2000-2001 Huckabay Teaching Fellowship Proposal
by Christine Keating

Critical Pedagogies of Race, Class, and Gender
Christine Keating, Political Science and Women’s Studies
Mentor: Priti Ramamurthy, Assistant Professor, Department of Women Studies

Project Motivation

"Theory is that which helps you comprehend what is happening around you and within you. Theory emerges from the concrete, from efforts to make sense of everyday experiences, from efforts to intervene critically in my life and the lives of others."
                                                                              bell hooks,  Teaching to Transgress
 

Women's Studies students often lament the classroom/ "real world" divide; they note that it is difficult to share and continue the conversations they have in the Women's Studies classroom in their out-of-classroom lives.  Indeed, the question of the link --or lack of link-- between theory and practice has been one that has vexed feminist theory as well as the teaching of women's studies. At stake in solving this problem is ensuring the relevance of what students learn in the Women's Studies classroom to their own lives and underscoring the importance of bringing students' lives and experiences to bear on feminist theory itself.  Rather than attributing this problem to the conceptual difficulty of feminist theory or to the use of "overly academic" language, this proposal holds that the theory/practice divide is an instructional challenge that can be approached by working with students to find, explore, and invent participatory mechanisms to communicate and build feminist theory. In other words, the theory/practice divide is a pedagogic problem.

 
Project Method

To meet that challenge, this project will draw upon the methodological resources of critical pedagogy. Critical pedagogists have developed several concrete methods to encourage people to "make meaning and act from reflection on their everyday experience and the conditions in society" (Shor 1992: 12).  These methods include Paulo Freire's and Ira Shor's problem-posing and dialogic approach to critical pedagogy, Augusto Boal's participatory theater exercises, and workshops devised by the Highlander School, the Doris Marshall Institute, and the Escuela Popular Nortena. The methods are geared to generate participatory dialogue about issues that are often hard to talk about such as race, class and gender inequities-- issues that are at the heart of women's studies courses. Critical pedagogists have also devised ways of fostering conversation and learning about inequitable power relations and how we might change them using innovative forms of expression. An example of one such innovative practice is Augusto Boal's participatory theater method entitled "forum theater" in which actors (it is emphasized that no formal training or skill in acting is required) present the audience with a scene that involves a conflict.  The actors then repeat the scene and the audience, or "spect-actors",  to use Boal's terminology, stop the scene and take the place of one of the characters to intervene in the scene to change the situation. The scene gets replayed until the participants are satisfied that they have changed the situation in an effective and realistic manner.  Among the central goals of Boal's  method, and of critical pedagogy more generally, is to bring to the forefront participants' own experiences, concerns, knowledges, ways of thinking, and perceptions in problem-solving and critical conversation.

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Course Proposal and Goals

The Huckabay Fellowship will be used by Christine Keating, under the guidance and supervision of Dr. Priti Ramamurthy, to design an upper-level Women Studies course that trains students in critical pedagogy approaches in relation to themes of race, class, and gender. The goals of this course are: (i) to involve students in critical conversations about race, class, and gender in their communities, (ii) foster understanding of the integral relationship of theory and practice, (iii) develop alternative modalities to communicate theory in settings outside of the classroom, and (iv) draw on the insights from those communities and "everyday" practices to develop feminist theory.

As currently envisioned, the course will have four components:

1) Analysis of critical pedagogic theory and method: Students will be introduced to the theory and techniques of critical pedagogy, paying particular attention to traditions developed in struggles against race, class, and gender oppression in the U.S. and transnationally. Different techniques and goals of critical pedagogy will be studied to explore the connection between education and action, the mechanisms for the creation of settings for critical conversations in everyday life, and the epistemic conditions for the formation of social movements.

 2) Identification of group: Students will identify a group of people with whom they would like to engage in critical conversation with over issues of race, class, and gender (examples include a campus group, a grassroots organization, a political association or group, friends, sorority or fraternity members, family, co-workers, or neighbors).  Ideally the group should include more than 5 people and no more than twenty-five.

3) Design and implementation of a participatory workshop: Drawing on the theory and methods studied, as well as on their own analyses of the group they would like to work with, students will work in small groups or individually to design a workshop for their targeted group.  Students will first conduct their workshops with the class to get input from the instructor and from the class, and will then take the workshop to their targeted group.

 4) Development of feminist theory using insights from the workshop: Students will critically reflect on the workshop in a final essay which will include a description of the workshop itself, examples from the actual workshop, and an analysis of the insights that it generated. It is expected that they will answer questions such as: Were there any issues raised that were unexpected?  How do the conversations engendered in the workshops interrogate, complicate or help to clarify feminist theory?

