Resources for the Resistance: 16 must-reads on queer, anti-racist pedagogy
For February’s Resources for the Resistance, I’m serving up my favorite articles about teaching as praxis and practice.
In this post: I list sixteen PDFs on different topics including pedagogy, Why We Teach as a Practice of Freedom, Teaching to Transgress in Real Life, and the Pedagogy of Lesbian Feminism.
Next week: Dr. Tashima Thomas gives Unsolicited Academic Advice on trusting yourself, your methodology, and finding your tribe.
Last week: I write about why I believe in our (Audre) Lorde's uses of the erotic, the power of lesbian feminism for ALL of us, and how love informs our work both within and beyond the university.
*Call for PDFs! Help me out those of you with fab database access, I'm on the hunt for more about this topic!
p.s. Have a recommendation? Let us know by replying to this email, and soon we'll have a feature built out for you to submit them!
Note: this annotated bibliography is not complete, nor comprehensive. These are simply readings a few of us found powerful when thinking through the pedagogy of aligning your praxis with your practice in the classroom.
PDFs are organized into three categories:
Why We Teach As A Practice of Freedom
On Teaching to Transgress IRL
The Pedagogy of Lesbian Feminism.
For abstracts/ the annotated bibliography, scroll to the end of this list.
Why We Teach As A Practice of Freedom (The Theory of it All)
Giroux, Henry A. "public Pedagogy as Cultural Politics: Stuart Hall and the Crisis of Culture." Cultural Studies (London, England) 14, no. 2 (2000): 341-360.
Varadharajan, Asha. 2016. "' . half-Sick of Shadows': Figure and Ground in Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak's Imagination of the Subaltern." Cultural Studies (London, England) 30 (5): 730-753.
Puri, Jyoti. "Postcolonial Feminisms and Introducing Sociology in the Imperium." Radical Teacher (Cambridge) 101, no. 101 (2015): 63-71.
Osman, Ruksana and David J. Hornsby. Transforming Teaching and Learning in Higher Education: Towards a Socially just Pedagogy in a Global Context. Cham: Springer International Publishing AG, 2017.
Chapter 2: "Stuart Hall and Education: Being Critical of Critical Pedagogy." by Nazir Carrim.
Chapter 3: "Being/Becoming an Undutiful Daughter: Thinking as a Practice of Freedom." by Danai S. Mupots.
Leonard, Jerry D. Lesson Four: “An Aesthetic Education” in 197 Lines, or, Keeping “Even Pace With … Dissolution” Teaching Spivak--Otherwise : A Contribution to the Critique of the Post-Theory Farrago, Peter Lang Publishing, Incorporated, 2019.
On Teaching to Transgress IRL:
I recommend this entire book, as Chavez describes of it: "Here is my testament, a blueprint for a twenty-first-century writing workshop that concedes the humanity of people of color so that we may raise our voices in vote for love over hate."
Chavez, Felicia Rose. Introduction (full PDF, but y'all buy this book for the chapters and support this) The Anti-Racist Writing Workshop : How To Decolonize the Creative Classroom, Haymarket Books, 2021.
Interview with Felicia Rose Chavez, author of The Anti-Racist Writing Workshop: How to Decolonize the Creative Classroom. amvettergmailcom . Weblog post. Teachers, Profs, Parents: Writers Who Care [BLOG] Newstex. Jul 16, 2021
The Pedagogy of Lesbian Feminism:
Sara Ahmed: "Lesbian Feminism," Living a Feminist Life. Duke University Press: Durham and London, 2017.
Leola Murphy: Intersectional feminisms: Reflections on theory and activism in Sara Ahmed’s Living a feminist life (2017) Winner, 2017 Women’s Studies Journal Graduate Prize for a Feminist Essay
Heather Talley and Alexis Pauline Gumbs. "Teaching Resources Brilliance Remastered: An Interview with Alexis Pauline Gumbs." Feminist Teacher 22, no. 2 (2012): 165-167.
McRae, Eleanor and Jen Scott Curwood. "LGBTIQ+ Representations and Social Justice Principles within English Teacher Education." English in Australia 53, no. 2 (2018): 59-67.
