Dancing in the Shadows of War

Abstract

This article explores the use of performative pedagogy to examine popular culture, the body and gender from a critically engaged, personal, and moral perspective. It examines the effectiveness of using reflexive auto-ethnography in the classroom by having students create Mystories (Denzin, 1997) to explore their conceptions of gender. Moving forward in the reflexive moment, by juxtaposing the image of Pat Tillman and patriotism and the athletes on Dancing with the Stars as archetypes of the hyper masculine (sporting males) over and against excerpts from my students’ self-reflexive stories, I explore my own raced and gendered position as an educator and researcher and the challenges and politics of teaching politically engaged academic inquiry.