The course will be limited to 15 students the first time it is taught. Course grades (5 credits) will be based on preparation and participation in group discussions and activities, writing assignments, and workshop design and implementation. There will be two writing assignments for the course. The first will ask students to analyze the group that they choose to work with in order to ensure that the students think closely about their audience. The second will ask them to analyze their workshop in terms of its potential contribution to feminist theory and to reflect on their own learning.

Project Implementation and Wider Impacts

The Huckabay fellowship will be used by Christine Keating during Winter 2002 to work with Dr. Ramamurthy to design the course. In particular, she will focus on developing a list of readings from contemporary feminist theory and a range of critical pedagogic strategies.  Based on these insights, she will also develop assignments and evaluatory methods that are geared to the particular needs of this course. It is expected that Christine Keating will teach the course in Spring 2002. In addition to developing the course as a stand-alone course for upper-level undergraduates, Dr. Ramamurthy and Christine will also explore the possibility of linking the course with other courses in the Women Studies curriculum and/or developing critical pedagogy "modules" that could be used to serve Service Learning and K-12 Outreach and thus adopted by a range of Women Studies courses.

Evaluation

It is expected that the course will be evaluated in several ways. First, both the content of the course and the quality of instruction will be assessed by the students in the middle of the quarter as well as at the end of the course. Second, Christine Keating will keep a class journal and meet weekly with Dr. Ramamurthy to discuss its progress. Third, students' own progress will be measured by their participation in class discussion, their written assignments, and their final project. Fourth, the instructor will work with students to devise a mechanism for evaluation of their own community-based projects and incorporate this evaluation into their workshops. Finally, at the end of the course, Dr. Ramamurthy, Christine Keating, and students from the class will hold a presentation for Women Studies faculty and graduate students on their experiences in the class. Throughout the development and instruction of the course, we will draw upon the resources of CIDR to assist this project.

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Statement by Priti Ramamurthy, Faculty Mentor

Christine Keating's Huckabay proposal to develop a course on Critical Pedagogies of Race, Class, and Gender is exciting to me for several reasons. First, the problem that Christine articulates of the relationship between theory and practice in Women's Studies classrooms speaks to an issue around which there is currently an animated debate in both feminist theory and in the academic field of Women's Studies. This is a historical problem in some ways peculiar to U.S. Women's Studies because it institutionalized a field of inquiry that grew out of the women's movement of the 1970's and therefore began as a practical approach to changing the actual conditions of women's, and indeed, all disadvantaged people's lives. Yet, over time, and concomitant with the "success" of Women's Studies and feminist theory in the academy, there seems to be a disjuncture between the political project of Women's Studies and its intellectual project. Christine's proposed course, by using participatory methods as an intellectual and theoretical project, addresses that disjuncture head-on. The project, thus, has much wider salience in the discipline in addition to meeting the immediate needs of our students in the UW Department of Women Studies.

Second, this project is interesting to me because it promises to expand the range of pedagogies that are characterizable as "feminist". Based on the consciousness-raising strategies of the women's movement of the 1970s, Women's Studies as a field has valorized pedagogies that privilege the creation of a classroom as a safe area where, through compassionate listening, co-operative learning takes place. The sharing of personal experiences in a supportive environment allows the students (mainly women) in Women Studies classrooms, to confront the oppressive practices and institutions in their everyday lives and through discussion arrive at new interpretations. Yet, while this centering of personal experiences is important, because it still goes against the grain, it often reproduces the "individual" as the locus of any change. I see Christine's project, on the other hand, extending the possibility of feminist pedagogies from the "individual" to the "social" as a realm of interrogation. Issues of international political economy, race, class, and gender that one may not address, if one is individually privileged, must now be confronted. In my own teaching this is a struggle I am constantly working on: of how to make the process of de-centering individual privilege an intellectual project that is socially accountable and difficult but exhilarating for all students.

Third, I think the potential of Christine Keating's course for both innovatively linking with and broadening UW Women Studies education more generally will make my involvement very worthwhile. I propose to work with her during the process of designing the course to consider if it can be built around "modules" that can be used by other courses. For example, perhaps a module on race and gender could be designed to also be part of Women 200: Introduction to Women Studies or Women 455: Feminist Theory. It is also quite possible that Christine's course could be designed so as to be done by students in concert with other Women Studies courses, for example, Women 322: Race, Class, and Gender or Women 305: Feminism in an International Context. Students would draw on the material from these other courses, and the participatory pedagogies from Critical Pedagogies of Race, Class, and Gender during the course of a quarter. This course could easily be designed in conjunction with a Service Learning component in keeping with UW’s emphasis on the need to develop experiential learning opportunities for our undergraduates. Finally, I think the course will provide an opportunity to think in very systematic ways about involving our students in K-12 and/or community outreach.