Jonathan T. Pryor. "Queer Activist Leadership: An Exploration of Queer Leadership in Higher Education,". Journal of Diversity in Higher Education. 2021, Vol. 14, No. 3, 303– 315
Ryan A. Miller Toward Intersectional Identity Perspectives on Disability and LGBTQ Identities in Higher Education. Journal of College Student Development. Disability and LGBTQ Identities. May–June 2018 ◆ vol 59 / no 3
Haynes C, Taylor L, Mobley SD, Haywood J. Existing and Resisting: The Pedagogical Realities of Black, Critical Men and Women Faculty. Journal of Higher Education. 2020;91(5):698-721. doi:10.1080/00221546.2020.1731263
Alexis Pauline Gumbs: "17th Floor: A Pedagogical Oracle from/with Audre Lorde." Journal of Lesbian Studies 21, no. 4 (2017): 375.
favor request: can someone with database access please send me a pdf of this? thanks!!
Helton, L. "Learning Butch: Tracing Lesbian and Trans Becoming in the Classroom." Journal of Lesbian Studies (2021): 1.
favor request: can someone with database access please send me a pdf of this? thanks!!
Lewis, Mel Michelle. "Body of Knowledge: Black Queer Feminist Pedagogy, Praxis, and Embodied Text." Journal of Lesbian Studies 15, no. 1 (2011): 49.
favor request: can someone with database access please send me a pdf of this? thanks!!
Guest Recommendations: What to Read by Lesbians
Post-PhD co-conspirator, Sohini Chatterjee's recommended lesbian reads:
Fun Home by Alison Bechdel. (Interview with the author, click here)
Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal by Jeanette Winterson.(review of this memoir, click here)
Her Body and Other Parties by Carmen Machado (review of book, click here)
Lesbian Feminism: Essays Opposing the Global Heteropatriarchy. Zed Books, 2019. edited by Niharika Banerjee et al. (FULL pdf in link)
ANNOTATED BIBLIOGRAPHY:
Why We Teach As A Practice of Freedom (The Theory of it All)
Giroux, Henry A. "public Pedagogy as Cultural Politics: Stuart Hall and the Crisis of Culture." Cultural Studies (London, England) 14, no. 2 (2000): 341-360.
ABSTRACT: This article argues that Stuart Hall's work provides an important theoretical framework for developing an expanded notion of public pedagogy, for making the pedagogical central to any understanding of political agency, and for addressing the primacy of public pedagogy and cultural politics in any viable theory of social change. Hall's work becomes particularly important not only in making education crucial to the practice of cultural studies, but also in providing a theoretical and political corrective to recent attacks on cultural politics, which cut across ideological lines and include theorists as politically diverse as Harold Bloom, Richard Rorty and Todd Gitlin.
Varadharajan, Asha. 2016. "' . half-Sick of Shadows': Figure and Ground in Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak's Imagination of the Subaltern." Cultural Studies (London, England) 30 (5): 730-753.
On Spivak, Imagination and Pedagogy
Abstract: This essay moves the category of the subaltern out of the exclusive domain of colonial historiography and restates it in the context of contemporaneity. Taking my cue from Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak’s insistence on the dream of postcoloniality in the realm of the global, I examine two ‘empirical anomalies’ that redefine subaltern insurgency, cultivate democratic reflexes, and defeat the expectations of their moment and milieu. My method throughout, in the manner of Spivak and Paul de Man, is one of interruption and undoing; my aim is to delineate what Spivak describes as ‘the resistance fitting our time.’
Puri, Jyoti. "Postcolonial Feminisms and Introducing Sociology in the Imperium." Radical Teacher (Cambridge) 101, no. 101 (2015): 63-71.
Abstract: The vast majority of introductory sociology texts and readers in the United States resolve this problem of the discipline's presentation by gesturing to or providing excerpts from C. Wright Mills' (1959) concept of the sociological imagination-as the ability to connect the life of an individual with the history of a society or the quality of mind essential to grasp the interplay of man (sic) and society, of biography and history, of self and world (p. 4). Taking this Foucauldian critique further, other scholars seek a more fundamental disciplinary shift by bringing to bear a postcolonial critique on sociology. [...]José H. Bortoluci and Robert Jansen (2013) call for a postcolonial sociology that more thoroughly engages, and contributes to, the study of colonial and postcolonial Latin America.
