Question for 4/14

Does the cover of Encompassing Gender: Integrating International Studies and Women's Studies challenge and refute or uphold and reinforce the assumptions, binaries and dichotomies discussed by the authors that we read? How so?

How do ideas of nationality and the "state" get played out on gendered bodies (both male or female)?

CONFERENCES IN APRIL

Below is a link for the conference I was telling you all about in class today. There are descriptions of the various workshops being offered and information about keynote speakers, etc. Registration is free! There will be must, performances, etc.
http://www.sdfoodjustice.org/


Also, Irene was right and the SDSU Diversity Conference is also on April 24th. Here is the link: http://www.sa.sdsu.edu/intercultural/conference/ I was not able to locate workshop descriptions for this conference. Also, registration is not free, but is anywhere between $5 and $15 depending on when you register.

<3
Jessica

April 7th post-Vivian

In Imagining Differently: The Politics of Listening in a Feminist Classroom, Cevenak, Cespeden, Souza and Staub explore the concept of Latinidad. Latinidad(solidarity on the basis of bieng a Latina woman) is deconstructed to understand the complexities of sisterhood and solidarity. According to the article, internalizing an identity such as belonging to a "Latina group" can actually be counterproductive. The article cautioned against internalizing identities. According to the article, if a Latina accepts and internalizes her identity then she is also internalizing the state's narrative of what that role is.
Do you think accepting an identity as part of a group means internalizing the nation's narrative of that group? In other words, is identifying by race or gender counterproductive because it assumes essentialized notions of truth?

April 7th Question_Irina

In Anne Donadey’s article, “Negotiating Tensions,” Donadey explores the difficulty in balancing when to respond to students’ comments and when to allow other students to speak up (214-215). How would you handle a situation in which a student speaking up makes racist remarks (or remarks that reproduce ideologies of dominance)?
.........What would be your initial reaction?
.........What would be your thought-out reaction?

Pedagogical Practice for April 7th, 2010 - Jessica Spain

This pedagogical practice is geared toward students in a 101 level women's studies course and aims to support Ann Donaday's assertion that women's studies courses must, from the very beginning, resist monist (gender-only) discourse when analyzing oppression in favor of integrated curriculum that engages students in feminist discussion of race and class (and other systems of dominance).

The practice itself has been taking from the women's studies textbook Women's Voices, Feminist Visions: Classic and Contemporary Readings by Susan M. Shaw and Janet Lee (p. 61). Rather than creating my own pedagogical practice to shed light on the way each of us experience varying degrees of privilege and oppression based on our multiple subject positions, I intend to make use of, and add to existing tools that have been developed by feminist teachers before me (this exercise was created by authors and is based on Peggy McIntosh's "White and Male Privilege," a featured reading in the text's second chapter, "Systems of Privilege and Inequality in Women's Lives."

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learning activity:

Unpacking Your Knapsack
Author Peggy McIntosh lists a number of ways that she experiences White privilege.
Based on your various non-target statuses*, make lists of the ways you experience
the following categories of privilege:

White
Middle or upper class
Young
Male
Heterosexual
Able-bodied

*Target groups are groups that are targeted as “less than” or different because of their race, gender, age, sexual orientation, and/or other differences. Non-target groups are defined as groups that are more likely to receive privileges and benefits in a society, i.e. part of the dominant group.

Addition to exercise for graduate students: Share with the class one or two lists of the ways that you are privileged based on your various non-target statuses, and take a moment to speculate (on paper or verbally) how taking responsibility for your social location is important to a holistic and integrated women's studied curriculum that highlights intersectionality. How might this exercise benefit you as a future teacher of women's studies? of some other discipline? in non-traditional teaching environments?

Peace,
Jessica

Question/Pedagogical Practice for 04.07

In the feminist classroom we focus on decentering authority and power by valuing, empowering and encouraging experiential knowledge of students allowing for critical thinking and engagement in, or challenging of, ideas, theories and thought processes presented by the professor/teacher. Student resistance, monist thoughts, racist/sexist assumptions, or reproduction of dominant ideologies (through subtle and not so subtle ways) complicate this decentering of power. How as feminist teachers do, or can, we navigate between both a decentering of power/valuing of students' experiential knowledge and still work towards an anti-sexist, -homophobic, -racist, -classist, -ageist, -ability(ist?) course? In other words, what strategies can we use to maintain a feminist pedagogy valuing experiential knowledge of our students when our students come from, are vested in, informed by, marred by, or are products of an otherwise racist, sexist, classist, homophobic, ageist and ability(ist?) society?

OR

This is a quick write that does not have to be shared; it is a personal self-reflection that might illustrate or highlight some of your own assumptions, fears or investment in power. Donadey's piece examines how fear can inform student resistance to anti-racist or anti-colonial theory. Fear can come across as defensiveness, anger, and refusal. She discusses ideas of unsettling assumptions, solipsism, vested privileges, and reaffirming the myths that justify one's dominance. She also mentions that a truly radical pedagogy "would integrate emotions in the epistemological model". As such, take a few moments to think about a time in a class, CR group, or other discussion wherein you found yourself as angry, defensive, or refusing to engage with the material. Why? Thinking back now, was the material challenging a privilege in which you were/are invested? How did/n't this change your perspective on something? What did your anger, resistance, or refusal to engage reveal about yourself?

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?