Strata and strategies of teaching about the global “other” using critical feminist pedagogical praxis
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.20343/teachlearninqu.7.2.6Abstract
In this article, I analyze the way “globalization” is deployed in US universities as a value addition. I explore issues of teaching about the global “Other,” the “third world,” and other unfamiliar, objectified spaces. Through critical discourse analysis of syllabi, I outline some representational and pedagogical trends. I also draw from my experience of teaching undergraduate-level globalization-focused courses, including courses on transnational feminisms, international literature, social movements, migrations, and socioeconomic exchanges. Teaching about “the other” often leads to a multiplier effect of othering within the classroom. Using transnational feminist perspectives, I argue that teaching such classes on “global,” “transnational,” or “international” women, gender, sexuality, and feminisms requires decentering not just of dominant paradigms but also of oneself as purveyor of insider or global knowledge. I also argue, as have many others before me, that a classroom can serve as a site for epistemic injustices and colonizing acts; we must attempt to find ways in which such neocolonial damages can be mitigated. This article is an exercise in finding some ways to decenter and decolonize dominant discourses on the global Other and suggest critical and compassionate pedagogical strategies.
Metrics
References
Alexander, M. J., & Mohanty, C. T. (2010). Cartographies of knowledge and power: Transnational feminism as radical praxis. In A. Swarr & R. Nagar (Eds.), Critical transnational feminist praxis (pp. 23-45). Albany, NY: State University of New York Press.
Ang, I. (1995). I’m a feminist but . . . “Other” women and postnational feminism. In B. Caine & R. Pringle (Eds.), Transitions: New Australian feminisms (pp. 57-73). New York, NY: St. Martin’s Press.
Chaput, C. (2008). Inside the teaching machine: Rhetoric and the globalization of the US public research university. Tuscaloosa, AL: University of Alabama Press.
Chowdhury, E. H. (2009). Locating global feminisms elsewhere: Braiding US women of color and transnational feminisms. Cultural Dynamics, 21(1), 51-78. https://doi.org/10.1177/0921374008100407
Chowdhury, E. H. (2011). Transnationalism reversed: Women organizing against gendered violence in Bangladesh. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press.
Collins, P. H. (1986). Learning from the outsider within: The sociological significance of black feminist thought. Social Problems, 33(6), S14-S32. https://doi.org/10.2307/800672
Collins, P. H., & Bilge, S. (2016). Intersectionality. Cambridge: Polity Press.
Darla Moore School of Business (n.d.) International requirement. University of South Carolina Retrieved from http://moore.sc.edu/academicprograms/undergraduate/globalexperience/internationalrequirement.aspx
Desai, J., Bouchard D., & Detourney D. (2010). Disavowed legacies and honorable thievery: The work of the “transnational” in feminist and LGBTQ studies.” In A. Swarr & R. Nagar (Eds.), Critical transnational feminist praxis (pp. 23-45). Albany, NY: State University of New York Press.
Doerr, N. M. (2016). Chronotopes of study abroad: The cultural Other, immersion, and compartmentalized space-time. Journal of Cultural Geography, 33(1), 80-99. https://doi.org/10.1080/08873631.2015.1065030
Downing, D. B. (2014). What does neoliberalism have to do with teaching research writing? Radical Teacher, 100(Fall), 126-132. https://doi.org/10.5195/rt.2014.168
Felten, P. (2013) Principles of good practice in SoTL. Teaching & Learning Inquiry, 1(1), 121-125. https://doi.org/10.20343/teachlearninqu.1.1.121
Freire, P. (2005). Pedagogy of the oppressed (M. B. Ramos, Trans.). New York, NY: Continuum.
Grewal, I. (2005). Transnational America: Feminisms, diasporas, neoliberalisms. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
Hobart, M. (2002). Introduction: The growth of ignorance? In M. Hobart (Ed.), An anthropological critique of development: The growth of ignorance (pp. 1-30). New York, NY: Taylor and Francis.
Jespersen, T. C. (2014). Literary identification as transformative feminist pedagogy. Feminist Teacher, 24(3), 221-228.
Kaplan, C. (1994). The politics of location as transnational feminist critical practice.” In I. Grewal & C. Kaplan (Eds.), Scattered hegemonies: Postmodernity and transnational feminist practices (pp. 137-152). Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press.
Lea, Y. (2006). The matrix of Freirean pedagogy: Time and cultural literacies. In C. A. Rossatto, R. L. Allen, & M. Pruyn (Eds.), Reinventing critical pedagogy (pp. 207-224). Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield.
Lorde, A. (2007). Sister outsider: Essays and speeches. Berkeley, CA: Crossing Press.
McLaren, P. (2006). Some reflections on critical pedagogy in the age of global empire. In C. A. Rossatto, R. L. Allen, & M. Pruyn (Eds.), Reinventing critical pedagogy (pp. 79-98). Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield.
Mies, M., & Bennholdt-Thomsen, V. (1999). The Subsistence perspective: Beyond the globalised economy (M. Mies & P. Camiller, Trans). London: Zed Books.
Minh-Ha T. T. (1989). Woman, native, other: Writing postcoloniality and feminism. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press.
Moallem, M. (2006). Review: Feminist scholarship and the internationalization of women’s studies. Feminist Studies, 32(2), 332-351. https://www.jstor.org/stable/20459089
Mohanty, C. T. (1988). Under Western eyes: Feminist scholarship and colonial discourses. Feminist Review, 30(Autumn), 61-88. https://www.jstor.org/stable/1395054
Mohanty, C. T. (2003). Feminism without borders: Decolonizing theory, practicing solidarity. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
Monzó, L. D. (2014). A critical pedagogy for democracy: Confronting higher education’s neoliberal agenda with a critical Latina feminist episteme. Journal for Critical Education Policy Studies, 12(1), 73-100. Retrieved from http://www.jceps.com/wp-content/uploads/PDFs/12-1-03.pdf
Ong, A. (2006). Neoliberalism as exception: Mutations in citizenship and sovereignty. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
Office of Undergraduate Studies, University of Utah (2019). International (IR) criteria mission statement. Retrieved from https://ugs.utah.edu/general-education/requirements/ir.php#
Pfeil, F. (1994). No basta teorizar: In-difference to solidarity in contemporary fiction, theory, and practice. In I. Grewal & C. Kaplan (Eds.), Scattered hegemonies: Postmodernity and transnational feminist practices (pp. 197-230). Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press.
Spivak, G. C. (1988). Can the subaltern speak? In C. Nelson and L. Grossberg (Eds.), Marxism and the interpretation of culture (pp. 271-313). Basingstoke: Macmillan.
van Djik, T. A. (1993). Principles of critical discourse analysis. Discourse and Society, 4(2), 249-283. https://doi.org/10.1177/0957926593004002006
Downloads
Published
How to Cite
Issue
Section
License
Copyright (c) 2019 Debjani Chakravarty
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.
