Feminist Theory and Pedagogy

Educational research shows a growing interest in "affect as pedagogy", a concept grounded in feminist studies, which focuses on the relationality and materiality of affect. This article addresses the becoming of affect as pedagogy, positioning its inquiry at the crossroads of feminist scholarship and the Deleuzian-Guattarian concept of affect. It presents a postqualitative inquiry that "experiments with" an agentic assemblage of 76 public schools in Brazil, 78 responses to a qualitative survey, 12 teachers interviewed, and the researchers' fieldwork observations. The result of this experiment is a collective narrative organized as a Voice without Organ (VwO), which shows interlocking elements of challenging, disadvantaged educational scenarios and a teaching practice traversed by affect. The VwO answers the question of how affect becomes pedagogy, describing events that can be characterized as embodied history, affective labor, and the capacity to be affected. In these events, an intense connection between bodies occurs. This pedagogy also shows the capacity to affect, by creating affirmative desires that materialize in alternative narratives for the students' futures. In the face of limited and precarious resources, lack of public support, and an environment of violence, affect as futuremaking pedagogy becomes a means of working against exclusion and social injustice.

As it currently stands, little academic attention has been paid to the systematic devaluation of femininity or femmephobia. By adopting “femme” as a critical analytic, this paper dislocates femininity from its ascribed Otherness and demonstrates how empowered femininities have been overlooked within gender studies. Femme, as the failure or refusal to approximate the patriarchal norms of femininity, serves as the conceptual anchor of this study and is used to examine how femmephobic sentiments are perpetuated within Contemporary Western Feminist (CWF) theory. This perpetuation is propped up by the thematic marginaliza- tion of empowered femininities from the texts chosen for gender studies courses, revealing a normative feminist body constructed through the privileging of identities that maintains femininity as white, middle-class, normatively bodied, and without agency. The excavation of an empowered feminine subject from the margins reveals the foothold of normative whiteness embedded within feminist pedagogies. Using a thematic analysis of how femininity is taken-up within textbooks used in gender studies courses, the current paper demonstrates how intersections of femininity have yet to be addressed within dominant Feminist theories. The femme—as a queer potentiality—o ers a way of (re)thinking through the limitations of CWF theory and the paradoxical preoccupations with the absented femme.

In this new collection, contributors from a variety of disciplines provide a critical context for the relationship between feminist pedagogy and academic feminism by exploring the complex ways that critical perspectives can be brought into the classroom.

This book discusses the processes employed to engage learners by challenging them to ask tough questions and craft complex answers, wrestle with timely problems and posit innovative solutions, and grapple with ethical dilemmas for which they seek just resolutions. Diverse experiences, interests, and perspectives—together with the various teaching and learning styles that participants bring to twenty-first-century universities—necessitate inventive and evolving pedagogical approaches, and these are explored from a critical perspective.

The contributors collectively consider the implications of the theory/practice divide, which remains central within academic feminism’s role as both a site of social and gender justice and as a part of the academy, and map out some of the ways in which academic feminism is located within the academy today.

¿Cuáles son los códigos lingüísticos opresores o cautiverios (Lagarde, 2005) dirigidos hacia las mujeres obligándolas a abandonar su actividad sociocultural (artística y literaria) y a perpetuar el ciclo de la víctima? ¿Es la escritura crítica orgánica (ECO) una herramienta pedagógica y
decodificadora funcional para la enseñanza del arte y la creación literaria? En este trabajo feminista analizo a través de la investigación cualitativa y cuantitativa crítica, el fenómeno de las opresiones,
y la pedagogía de la violencia entretejida en la relación binaria y jerárquica (hombre-mujer) en el ambiente académico y sociocultural de Ciudad Juárez. Consideré centro de cautiverio, el caso de Elena Garro (escritora mexicana) para desarrollar la propuesta pedagógica ECO, conocer el
discurso de la víctima, descolonizar la enseñanza de la creación literaria y el arte e investigar en la voz de mujeres artistas y escritoras de la frontera, las gramáticas que inhiben o desaparecen su identidad artística y escritural. Fundamentada en los feminismos de la diferencia (Abya Yala,
Nueva Mestiza) y la LatCrit, creo seis códigos madres para indagar en el discurso de las participantes las palabras de alta frecuencia y semióticas que emplean sus yoes, ecos (sombras), opresiones, desconocimientos (Anzaldúa, 2015). A través del testimonio guiado por el cuestionario, notas autobiográficas, y textos creativos generados durante las sesiones de ECO, los resultados disponen el panorama actual del fenómeno tratado.

As community engagement continues to be institutionalized within colleges and universities it is increasingly important it retain its founding mission to prepare engaged citizens to address societal issues and contribute to the public good. Unfortunately, dominant models of community engagement remain charity focused and thereby reinforce social hierarchies that undermine the public good mission of higher education. Though many studies have focused on critiquing charity focused models of community engagement few studies offer alternative approaches. Utilizing an intrinsic single-case study approach this study investigates what can be learned from the narratives of 12 students in a community engagement program that uses feminist pedagogy. The findings suggest that a feminist approach to community engagement can be a catalyst for students’ to development critical consciousness and social justice self-efficacy by addressing issues of privilege and oppression in community-engaged work in ways that current community engagement models have yet to operationalize.

