Feminist Pedagogy Series 2005-2006

Women’s Studies Program, UCSB

Lead TAs Debra Guckenheimer and Sarah Whedon
Faculty Mentor Laury Oaks


Session 1: Responding to Katrina & Mentoring

Session 2: Encountering Increasing Conservatism Among Students

Session 3: Pedagogy of Personal Experience

Session 4: Women's Studies Graduate Student Celebration and Final Feminist Pedagogy Session

Session 1: Responding to Katrina & Mentoring

Thursday, September 29
McCune Conference Room, 6020 HSSB

  1. Introductions
  2. How do we as feminist academics respond to Hurricane Katrina? A panel discussion on how to think creatively and concretely:
    1. Professor Howard Winant on talking to students about racism
    2. Sociology Graduate Student Jennifer Rogers on activism as pedagogy
    3. Carol Mosely, Coordinator of the Rape Prevention Education Program at the Women’s Center on responding to stories of sexual violence in the aftermath
    4. Religious Studies PhD Student Johari Osaze Jabir on Memory and Mourning as a Black Feminist Strategy of Action and Activism
  3. An introduction to feminist mentoring with Women’s Studies Professor Laury Oaks, and mentoring relationships set up between participants.
  4. Donations collected for the National Youth Advocacy Coalition

Recommended Reading:

Academic feminist response to Katrina disasters
By Mab Segrest, Chair, Gender and Women's Studies, Connecticut College

Katrina and Her Gendering of Class and Race
By Zillah Eisenstein, Professor and Writer, Ithaca, New York




Session 2: Encountering Increasing Conservatism Among Students

Monday, November 7th
Women's Studies Seminar Room, South Hall

  1. Introductions
  2. Introduce the topic
  3. Break-out groups with these guidelines:
    1. Introduce yourselves and say what you're teaching and have taught
    2. What examples of student conservatism have you seen come up?
    3. How have you handled it?
    4. Discuss how to handle scenarios on the handout
Handout: Scenarios to discuss about conservative views expressed in sections of Women’s Studies introductory-level courses:
  1. A white woman student declares that feminism is a “bunch of complaining.” She refuses to acknowledge the concept of “privilege” particularly related to class.
  2. One male student (of only 2 in the section) is particularly vocal and resistant to the material discussed, with an attitude of “I’m above all this and it is not news to me.”
  3. A student cites the Bible as her source of evidence for a claim about truth, giving it the status of incontrovertible data that cannot be contested.
  4. Two students who are active in a campus group (fictitious W for Bush Organization, for example) contest course material based on their political, activist views.
  5. Student evaluations of the course call the material “too political,” and/or “too lesbian,” and/or “too much about women of color.”
  1. Come back to large group discussion to share problems solved and unsolved.

Recommended Reading:

Webber, Michelle. “ 'Don’t Be So Feminist': Exploring Student Resistance To Feminist Approaches In A Canadian University,” Women’s Studies International Forum 28 (2005), 181-194.




Session 3: Pedagogy of Personal Experience

January 19, 2006
Women’s Studies Seminar Room, South Hall

  1. Welcome
  2. Website suggestion for building course websites - http://moodle.id.ucsb.edu
  3. Three levels of pedagogy of personal experience: teacher's past experience, student's past experience, creating new experience
  4. List your identities and round to introduce ourselves
  5. Presentations
    1. Melissa Forbis
      1. experience outside academia in a program that emphasizes activism in research in Chiapas
      2. now teaching Women, Gender, & Indigenous Rights in Latin America - talking in class about academia fitting into activism - challenge of bringing popular education in the university
      3. we are taught to teach in normalized ways
      4. "experience is not enough" to move forward social change
      5. how do we challenge a student's experience without challenging the student?
      6. how as a teacher can I share things I've experienced and have them be analyzable?
    2. Gladys Garcia-Lopez
      1. research on Chicana attorneys
      2. draws on her students' experiences - want them to understand inequality structurally and interpersonally, make links between sexism and other inequalities
      3. readings on Chicana feminists
      4. service learning in classroom - applying what they've learned in classrooms
      5. in this way students learn to value marginalized knowledge
      6. problems/ advice:
        7. determine suitable types of organizations - encourage to go outside UCSB eg. no fraternities/sororities - maybe limit organizations to a list which you contact ahead of time
        students need to be clear what their role is
        don't want to inundate organizations with flocks of students for short periods
        volunteermatch.org lists SB county organizations
        determine number of hours required - have used 10 hours/quarter in past - be aware of working class students
        students hand in time sheet signed by supervisor with contact info
        reflection paper
        students' critique can change an organization
    3. Daraka Larimore-Hall
      1. before grad school did political education including anti-racism program with children in Norway
      2. trying here to create comfortable environment for people to speak honestly about sexism and racism - not where students feel they have to say what the teacher wants to hear
      3. tell a lot of stories and encourage students to tell stories
      4. developed a level of comfort talking about himself to talk about race
      5. there are also reasons not to talk about personal experience in classroom
      6. problem with discourse having gotten simplified to two sides - this is challenged by African American and Latino voting patterns
      7. don't concede social scientific data to one side of the 2-sided political debate - can explain this at start of an intro class
      8. contradiction of wanting to attend to their experiences but want them to know about multiplicity of experience
  6. Group Discussion
    1. Melissa did work outside of academia that had clear goals - so start of class asked students to write down anonymously their goals for the course
    2. formal vs. informal ed.
    3. problems with privileging one person's report of self - how well can we tell our own stories?
    4. students who say they've never experienced sexism
    5. reasons why students may be afraid to be people who have experienced oppression - needs of 18 year olds
    6. need to get students to engage intellectually, not reinforce centering of privilege by hearing from privileged students
    7. focus on vision for kind of world people want
    8. show students problems with arguments instead of with the ideas
    9. long discussion on responsibility to organizations to which we send students
    10. not necessarily a magic phrase to say to students, but creating an environment for dialogue
    11. problems with wanting to undo student/teacher binary but not lie about actual power structure

