Current Events: Technology and Resistance

In the past few years, cell phone video technology has been used to capture several incidents of students being tasered and/or arrested for creating disturbances in university classrooms and libraries. One example is the UCLA Taser Incident in 2006; a more recent incident occurred at the University of Wisconsin earlier this semester. A video of the latter is below (warning for conflict and violence):

Incidents like these raise a lot of questions for me. How are campus safety policies used to discriminate against students of color, or students from different cultures? At what point would you feel the need to call campus security? At what point does student hostility become a threat, or out of control? Regarding the above video, how would you have reacted if you were the teacher in that situation?

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I also wanted to share a really fascinating article about a local UCSD professor who uses art and technology to protest immigration policies and raise political consciousness--and the negative consequences he's facing as a result.

http://articles.latimes.com/2010/may/07/local/la-me-ucsd-professor-20100507-53

Week 16 Discussion Question(s)

This week's readings offered a plethora of practical tips not only for teaching, but for constructing the best possible learning experience for students. Without a doubt, to succeed at this requires us to understand our students as well as possible. In Chapter 2, "The Countdown for Course Preparation," and Chapter 3, "Dealing with Student Problems and Problems," the authors advocate for understanding who our students are, and what they need from us.

Drawing from our personal experiences in the classroom--both as students, and as teachers--how must our teaching strategies vary depending on the different types of college/universities we are at, or the different student groups we teach to? Have you had any experiences with adjusting your pedagogical strategies to fit students' needs that you'd like to share? Thinking reflexively, what could you do to make your pedagogy more flexible and spontaneous?

Week 15 Discussion Question(s)

In Mary Margaret Fonow and Debian Marty’s “The Shift from Identity Politics to the Politics of Identity: Lesbian Panels in the Women’s Studies Classroom,” the authors address the "impression management" that lesbian panelists often struggle with while discussing their sexual identity in front of a classroom. Similarly, Michelle Cox and Katherine E. Tirabassi both questioned whether to self-disclose their experiences with rape to their students in “Dangerous Responses.” How do we determine which of our personal disclosures--particularly those that are deeply emotional or deal with trauma--have pedagogical value, and which are better left unsaid? When, and to what extent, may students be more enriched by our silence than our voice? And at what point do we draw the line in regards to our vulnerability?

Week 14 Discussion Question

In light of Catherine M. Orr's "Challenging the 'Academic/Real World' Divide" and Rebecca Anne Allahyari's "Becoming Feminist Cyber Ethnographers," I wanted to reflect on the idea of creating activist narratives through new technologies.

Orr discusses how her students struggled to see themselves as a part of the history of women's activist movements, and how they were equally troubled by the idea that no singular narrative of the women's movement might exist. Considering Allahyari's discussion of cyber ethnographies, how might the organization histories found on most organization's websites serve to either distance students from narratives of activism, or make them feel closer to it? In other words, can technology provide different experiences and interactions with history than books can? Also, given the multiplicity of perspectives/information available on the Internet, is there a danger of reinforcing the lack of cohesiveness and commonality between women's different forms of activism?

Week 12 Discussion Question + Reading Choices

Our readings this week explored the importance and implementation of multicultural, transnational, and international perspectives in gender studies. My contribution this week is part exercise, and part question: what books/articles, documentaries, videos, media, or pop culture examples have you encountered in the past that helped to promote international and transnational perspectives?

Together, perhaps we can collectively build a list of resources that can be used in our classrooms to promote global perspectives and multicultural understandings of gender, race, sexual orientation, transgender/intersexual experiences, disability/ability, age, religion, ethnicity, body politics, labor, and cultural borderlands. I'll be including some of mine in a comment to this post, and I invite you all to do the same.

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Here are my choices for next week's readings (I gravitated toward the technology-oriented pieces):

- Cohee, et al in The Feminist Teacher Anthology

• Chapter 10, "This Class Meets in Cyberspace: Women's Studies via Distance Education" by Ellen Cronan Rose
• Chapter 17 , "Would You Rather be a Goddess or a Cyborg?" by Suzanne K. Damarin

- Naples and Bohar, Teaching Feminist Activism

• Chapter 16, "Becoming Feminist Cyber Ethnographers" by Rebecca Anne Allahyari
• Chapter 11, "Activism and Alliance within Campus Sisterhood Organizations" by Simona J. Hill

- McKeachie's Teaching Tips

• Chapter 13, subsections "Class Management Problems" and "Emotional Problems"
• Chapter 17, subsections "How Will Technology Enhance Teaching and Learning?" and "Teaching with Technology"

Week 11 Discussion Question

As several of this week's readings demonstrate, the likelihood of encountering resistance in the classroom remains high, particularly when discussing issues of racism; and as feminist teachers, we must prepare ourselves for addressing such reactions. In Donadey's chapter, she takes time to share several readings she assigns in anticipation of students' confused and upsetting emotional responses to racism. Audre Lorde also speaks about the importance of recognizing the "uses of anger" to overcome paralyzing feelings of guilt, or the fear of confronting with other women about racism.

What other specific methods, materials, and assignments could we use to find productive uses for anger--both the anger of students of color, and white students' anger at being confronted with their privileges? How might our pedagogies help to creatively channel that anger into productive change, as Lorde urges us to do, and what would these practical strategies look like in a syllabus?

Week 10 Discussion Question

In Nancy Sorkin Rabinowitz's "Queer Theory and Feminist Pedagogy" (Chapter Seven), she describes the difficulties and complications of teaching sexuality through a queer theory approach. Among other issues, she struggles with the question of who can teach queer theory, and how to utilize it as fundamental element in her course when her students have varying levels of familiarity with topics of sexuality.

How could queer theory either positively or negatively affect students' willingness to engage with topics of sexuality? What are the risks of this, and when/how should queer theory be integrated into classroom conversations? Also, how can might queer theory's call for anti-identitarian perspectives be integrated into our pedagogical approaches to race, class, and gender? Why might this be beneficial?