Reflections on Remixing New Romanticisms: A Plenary Workshop on Anti-Racist Teaching

This essay is a co-written reflection by two educators on a plenary workshop we led together called "Remixing New Romanticisms: A Workshop on Anti-racist Teaching" during the 2022 NASSR/BARS Conference. We presented on the teaching resource we developed as inaugural fellows of the 2021-2022 Keats-Shelley Association of America/Romantic Circles Anti-Racist Pedagogy Colloquium. First, we explain how we adapted Nicole N. Aljoe, Elizabeth Maddock Dillon, Benjamin J. Doyle, and Elizabeth Hopwood's theory of "remixing" to design constellations that re-envision Romantic concepts such as Revolution and Rebellion, Nature and Ecology, and Imagination through the curation of innovative archival materials. We then discuss a specific example of remixing that we covered in depth, our Q and A session with workshop participants, and an anti-racist teaching resource they created. In addition, we explore other anti-racist pedagogies mentioned during the workshop, among them teaching with tension, valuing student knowledge, and critical fabulation. We frame these concerns within a broader consideration of the need to reconstruct the traditional forms of knowledge that shape our disciplines so that they are more inclusive and accessible for everyone, especially students.