Informal Education V. Formal Education

Women’s Studies Pedagogy Series 2005-2006
Debra Guckenheimer

Not everyone absorbs information well through formal lectures. Many students absorb a lesson more deeply if they can experience it. Informal education techniques utilize student experiences, learning becomes a process of activity and conversation. Informal education includes many tools that you are likely already using – discussion, in class activities, assignments to have particular experiences, and concern for the experience of being in the classroom.

When I create informal educational experiences, I try to create a community in the classroom. I focus less on how much information I can pass on and more on larger lessons that can be experienced. I try to create activities where students learn by DOING instead of passively listening.

For example, when teaching the concept of deviance, I often assign students as homework to go out and do a deviant act. The act must be legal. I encourage students to think about mores and norms which do not necessarily have a logical function and give them the classic example of facing the “wrong” way in an elevator. I ask them to record the response to their act, write it up, and bring it to class. Students learn more through the creative process of thinking about what act might be deviant and conducting the little experiment than through any lecture I could give on the topic.

Informal education tools are often best utilized at a university when incorporated with more traditional tools. Introduce the main concept before the activity. Give students time to process their experience after the activity. Consider requiring students to write a response or summary of their experience.

For more information, see:
"Introducing Informal Education." http://www.infed.org/i-intro.htm.
Jeffs, T. and Smith, M. K. (1996) Informal Education. Conversation, democracy and learning, Ticknall: Education Now.

Session 4: - Women's Studies Graduate Student Celebration and Final Feminist Pedagogy Session

Tuesday, May 16
The Women’s Center

  1. Welcome
  2. Best Practices of Teaching Assistants Discussion – ideas generated in small discussion groups:
    1. have students make presentations as groups or individually
    2. games and competitions eg. Jeopardy – raises issue of competition in feminist classroom
    3. fun introductions on the first day eg. say your pet peeve
    4. deal with shyness by giving options like coming to office hours – or maybe better to push shy students to speak
    5. class website – suggest using Moodle available from Instructional Development
    6. homework assignment to focus reading by coming to section with something written
    7. posting reading questions on a website
    8. broad questions on board for free writes
    9. to get discussion going call on people
    10. balance between familiarity of routine so students know what to expect and being able to change things up
    11. use first day to set tone for class, create climate of comfort in speaking
    12. set thresholds of when to call someone out on inappropriate comments vs. having the students respond
    13. experiential assignments eg. walk across campus holding hands with someone of the same sex and write a reflection paper
    14. offer alternative opportunities of expression eg. artistically
    15. challenge students to look at their own privilege – Peggy McIntosh
    16. if seats are bolted can take students outside or trade with someone teaching in the same building or ask students to sit around edges of room or schedule class to meet in computer lab for writing
    17. ask students for all of the possible answers to a question (even to the point of absurdity)
  3. Instructional Development as a Resource with Shirley Ronkowski
  4. How to Transition from TA to Teaching Associate with Program Chair Leila J. Rupp
  5. Meeting Professor Barbara Tomlinson, incoming Women’s Studies Graduate Advisor
  6. Presentation of Award for Outstanding Women’s Studies Teaching Assistant of the Year to Carolyn Lewis
  7. Presentation of Charlotte Stough Memorial Prize to Leandra Zarnow


"In the end, the women’s movement has survived the ups and downs because it encompasses multiple generations." – Nancy Whittier