Research Spotlight: Dr. Pauli Badenhorst
Q & A with Dr. Pauli Badenhorst, Assistant Professor in the Department of Teaching and Learning
What are your research interests and research achievements?
What are the ontological constituents of race? How are both raced identity and racism related to pleasure? What is the role of emotion in the constitution and enactment of racial identity? How are racialized Others compensatively used to generate and sustain identities and ideologies in localized sociopolitical contexts? How may psychoanalytic theories be reconceptualized and mobilized towards relational antiracism work? These are some of the provocative questions that inform my emergent conceptual-theoretical and ethnographic stream of scholarship that engages race and ethnicity as relevant to teacher education, schools, and society. Ultimately, my research seeks to aid in the design of holistic epistemological frames to inform antiracist and anti-oppressive teaching, learning, and curriculum. Furthermore, my interdisciplinary approach to research is rooted in Black antiracist literature and draws from a smorgasbord of theoretical traditions including poststructuralism, contemporary political psychoanalysis, philosophical pessimism, second-wave CWS, affect theory, and cultural studies. My scholarship has either been published or is forthcoming in journals like Psychoanalysis of Culture & Society; International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education; English Education; Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy; Journal of the American Association for the Advancement of Curriculum Studies, Forum: Qualitative Social Research, and The Texas Forum of Teacher Education.
How does your work align with UTRGV’s and CEP’s strategic plans?
The teacher education and broader sociocultural scope of my emergent scholarship crosscuts several interrelated UTRGV and CEP-16 strategic plan priorities. My dominant stream of independent research engaging psycho-social processes of racial be[com]ing – including focused collaboration with Dr. Jim Jupp around counter-white supremacist social and identarian renovation – pipes into the creation of educational opportunities via innovative, cutting-edge, intersectional antiracist and anti-oppressive instructional and curricular advancement. In turn, RGV-focused grant-based collaboration with Dr. Sandra Musanti and Dr. Veronica Estrada around practice-based community-engaged pedagogy in HSI teacher preparation foregrounds equity-grounded student success enabled by the integration of scholarship, professional and life experiences as well as community partnerships. Furthermore, my mentoring collaboration with graduate students nurtures a research enterprise generative of knowledge, discoveries, and creativity. Finally, some of my research collaborations also engage pertinent issues affecting schools and society beyond the RGV such as my work with Dr. Shim (University of Wyoming), Dr. Kim-Bossard (College of New Jersey), Dr. Smolcic and Dr. Martin (Penn State), as well as my work with Dr. Tanner (Penn State) and Dr. Grinage (University of Minnesota).
How does your work align with UTRGV’s and CEP’s strategic plans?
I am involved in several concurrent research projects – both short and long-term, individual and collaborative – at various stages of production. Examples of these include:
- Emergent trajectories in critical Whiteness, antiracist research for curriculum studies (with Dr. Jim Jupp / UTRGV)
- Practice-based community-engaged pedagogy in HSI teacher preparation (with Drs. Sandra Musanti & Veronica Estrada / UTRGV)
- Updating relevance of critical Whiteness studies for education (with Drs. Jupp & Shim / UTRGV & University of Wyoming)
- Accent prestige theory, migration, and processes of racialization in South Korean schools and society (with Dr. Kim-Bossard / College of New Jersey)
- Sociopolitical conscientization of teacher candidates in an immersion-abroad experience (with Drs. Smolcic & Martin / Penn State)
- Antiracism and CWS in ELA curriculum and pedagogy (with Drs. Tanner & Grinage / Penn State & University of Minnesota)
- Psychoanalysis of racialized emotions and interracial conflict for antiracism work in teacher education (with Dr. Shim / University of Wyoming)
- Psychoanalysis of narcissism inhering White antiracist identity posturing
- Contemporary political psychoanalysis for teacher education
- The epistemological value of conceptual metaphor for antiracism work