Imagining an Activist Future for a Blue Guitar: Maxine Greene and her Legacy at 100: Reflections on a 2017 AERA Biographical and Documentary Research SIG Symposium April 29, 2017

During this centennial year of Maxine Greene’s birth (1917-2017), the Biographical and Documentary Research SIG created an opportunity to highlight the importance of celebrating and reflecting on her intellectual legacy. Our intention with this symposium was to facilitate a fresh release of Greene’s notion of social imagination in ways that confront head on prevailing conditions of pedagogy of “authoritarianism,”1 violence, xenophobia and cultural and ethnic erasure while also imagining more socially just worlds of what “might be”. The symposium consisted of the contributors dividing the allotted time and providing oral summaries of their completed papers. Sonia Nieto followed the panelists, serving as a masterful and inspiring discussant, and inviting comments and questions from those in attendance. Here is a summary of the presentations.