The emergence of feminist pedagogy revolutionized the teaching practices at universities, however, it was less successful in public education. The feminist political agenda resulted in the inclusion of gen der equity in the education policies. Yet, stereotyping still prevails in the majority of schools. While the emphasis on critical analysis yielded some results, the lack of theories on pedagogical knowledge production, drawn on feminist epistemology seems to diminish the desired effects. For gen der education to develop further as a critical branch of education studies feminist theories are to be incorporated into all of its discourses. Key words Feminist pedagogical knowledge, interdisciplinary discourses in education, institutionalized education vs. non‑formal education.
Vázlat A feminista pedagógia bevezetése a felsőoktatás‑pedagógia egyik forradalminak tekinthető átalakításának számított a 70‑es évek egyetemein az Egyesült Államokban. Azonban a közoktatásban alkalmazható feminista pedagógia kidolgozása és meghonosítá‑ sa korántsem hozott hasonló sikereket. A politizáló feminista mozgalmak abban tudtak eredményt felmutatni, hogy pressziót gyakoroltak az oktatáspolitika aktoraira a gender esélyegyenlőség jog által előírt megvalósítása érdekében a közoktatásban. A felülről " elrendelt " és jogilag előírt programok megvalósítása azonban soha nem tudta megszüntetni az iskolai rejtett tanterv rétegeiben húzódó különböző bánásmódok, a sztereotípiák továbbélését. Az oktatás különböző elemeit vizsgáló kutatások számos eredményt mutattak fel különösen a tekintetben, hogy tudományosan is megerősítették a gender diszkrimináció jelenlétét (tankönyvekben, kommuni‑ kációban, pálya‑orientációban, értékelésben, stb.), de a feminista episztemológiai alapozás befogadása híján – mely a mai napig idegen a neveléstudomány számára – az esélyegyenlőséget szorgalmazó oktatáspolitikai intézkedések nem mutatták fel az elvárt eredményeket. Jelen tanulmány ennek a választásnak a kritikáját adja, és felvázolja az elméleti pedagógiai diskurzusokba ágyazott gender pedagógia gyakorlásának lehetséges módját. Kulcsszavak Feminista pedagógiai módszertani tudás, a pedagógus és a tanuló ágenciája, a neveléstudomány megújítása, a feminista pedagógiai praxis sajátosságai.

Learning about feminism can be a revelation for many students. However, for others, it can be a confounding, troubling experience. These difficulties return as problems for the teacher: how to help sceptical, resistant students understand the theory. Moreover, understanding what can be so troubling about learning feminism helps us to better understand the situation of feminist modules in the contexts of broader humanities curricula. Obviously, these are complex issues, and I wish to focus on just two specific points: how feminist theories make critical claims and the challenges that emerge for students as a result; how feminist theory claims find challenges in student certainty. Firstly, feminist theory claims, which describe sociocultural states of affairs while at the same time destabilising them, are operating with critical norms. These critical norms are at odds with norms of descriptive theory claims that students find elsewhere in their curriculum. As such, I want to explore the effects of this clash in student learning experience, and the difficulties that teachers face a result. In the second part of the article, I use Wittgenstein's analysis of certainty to explore how feminist theory claims often challenge the very foundations of students' understanding of themselves, and the world around them. As such, learning in the feminist classroom is not merely an issue of learning about and then adjudicating between theories. Feminist theories implicate the way in which we live, and the conditions of intelligibility for theories as such. In light of my discussions , I do not think there are onesize solutions to these issues. However, I think that recognising these problems in theory can help us to articulate them in the classroom, and this might go some way to alleviating the structural challenges faced by teachers of feminism.

Cette note d’action, écrite par une enseignante des méthodologies féministes en contexte universitaire, trace un portrait sommaire des multiples rôles assumés par les personnes étudiantes dans la coconstruction des connaissances à caractère plus précisément méthodologique. Que ce soit par des pédagogies interactives qui nécessitent leur participation, par les travaux d’ équipe ou par le partage d’expériences pertinentes relativement à l’apprentissage du plus grand nombre, ces personnes se livrent, dans une certaine mesure, au coenseignement. En filigrane, le texte insiste également sur la nécessaire cohérence entre les principes féministes enseignés en classe et leur application concrète, notamment au cœur de la relation enseignante-étudiante ou étudiant.

