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Dr Mandy Pierlejewski In this blog post, I explore the idea that using generative AI to plan lessons is cheating. I compare artificial intelligence lesson planning with the use of government validated schemes such as Little Wandle, using Foucualt’s work on discipline to explore notions of lesson authorship. I suggest that the use of generative…
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Claire Birkenshaw “Well it ain’t written in the papers, but its written on the walls” (Matt Johnson, 1986). In the hands of the military, the stencil graphic is utilised as a means to communicate no-nonsense graphical edicts to direct, control, and corral compliance. When used by those with power, the stencil graphic facilitates a visual…
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Claire Birkenshaw “If you are the dealer, I’m out of the game.” (Leonard Cohen, 2016) Happy New Year! Set any New Year resolutions? I have. At the heart of my New Year resolutions for 2024 is the improvement of my ‘cultural capital’ portfolio in terms of “volume” and “composition” (Threadgold, 2018, p.45). I am motivated…
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Claire Birkenshaw “But don’t forget the songs that made you cryAnd the songs that saved your life” (Marr and Morrissey, 1985) As his 2023 Glastonbury ‘songs of The Smiths’ set with Stockport band, Blossoms, drew to conclusion with the playing of arguably one of The Smiths’ “best ever songs” (Marr, 2016, p.224), There is a…
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Claire Birkenshaw “In every cry of every Man,In every Infants cry of fear,In every voice: in every ban,The mind-forg’d manacles I hear” (William Blake, 1794). Sociology’s purpose, Bourdieu (2013, p.10) argued, is to “uncover the social unconscious” in order to examine and explain “the social relations of domination”, which “deny others the full expression…
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Claire Birkenshaw “By means of strange incantations, they conjured up a new incarnation of evil, another grinning mask of fear, home to the constantly renewed magic of purification and exclusion” (Foucault, [1972] 2009, p.3). Film, as Sian Barber (2015, p.4) reminds us, is a “crafted artefact”, which is “never produced in a cultural and social…
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Claire Birkenshaw “For girls. Not for lads, Billy. Lads do football, or boxing, or wrestling. Not friggin’ ballet!” (Billy Elliot, 2000). The dramatic kitchen table confrontation between Billy and his dad about the discovery of Billy’s pursuit of ballet instead of boxing, is a knock-out moment in the film Billy Elliot (dir. Daldry, 2000). Within…
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Claire Birkenshaw In his book, Imperial Nostalgia, historian Peter Mitchell (2021, p.3) powerfully reminds us that: “The violence of the past is ongoing in the present; not only structurally, in that it is built into the foundations of the society in which we live, but in more subtle, more constitutive ways: in the words we…
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Excerpts from my PhD thesis (Pierlejewski, 2022 p26-30) Dr Mandy Pierlejewski Power For Foucault, power was always a focus. He does not see power as a top-down force, oppressing individuals, but as something which exists between people in their relationships with each other and the social body. Foucault was interested in what he called the…
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Dr Mandy Pierlejewski. This week, at universities across the UK, Coca-Cola were giving away free samples of their newly packaged bottles of Coke Zero. I noticed that although the bottles were made of a recycled material which was a little darker than the original bottles, essentially the branding was exactly the same. Every Coca-Cola product…
Altered States of Academia 