Excursions: Introduction

The desire to “get lost” can offer an enticing pull away from our lives, especially when faced with ongoing difficulties, day-to-day distractions, and the contradictions that make up our world. Who among us has not felt the desire to wander away with no destination in mind? And yet, it would be too simple to describe what has been done in this section as just “getting lost.” The original 2011 conference call, drawn from Patti Lather’s (2007) description in Getting Lost: Feminist Efforts Toward a Double(d) Science, asked us to “get lost in the limits, refuse a desire to know in favor of finding what goes beyond what we know.” The Curriculum and Pedagogy Group did not just offer us an opening, but rather gave us a charge—that of finding “alternate possibilities, new understandings, and a rethinking of entrenched beliefs concerning social justice, curricular theorizing and practices, and pedagogical practices.” Such a charge should not be reduced in metaphor to merely wandering off into the woods (the vision that first came to mind when I thought of “getting lost”), but rather a purposeful expedition, charting into the unknown.