Embodying Controversy Through Feminist Pedagogy

Authors

  • Denise B. McLeod George Brown College
  • Willie J. Wright Rutgers University
  • Nicole Laliberte University of Toronto Mississauga
  • Alison L. Bain York University
  • Lorraine Dowler Pennsylvania State University

Keywords:

Feminist geography, feminist pedagogy, controversy, anti-oppressive pedagogy, post-secondary education

Abstract

The papers in this special issue were inspired by a workshop designed to engage with the myriad ways that controversy manifests in feminist pedagogies in post-secondary geography classrooms. Whether early in their careers or more senior, all special issue contributors reflect upon what and how they have been (in)formally taught – as both students and instructors – and learned what to teach, how to teach, and how to connect with other educators about the challenges of engaging with controversy in/as critical pedagogies. This introduction explores how the authors, individually and collectively, offer emotionally informed analyses of their embodied pedagogies and the consequent exclusions and discriminations resulting from them. We explore how the contributors envision ‘world-making’ alternatives within colleges and universities, assuming in some small capacity the responsibility for recreating academic institutions as more socially just. Although it is our goal to use controversy as a lens to disrupt the academic institutions and the systems of oppression upon which they are founded, the imperfectness of our disruptions was evident in the workshop (as explored in this issue) and acknowledged in the construction of this special issue as well.

Author Biography

Nicole Laliberte, University of Toronto Mississauga

Nicole Laliberte is an Assistant Professor, Teaching Stream in the Department of Geography at the University of Toronto Mississauga.

References

Ahmed, Sara. 2017. Living a Feminist Life. Durham: Duke University Press.

Bauch, Nicholas. 2010. The academic geography video genre: A methodological examination. Geography Compass 4(5): 475-484.

Biondi, Martha. 2012. The Black Revolution on Campus. Berkeley, California: University of Berkeley Press.

Brice, Sarah. 2018. Situating skill: Contemporary observational drawing as a spatial method in geographic research. Cultural Geographies 25(1): 135-158.

Bryan, Michelle, Brandy Wilson, Ashlee Lewis, and Lisa Wills 2012. Exploring the impact of “race talk” in the education classroom: doctoral student reflections. Journal of Diversity in Higher Education 5(3): 123-1347.

Chick, Nancy and Holly Hassel. 2009. “Don’t Hate Me Because I’m Virtual”: Feminist pedagogy in the online classroom. Feminist Teacher 19(3): 195-215.

Daigle, Michelle and Juanita Sundberg. 2017. From where we stand: Unsettling geographical knowledges in the classroom. Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers 42(3): 338-341.

de Leeuw, Sarah. 2017. Writing as righting: Truth and reconciliation, poetics, and new geo-graphing in colonial Canada. The Canadian Geographer 61(3): 306-318.

Detamore, Mathias J. 2010. The carnal body: Representation, performativity, and the rest of us. Geography Compass 4(3): 241-254.

Dixon, Mary and Senior, Kim. 2011. Appearing pedagogy: From embodied learning and teaching to embodied pedagogy. Pedagogy, Culture & Society 19(3): 473-484.

Eaves, Latoya. 2020. Interanimating Black sexualities and the geography classroom. Journal of Geography in Higher Education 44(2): 217-229.

Gale, Ken and Wyatt, Jonathan. 2017. Working at the wonder: Collaborative writing as method of inquiry. Qualitative Inquiry 23(5): 355-364.

Haritaworn, Jin, Ghaida Moussa, and Syrus Marcus Ware with Rio Rodriguez. 2018. Queering Urban Justice: Queer of Colour Formations in Toronto. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.

Holmes, Mary. 2004. Feeling beyond rules: Politicizing the sociology of emotion and anger in feminist politics. European Journal of Social Theory 7(2): 209-227.

hooks, bell. 2014. Teaching to Transgress. New York, NY: Routledge.

Hunt, Sarah and Holmes, Cindy. 2015. Everyday decolonization: Living a decolonizing queer politics. Journal of Lesbian Studies 19(2): 154-172.

Igloliorte, Heather, Alice Ming Wai Jim, Erin Morton, Charmaine A. Nelson, Cheli Nighttraveller, AJ  Ripley, Carla Taunton and Tamara Vukov, with Susan Cahill and Kristy A. Holmes. 2017. Killjoys, academic citizenship and the politics of getting along. Canadian Journal of Cultural Studies 38: 187-208.

Ivancheva, Mariya, Kathleen Lynch, and Kathryn Keating. 2019. Precarity, gender and care in the neoliberal academy. Gender, Work and Organization 26(4): 448–462.

Kerschbaum, Stephanie L., Laura T. Eisenman, and James M. Jones. 2017. Introduction: Disability, Disclosure and Diversity. In Kerschbaum, Stephanie L., Laura T. Eisenman, and James M. Jones (Eds.) Negotiating Disability: Disclosure and Higher Education. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. pp: 1-12

Laliberté, Nicole, Alison L. Bain, Greg Laneknau, Kristen Sziarto, Michelle F. Bolduc, and Anna M. McGinty. 2017. The controversy capital of stealth feminism in higher education. ACME: An International Journal for Critical Geographies 16(1): 34-58.

