Remembering School

The Author: Erica Southgate is Research Fellow at the Centre for Clinical Epidemiology and Biostatistics at the University of Newcastle, Australia, where she received her Ph.D. in Education.

«Erica Southgate’s book brings exemplary analytic rigor to bear on moving and terrifying accounts of violence in schools. It demonstrates carefully but vividly the order of things disciplinary in classrooms, virtually unchanged from the beginnings of formal schooling to the present day. This is a must-read book for anyone interested in the application of postmodern thought to practical issues.» (Stephen J. Ball, Karl Mannheim Professor of Sociology of Education, University of London, Institute of Education)«In its theoretical range, empirical richness, and analytical intelligence, Erica Southgate’s book not only sets the standard for any future work on school memory, but also contributes to our understanding of physical and verbal punishment and pleasure in the recollected lives of children and youth and perhaps, even more, in social life generally. It is a specific work in school memory, and is within a specific tradition – Foucaldian microanalyses of biopower as well as feminism and qualitative school studies. But by its internal, reflective willingness to criticize its own traditions of work and by the strength and sensitivity of the analysis, ‘Remembering School’ goes further, making a contribution to questions of power, discourse, body, emotions, and the pain and pleasure in everyday life.» (Philip Wexler, Michael Scandling Professor, Warner Graduate School of Education and Human Development, University of Rochester and Senior Research Fellow, Shalom Hartman Institute, Jerusalem, Israel)