Urban Children and Intellectual Emancipation: Video Narratives of Self and Place in the City of Milwaukee

Abstract

This study uses an interdisciplinary framework inspired by Rancière (1991, 2009, 2010) ideas such as intellectual equality, redistribution of the sensible, and aesthetic heterogenesis to analyze the production of video-narratives of self and place within a group of Latino eight-year-olds attending public school in Milwaukee. The essay film, with its specific formulation through the self-portrait, operates as Rancière’s “third things” in a pedagogical encounter that searches for new visibilities for urban childhood through a learner-centered model that acknowledges the creative capacities of urban children, their contributions to the urban imaginary of the city, and their cultural status within communities of sense.