Osman, Ruksana and David J. Hornsby. Transforming Teaching and Learning in Higher Education: Towards a Socially just Pedagogy in a Global Context. Cham: Springer International Publishing AG, 2017. Cover and Front Pages (full PDF)
This book explores the idea of transformation and pedagogy, In particular… how universities are transformed through a set of pedagogical interventions and stances that integrate a sense of moral and ethical purpose to learning. Actively integrating cultural pluralism in developing knowledge and understanding aspires to liberate the learner from existing power structures by fostering a desire to challenge and change the social system in which we live and connects the reality around us and its many problems to the knowledge generation process. Intro (full PDF)
Chapter 2: "Stuart Hall and Education: Being Critical of Critical Pedagogy" Nazir Carrim looks to the theoretical contribution of Stuart Hall to teaching and learning by engaging with hiswork on articulation and considering his conception of social reality.
Chapter 3: "Being/Becoming an Undutiful Daughter: Thinking as a Practice of Freedom." Danai S. Mupotsa explores how students' social and political locations from non-dominant locations. It's a good read for thinking through the various cultural contexts of Sara Ahmed's "feminist killjoy" (also on this list)
Leonard, Jerry D.. Teaching Spivak--Otherwise : A Contribution to the Critique of the Post-Theory Farrago, Peter Lang Publishing, Incorporated, 2019.
On Teaching to Transgress IRL:
Chavez, Felicia Rose. The Anti-Racist Writing Workshop : How To Decolonize the Creative Classroom, Haymarket Books, 2021. Cover and Publishing Info.
Introduction (full PDF, but y'all buy this book for the chapters and support this)
https://www.antiracistworkshop.com/
I recommend this entire book, as Chavez describes of it:
"Here is my testament, a blueprint for a twenty-first-century writing workshop that concedes the humanity of people of color so that we may raise our voices in vote for love over hate." -Felicia Rose Chavez
Official book blurb:
A captivating mix of memoir and progressive teaching strategies, The Anti-Racist Writing Workshop: How to Decolonize the Creative Classroom demonstrates how to be culturally attuned, twenty-first-century educators.
The Anti-Racist Writing Workshop is a call to create healthy, sustainable, and empowering classroom communities. Award-winning educator Felicia Rose Chavez exposes the invisible politics of power and privilege that have silenced writers of color for far too long. It’s more urgent than ever that we consciously work against traditions of dominance in the classroom, but what specific actions can we take to achieve authentically inclusive communities?
Interview with Felicia Rose Chavez, author of The Anti-Racist Writing Workshop: How to Decolonize the Creative Classroom. amvettergmailcom . Weblog post. Teachers, Profs, Parents: Writers Who Care [BLOG] Newstex. Jul 16, 2021
The Pedagogy of Lesbian Feminism:
Sara Ahmed: "Lesbian Feminism," Living a Feminist Life. Duke University Press: Durham and London, 2017.
Leola Murphy: Intersectional feminisms: Reflections on theory and activism in Sara Ahmed’s Living a feminist life (2017) Winner, 2017 Women’s Studies Journal Graduate Prize for a Feminist Essay
Alexis Pauline Gumbs: "17th Floor: A Pedagogical Oracle from/with Audre Lorde." Journal of Lesbian Studies 21, no. 4 (2017): 375.
favor request: can someone with database access please send me a pdf of this? thanks!!
Abstract: In 1974, warrior poet mother Audre Lorde published the poem "Blackstudies," a freeform dream villanelle about her complicated experience as a Black lesbian feminist English professor at the City University of New York during the dynamic period when students rose up in protest. The university granted open admissions, and cultural nationalists who taught at City University worked to create a Black Studies program. [This work] should be activated as a resource for current Black and Brown lesbian educators and everyone who brings complexity and nuance to their teaching settings, their students, each other, and the world more broadly.
I have a pedagogy crush on this author, here's her website: https://www.alexispauline.com/
Heather Talley and Alexis Pauline Gumbs. "Teaching Resources Brilliance Remastered: An Interview with Alexis Pauline Gumbs." Feminist Teacher 22, no. 2 (2012): 165-167.
