Publications

2024: Unterbrechen! Durcheinanderbringen! Stören! – Critical Diversity Literacy als Analyse- und Interventionsverfahren für diversitätssensible Lern- und Weiterbildungskulturen (Interrupt! Disassemble! Disrupt! – Critical diversity literacy as a method for analysis and intervention to foster diversity-sensitive learning and further education cultures)

This article explores the question of how critical diversity literacy can be used to analyze power and inequality relations and deconstruct historically developed orders and ideas of normalcy. We consider the concept of Critical Diversity Literacy as a tool to address concerns for more social justice, to be implemented in collective spaces. Working at the interstice of the institutional order and organization, we explore strategies of irritation as a driver with transformative power. In the contexts of further education “ateliers”, we test critical-performative reading practices to expose systems of powerful exclusion and initiate development processes in organizations.

Ulla Klingovsky / Georges Pfruender

To the publication

2021: Bildung.Macht.Diversität. Critical Diversity Literacy im Hochschulraum
(Education.power.diversity. Critical diversity literacy in the university space)

The university appears as a mirror and manifestation of social conditions and, moreover, as a place that can become a driver of necessary change processes under specific conditions. The university as a powerful institution is examined from various disciplinary, activist and socio-critical perspectives. From its margins, resistant mediation practices unfold, which ultimately open up critical-performative approaches for a socially and culturally more just (university) environment.

Serena O. Dankwa / Sarah-Mee Filep / Ulla Klingovsky / Georges Pfruender (Hg.)

To the publication

2018: Paths to a «Toolbox for Social Change». Interactions Between Art and Continuing Education in the Context of Critical Diversity Literacy

The aim of this article is to systematise some of the findings that have emerged in the context of an international research cooperation between the Wits Centre for Diversity Studies at the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, and the School of Education at the FHNW University of Applied Sciences and Arts Northwestern Switzerland.

The objective of this collaboration is to generate research-based formats of continuing education concerning Critical Diversity Literacy activated by art. In this article, Critical Diversity Literacy is considered as a founding principle for a process towards an understanding of oneself and of the world, within the framework of global tensions and conflict situations. Adult and continuing education can successfully assist with framing the content and designing the concepts for such developmental spaces. Art and theatre education are understood as a catalysing force to open up new social imaginations. By interweaving these three disciplines, the intention is to create a body of theory and informed practice, the core components of which will be illustrated in this article. We begin by outlining the concept of Critical Diversity Literacy established by Melissa Steyn. We shall then go on to demonstrate how this concept is enriched by educational theory. As the third step –informed by artistic theory and practice – the fundamentals and tools («Toolbox») for continuing education arrangements will be presented, together with an exposition of the status of knowledge to date: the key challenge is the configuration of «aesthetic spaces» that can lead to «social imaginations», to be designed in the form of «contact zones».

In: International Journal of Critical Diversity Studies.
Vol. 1, No. 2 (December 2018), pp. 58–71
Ulla Klingovsky and Georges Pfruender

To the article

2017: Critical diversity literacy through arts & further education. Konturen und Grundzüge neuer Formen der Begegnung mit dem Fremden und dem Eigenen. (Contours and outlines of new forms of encounter with the foreign and the own)

Abstract
This article presents the contours and main characteristics of the transnational research project ‘Critical Diversity Literacy through arts & further education’, which is jointly supported by the Wits Centre of Diversity Studies (University of the Witwatersrand Johannesburg) and the University of Teacher Education of the University of Applied Sciences Northwestern Switzerland. The authors describe possibilities of shifts of perspective in dealing with the topic of diversity, which refers to Melissa Steyn’s concept of ‘Critical Diversity Literacy’. In the cooperation process, the concept is grounded in educational theory and expanded through theories and practices of the arts, which are the starting point for the concept.

In: Hessische Blätter für Volksbildung, 67 (2017) 4, S. 367–375
Ulla Klingovsky and Georges Pfruender