“At Variance with Accepted Practice:” Antiracist Pedagogies within the Jewish History Museum

ABSTRACT

At the Jewish History Museum and Holocaust History Center in Tucson, Arizona, photographs, text, and audio displays present Jewish histories alongside local histories of African-American, Latinx, and Native peoples – among others – in Southern Arizona, where Jews comprise only 2–3% of the population. In documenting our pedagogical tools for presenting these histories, we ask what forms of responsibility and context are necessary when engaging antisemitism and other forms of exclusion. What does it mean to present these histories and not romanticize or isolate them in the past, but instead instrumentalize them in order to prompt contemporary action? Weekly public talks and an education program that reach several thousand students a year employ antiracist pedagogical methodologies for facilitating difficult conversations inside the museum. This article will document our frameworks of discussion and lines of questioning prompted by our museum displays that actively thematize race and institutional forms of discrimination.

KEYWORDS:

• Antiracist pedagogy
• antisemitism
• polyvocality
• testimony
• Jewish representation

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

About the authors

Bryan L. Davis is the Executive Director of the Jewish History Museum in Tucson, Arizona. He earned a Ph.D. in Language, Reading and Culture at the University of Arizona in 2018. His dissertation is titled, Teaching with Testimony: A Metalanguage. Davis serves on the board of directors of the Council of American Jewish Museums. He teaches for the University of Arizona Honors College, College of Education and Center for Judaic Studies.

Ariel Goldberg’s publications include The Estrangement Principle (Nightboat Books, 2016) and The Photographer (Roof Books, 2015). From 2014 to 2017, they organized readings at The Poetry Project. Goldberg’s writing has appeared in e-flux, Afterimage, and Art in America. They have taught writing and photography history at Pratt Institute, The New School, and Columbia University. Goldberg was the 2018–2019 Zuckerman Fellow (Curator of Community Engagement) at the Jewish History Museum in Tucson, Arizona.

Notes

1 Hooper-Greenhill, The Educational Role of the Museum.

2 Hooper-Greenhill, Museums and Education: Purpose, Pedagogy, Performance.

3 Segall and Trofanenko, Beyond Pedagogy Reconsidering the Public Purpose of Museums.

4 Ibid.

5 Marcus, Stoddard, and William Woodward, Teaching History with Museums: Strategies for K-12 Social Studies.

6 Hooper-Greenhill, Museums.

7 McManimon and Casey, “(Re)beginning and Becoming,” 396.

8 Peter Novick, “The Holocaust in American Life,” 2007.

9 For more on “Ashkenormativity” see Naar, “Our White Supremacy Problem,” 9.

10 Falk, “Understanding Visitors’ Motivations and Learning,” 110. http://slks.dk/fileadmin/user_upload/dokumenter/KS/institutioner/museer/Indsatsomraader/Brugerundersoegelse/Artikler/John_Falk_Understanding_museum_visitors__motivations_and_learning.pdf

11 Shohat, “Sephardim in Israel: Zionism from the Standpoint of Its Jewish Victims,” 8.

12 “Museum Facts & Data,” About Museums, Alliance of American Museums. Accessed May 1, 2019. https://www.aam-us.org/programs/about-museums/museum-facts-data/#_edn23

13 Cross, “Talking about Social Justice in a National Museum,” 3; Washington and Hindley, “Race Isn’t Just a ‘Black Thing’ – the Role that Museum Professionals Can Play in Inclusive Planning and Programming,” 2; Dewhurst and Hendrick, “Identifying and Transforming Racism in Museum Education,” 102.

14 Washington and Hindley, “Race Isn’t Just a ‘Black Thing,’” 2–7.

15 Swarupa Anila, “Inclusion Requires Fracturing,” 111.