Abstract: Feminist teaching is often an isolated and isolating practice because the work challenges the norms that structure so many educational spaces--that power can and should be employed to elicit student performance, that gendered dynamics are natural and should be taken for granted, that learning is best directed towards job market outcomes. Some of us are lucky to have feminist colleagues who help us disentangle institutional politics and challenge us to reimagine how our classroom can work. Others are geographically, disciplinarily, or otherwise isolated from the feminist community. In this latter scenario, how, then, do we connect with others who share our feminist vision?
Helton, L. "Learning Butch: Tracing Lesbian and Trans Becoming in the Classroom." Journal of Lesbian Studies (2021): 1.
favor request: can someone with database access please send me a pdf of this? thanks!!
Abstract: In this autobiographical essay, I study the ways in which becoming a classroom teacher illuminated the school-based gender socialization that had shaped my contested understanding of myself as a girl and woman. Leaning on the work of queer theorists both within and outside of fields explicitly marked as "pedagogical," I examine the notion of the "hidden curriculum" of gender.
McRae, Eleanor and Jen Scott Curwood. "LGBTIQ+ Representations and Social Justice Principles within English Teacher Education." English in Australia 53, no. 2 (2018): 59-67.
Abstract: Teacher education programs play a significant role in shaping pre-service English teachers' pedagogy. The incorporation of texts with lesbian, gay, bisexual, transsexual/transgender, intersex, and queer/questioning (LGBTIQ+) perspectives in the curriculum is one mechanism for promoting inclusion as well as a means to address and combat homophobia and heteronormativity. Situated at an Australian university, this case study examined the beliefs and practices of preservice teachers and teacher educators related to the inclusion of LGBTIQ+ issues and texts in secondary English classrooms.
Lewis, Mel Michelle. "Body of Knowledge: Black Queer Feminist Pedagogy, Praxis, and Embodied Text." Journal of Lesbian Studies 15, no. 1 (2011): 49.
favor request: can someone with database access please send me a pdf of this? thanks!!
This article examines the “body as text” in the Black women's studies classroom. I transparently name this method of teaching “Black queer feminist pedagogy,” an ordered and practical teaching method that relies on both the teaching of realities and teaching through interdisciplinary practices, while recognizing the body as a site of learning and knowledge. Illustrated by auto-ethnographic narratives drawn from classroom experiences, I discuss how the body inspires teachable moments, and consider how embodiment and subjectivity function as “equipment” for teaching and learning.
Jonathan T. Pryor. "Queer Activist Leadership: An Exploration of Queer Leadership in Higher Education,". Journal of Diversity in Higher Education
2021, Vol. 14, No. 3, 303– 315
Abstract: Higher Education has witnessed an increase in support of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ) communities on college campuses. Despite this slow growth, many colleges and university climates remain largely unwelcoming to LGBTQ students, faculty, and staff. Student activism has largely been responsible for this growth, supported by staff and faculty advocates.
Ryan A. Miller Toward Intersectional Identity Perspectives on Disability and LGBTQ Identities in Higher Education. Journal of College Student Development. Disability and LGBTQ Identities. May–June 2018 ◆ vol 59 / no 3
Abstract: Little has been published on the intersections of disability and queer identities among college students. I propose 5 intersectional identity perspectives based on semistructured interviews with 25 students at a research university who identified as lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, or queer students with disabilities. Students articulated relationships among their disability and queer identities as (a) intersectional, (b) interactive, (c) overlapping, (d) parallel, and/or (e) oppositional.
Haynes C, Taylor L, Mobley SD, Haywood J. Existing and Resisting: The Pedagogical Realities of Black, Critical Men and Women Faculty. Journal of Higher Education. 2020;91(5):698-721. doi:10.1080/00221546.2020.1731263
Abstract: The existing discourse highlighting Black faculty experiences in the classroom are largely hidden among studies that center the experiences of Faculty of Color who teach courses about race, gender, and/or diversity, regardless of their faculty status. And, even fewer of those studies unpack how their pedagogical approaches further complicate the experiences of Black faculty, especially Black faculty without tenure. The authors, who are Black hetero women and Black queer men, used embodied text as a framework to explore their teaching experiences as faculty and critical pedagogues