up alternative pathways of inquiry in social studies classrooms. After discussing prior connections between social studies education research and affect, emotion, and feeling, we focus our analysis on media texts covering two historically significant events: the boat evacuation of Manhattan on September 11, 2001 and the U.S. Capitol…
Inquiring Artlessly: Encounter(ing)s With Monstrous Materialities From/Through the Threshold
This article takes up the suggestion of artless inquiry as an extension for artful ways of doing, thinking, and be(com)ing. Specifically, each author/artist used discarded items—materialities we position as monstrous—to visually articulate how/what artless inquiry produces in the context of (post)qualitative research. Drawing inspiration from artists Mierle Laderman Ukeles, Theaster Gates, Yam Chew Oh, and Shani Nottingham, each work of art(less/…
Sociology (19 works) · Art (12 works) · Aesthetics (10 works) · Philosophy (10 works) · Psychology (10 works) · Critical Race Theory in Education (8 works) · Educator Training and Historical Pedagogy (8 works) · Epistemology (8 works) · Law (8 works) · Political science (8 works)