'Uncovering Possible: Pedagogies for Apocalyptic Times' is an edited volume that holds our experiences as educators, activists, and community members navigating the global pandemic of the past several years. This pandemic is situated within the context of ongoing interconnected crises: oppressive systems, worsening climate, and economic urgency, all at an unsustainable pace. The work in this volume confronts the grief, loss, and injustice that apocalypse brings, while also engaging with the possibility and intentional, resilient joy necessary to build a better world. This volume is an invitation to explore both the impacts of this and many other apocalyptic events in learning spaces, as well as (re)imagine what's essential to learning in community.
Through research, storytelling, reflections from the field, poetry, and interactive activities, this volume shares lessons from those on the front lines of apocalyptic learning, inviting the reader to find their place in building the more equitable communities we need and deserve. This apocalypse is situated within a social context that extends beyond this single event. For many, apocalypse has, and continues to happen, through colonial white-supremacist capitalism. What we carry forward must include the collective knowledges capable of carrying us not just through this apocalypse but the apocalypses ahead.
Cara Berg Powers has been working for over 15 years in arts, education, and culture to help people reimagine and reshape the world, most recently as Executive Director of the Transformative Culture Project. She is currently a Visiting Lecturer in Education at Clark University, and has also taught at Worcester State University, UMASS Boston and Wheelock College, as well as guest lecturing at a number of colleges and universities. She has produced content for MTV and NBC, and has presented at national conferences on issues of media, culture and equity. She has also provided training for non-profit leaders like Facing History and Ourselves and OxFam America. Cara founded the Youth Media Institute at Project: Think Different (now amplifyme) and also ran Digital Media programming for the United Teen Equality Center (UTEC). Her work has been published by Harvard University in partnership with Lady Gaga's Born This Way Foundation, as well as through several feminist publications. She was featured in Gloria Feldt's 'No Excuses: Nine Ways Women Can Change How We Think About Power' and gave the inaugural keynote for the UpTake's groundbreaking Conflict Sensitive Journalism fellowship. Cara holds a Doctorate in Educational Leadership and Change in addition to an MA in Transformative Media Arts and a BA in Screen Studies and Urban Development/Social Change.
Nastasia Lawton-Sticklor is an educator, climate justice activist, and nonviolent direct-action practitioner and trainer. She is a core team member with the Climate Disobedience Center, focusing on research and organizing at the intersection of environmental justice, restorative justice, and youth voice and leadership in education. She approaches this work with the belief that climate justice can only be reached through decolonizing and dismantling white supremacist, capitalist, and patriarchal systems and that our resistance to these systems lies in our solidarity and interconnectedness. Nastasia previously worked at the Hiatt Center for Urban Education at Clark University, cultivating spaces that uplift youth voices through qualitative research. Her teaching practice, both in the classroom and community spaces, focuses on interrogating traditional pedagogies and exploring ways to build antiracist and liberatory teaching practices that are grounded in multigenerational collaboration and relationship building. She has co-authored multiple articles and presentations with educators and youth. Nastasia holds a Masters' in Teaching from Clark University and a Doctorate in Educational Leadership from Simmons University. She is currently pursuing a degree in Restorative Justice at Vermont Law School.