I see my tasks on this project as resourcing Christine in thinking through ideas on critical and feminist pedagogy, in helping her prepare the readings and the syllabus, discussing the assignments and formulating, with CIDR, ways to evaluate the course. In doing this I will be drawing on my own experience as a professor at UW and earlier at Syracuse and Cornell Universities. I am constantly thinking about issues of pedagogy, and, I guess, this is reflected in my over-subscribed classes, teaching evaluations, and my nomination for the Distinguished Teaching Award (1999, 2000) and the Graduate Mentor Award (2001). I have also presented papers on feminist pedagogy and transforming the Women Studies Curriculum at the National Women Studies Association meetings and at several colleges. In the next few years I plan to complete an edited book, Transnational and Critical Feminist Pedagogies, that explores and theorizes these very issues.

Student Statement: I bring to this project academic training in race, class and gender theory; a knowledge of and training in critical pedagogic theory and method; and teaching experience in Women's Studies and Political Science.

Academic Background: I am a sixth-year student in the Political Science department. I came to UW with an undergraduate degree in History from Carleton College and with an M.A. in Women's Studies from the George Washington University. My M.A. thesis was an analysis of the history, issues, and structure of the women's movement in Sri Lanka. At the UW, I have focused my study in the fields of political theory, women and politics, and comparative politics. In my doctoral dissertation, I analyze the impact of the close linkage of the nationalist and feminist movements in pre-Independence India on women in the postcolonial Indian democratic framework. I anticipate defending my doctoral thesis and graduating by Spring 2002.

Critical Pedagogy Training: Since 1990, I have worked during the summers with La Escuela Popular Nortena, a center for critical pedagogy in New Mexico. There I have co-developed and facilitated workshops on issues such as violence against women and youth politics. At the school, I have gained experience in identifying groups to work with, creating workshops geared to them, and analyzing the workshops as sites for building critical race, gender, and class theory. Based on this work, I have published "Towards a Practice of Radical Engagement" in Radical Teacher (1999), a critical pedagogy journal.   

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Teaching History: I served as a Teaching Assistant for a year in the Political Science department, teaching several sections of “Introduction to Political theory” and “Introduction to American Politics.” Next, I served as an Instructor in the Integrated Writing Program, designing and teaching intensive writing courses linked to political science courses. After 2 years on a FLAS fellowship and a year abroad doing field work, I returned to teaching last summer when I taught “Philosophy of Feminism,” a course cross-listed in the Political Science, Women's Studies, and Philosophy departments. In Fall 2000 and Winter 2001, I taught the Women’s Studies courses “Introduction to Women's Studies” and “Race, Class, and Gender.”  Currently I am teaching “Race, Class, and Gender” and the Political Science course “Concepts of Power.” In these classes, I have experimented with critical pedagogic methods and had students design their own workshops for each other. I have found that this process often facilitates students' most lively engagement with the theories studied in class and with each other. In her evaluation of the course, for example, one student wrote:

At first I and my other classmates were skeptical about doing these group projects. In our classes we are rarely called upon to contribute to the direction of the class or to contribute our own viewpoints. I think we were all a bit worried that we wouldn't have anything to say. But after experiencing the process our group went through as well as experiencing the other groups' workshops, I'd have to say that it was probably my favorite aspect of the class. It was so refreshing to actually get to talk to my fellow classmates and hear what they have to say. Overall, I would honestly have to say, and other students have said this as well, that this is one of the best classes I've taken here at the U. 

Indeed, it is the students' enthusiastic engagement with critical pedagogic theory and method in these classes that has inspired me to pursue this approach further. Students in these classes have written that they would like to take these methods outside of the classroom. Some have begun to do so informally. For example, a student from the winter quarter "Race, Class, and Gender" course went back to her high school to talk with students in preparation for a workshop on transforming attitudes towards race.  Another student gathered her friends together one evening to do a workshop that we had read about in class. The Huckabay fellowship would be a great opportunity to develop this approach more systematically and in-depth, under the guidance of Dr. Ramamurthy and with input from the CIDR staff.

Student Tasks: My tasks in the project we have proposed will be as follows: (i) to develop the syllabus, assignments, readings and assessment plan for the course with Dr. Ramamurthy during Winter 2002, (ii) to teach “Critical Pedagogies of Race, Class, and Gender” during Spring 2002, keeping a journal of the class progress and problems and meeting weekly with Dr. Ramamurthy, (iii) to explore with Dr. Ramamurthy the possibility of developing the course as a “critical pedagogy link” course to other Women’s Studies courses, (iv) to present our experiences with the course to Women’s Studies faculty and graduate students.
 

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