Laster Pirtle, Whitney N. 2020. Racial capitalism: A fundamental cause of Novel Coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic inequalities in the United States. Health Education & Behavior. https://doi.org/10.1177/1090198120922942

Longhurst, Robyn. 2017. Skype: Bodies, Screens, Space. New York: Routledge.

Longhurst, Robyn and Johnson, Lynda. 2014. Bodies, gender, place and culture: 21 years on. Gender, Place & Culture: A Journal of Feminist Geography 21(3): 267-278.

Lugones, Maria C. and Elizabeth V. Spelman. 1983. Have we got a theory for you! Feminist theory, cultural imperialism, and the demand for ‘the woman’s voice.’ Women’s Studies International Forum 6(6): 573-581.

Maddrell, Avril, Nicola J. Thomas, and Stephanie Wyse. 2019. Glass ceilings and stone floors: An intersectional approach to challenges UK geographers face across the career lifecycle. Geografiska Annaler Series B: Human Geography 101(1): 7–20.

Mahtani, Minelle. 2004. Mapping race and gender in the academy: The experiences of women of colour faculty and gradaute students in Britain, the US, and Canada. Journal of Geography in Higher Education 28 (1): 91–99.

McCormack, Derek P. 2008. Geographies for moving bodies: Thinking, dancing, spaces. Geography Compass 2(6): 1822 - 1836.

Nast, Heidi. 1999. ‘Sex’, ‘Race’ and Multiculturalism: Critical consumption and the politics of course evaluations. Journal of Geography in Higher Education 23(1): 102-115.

McCusker, Geraldine 2017. A feminist teacher’s account of her attempts to achieve the goals of feminist pedagogy. Gender and Education 29(4): 445-460.

Mountz, Alison, Anne Bonds, Becky Mansfield, Jenna Loyd, Jennifer Hyndman, Margaret Walton-Roberts, Ranu Basu, Risa Whitson, Roberta Hawkins, Trina Hamilton, and Winifred Curran. 2015. For slow scholarship: A feminist politics of resistance through collective action in the neoliberal university. ACME: An International Journal for Critical Geographies 14(4), 1235-59.

Mullings, Beverly, and Sunjukta Mukherjee. 2018. Reflections on mentoring as decolonial, transnational, feminist praxis. Gender Place and Culture 25(10): 1405–1422.

Pryor, Jonathan 2015. Out in the classroom: transgender student experiences at a large public university. Journal of College Student Development 56(5): 440-455.

Rand, Erin J. 2013. An appetite for activism: The Lesbian Avengers and the queer politics of visibility. Women’s Studies in Communication 36(2): 121-141.

Robinson, Cedric J. 2000. Black Marxism: The making of the Black radical tradition. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press.

Robinson, Terrell E. and Warren C. Hope. 2013. Teaching in higher education: Is there a need for training in pedagogy in graduate degree programs? Research in Higher Education Journal, 21.

Sapon-Shevin, Mara. 2004. Being out, being silent, being strategic: Troubling the difference. Journal of Gay and Lesbian Issues in Education 2(2): 73-77.

Settles, Isis H., NiCole T. Buchanan, and Kristie Dotson. 2019. Scrutinized but not recognized: (In)visibility and hypervisibility experiences of faculty of color. Journal of Vocational Behavior 113: 62-74.

Story, Kaila Adia. 2017. Fear of a Black Femme: The existential conundrum of embodying a Black femme identity while being a professor of Black, Queer, and Feminist Studies. Journal of Lesbian Studies 21(4): 407–19.

Strauss, Kendra. 2019. Labour geography III: Precarity, racial capitalisms, and infrastructure. Progress in Human Geography. https://doi.org/10.1177/0309132519895308

Thomsen, Carly. (2016). In plain(s) sight: Rural LGBTQ women and the politics of visibility. In Gray, Mary L., Colin R. Johnson, and Brian J. Gilley (Eds.) Queering The Countryside: New Frontiers in Rural Queer Studies. New York: New York University Press, pp.244-263.

Walls, Jill K. and Scott S. Hall 2018. A focus group study of African American students’ experiences of classroom discussions about race at a predominantly White university. Teaching in Higher Education 23(1): 47-62.

Downloads

Published

2021-11-22

How to Cite

McLeod, D. B., Wright, W. J., Laliberte, N., Bain, A. L., & Dowler, L. (2021). Embodying Controversy Through Feminist Pedagogy. ACME: An International Journal for Critical Geographies, 20(5), 479–490. Retrieved from https://acme-journal.org/index.php/acme/article/view/1936

Issue

Section

SI - Controversy in Anti-oppression Pedagogies (Guest Ed. Nicole Laliberte)