Ever since I can remember, I remember learning to translate for my mother. Not just translating the English language to Khmer and from Khmer back to English, but translations of her medical diagnoses, or more often than not, the meanings of non-diagnosis. In and out of medical appointments, long hours in waiting rooms because my mother did not have health insurance... ever since I can remember, I remember my mother being in pain. I have grown up intimately aware of the specter of genocide. And although we were never privy to long oral histories regarding the Cambodian Holocaust growing up, my siblings and I walked with the ghosts of the genocide in our day-to-day interactions with our mother and her reoccurring psychosomatic trauma. We often fell in line with the frustrated Western doctors who attempted to convince my mother that her pain was not real. We often left these medical appointments angry and uncertain, wondering what more we could have done to banish these ghosts from the past. Thirty years later, in my own small way, I understand my mother's pain. And thirty years later, I also understand that there was little we could have done as children to take away such entrenched haunting. Looking back, however, at these experiences with the psychosomatic, I wonder how else I might read my mother's pain, still recurring over thirty years later. Centering an analysis of the multiple meanings of crossing, this essay explores the relational affects and effects of historical violence and trauma as they travel across time and space. Anchoring the central metaphor of her in "the enforced Atlantic Crossing of the millions of Africans that serviced... the consolidation of British, French, Spanish, and Dutch empires,"[] M. Jacqui Alexander invites us to consider how the Crossing "might instruct us in the urgent task of configuring new ways of being and knowing... mov[ing] away from living alterity premised in difference to living intersubjectivity premised in relationality and solidarity."[] In the same way that grief made the Crossing, war, famine, and collective violence also cross oceans, exceeding our assumed limits. The forms these crossings take, their various movements through space and time function as "an archive of empire's twenty-first-century counterpart, of oppositions to it, of the knowledges and ideologies it summons, and of the ghosts that haunt it."[] Drawing upon Alexander's invitation to query pedagogies of crossings and enforced transit, I ask: what might recursive instances of psychic-corporeal pain teach us about racialized and gendered experiences of trauma? In this essay I re-read such affective registers as psychosomatic symptoms and hauntings as legitimate archives of violence—opening up these lived spaces to alternative meaning beyond previous positionings as inauthentic, illegitimate, and pathological. In doing so, I propose to contribute to the construction of what Lisa Marie Cacho[] (following Ann Cvetkovich)[] refers to as an "archive of feeling," an archive of the particular and the ephemeral, which encompasses the performances of mourning that represent the value of the always already racially devalued. In reading these as affective archives, I seek to begin to make meaning of the seemingly unintelligible—listening to the fragments and storied afterlives of violence rife in spaces of seeming silence and unspoken narrative.

This article explores how 14 diverse, Canadian activist–facilitators working in inter-national development experience and understand critical reflection as a component
of participatory methodologies in facilitation practices. The findings, based on my doctoral study, demonstrate that although critical reflection is often discussed as
integral to participatory approaches of facilitation using critical pedagogies, understandings and experiences of what that means in practice vary. For example, study
participants often expressed practicing critical reflection through technical-rational approaches and seldom distinguished between critical reflection, reflexivity, and
reflection. The findings illustrate three main challenges to applying critical reflection in practice: (1) time and value given to critical reflection; (2) institutional requirements;
and (3) personal vulnerability. The results have implications for critical feminist pedagogies, including the development of critically reflective practices that challenge
dominant ideologies and hierarchical power structures. The study demonstrates lessons for deepening pedagogical practices around critical reflection and reflexivity.

Ever since I can remember, I remember learning to translate for my mother.

Not just translating the English language to Khmer and from Khmer back to English, but translations of her medical diagnoses, or more often than not, the meanings of non-diagnosis.

In and out of medical appointments, long hours in waiting rooms because my mother did not have health insurance... ever since I can remember, I remember my mother being in pain.


I have grown up intimately aware of the specter of genocide. And although we were never privy to long oral histories regarding the Cambodian Holocaust growing up, my siblings and I walked with the ghosts of the genocide in our day-to-day interactions with our mother and her reoccurring psychosomatic trauma. We often fell in line with the frustrated Western doctors who attempted to convince my mother that her pain was not real. We often left these medical appointments angry and uncertain, wondering what more we could have done to banish these ghosts from the past.

Thirty years later, in my own small way, I understand my mother's pain. And thirty years later, I also understand that there was little we could have done as children to take away such entrenched haunting. Looking back, however, at these experiences with the psychosomatic, I wonder how else I might read my mother's pain, still recurring over thirty years later.

Centering an analysis of the multiple meanings of crossing, this essay explores the relational affects and effects of historical violence and trauma as they travel across time and space. Anchoring the central metaphor of her in "the enforced Atlantic Crossing of the millions of Africans that serviced... the consolidation of British, French, Spanish, and Dutch empires,"[] M. Jacqui Alexander invites us to consider how the Crossing "might instruct us in the urgent task of configuring new ways of being and knowing... mov[ing] away from living alterity premised in difference to living intersubjectivity premised in relationality and solidarity."[] In the same way that grief made the Crossing, war, famine, and collective violence also cross oceans, exceeding our assumed limits. The forms these crossings take, their various movements through space and time function as "an archive of empire's twenty-first-century counterpart, of oppositions to it, of the knowledges and ideologies it summons, and of the ghosts that haunt it."[] Drawing upon Alexander's invitation to query pedagogies of crossings and enforced transit, I ask: what might recursive instances of psychic-corporeal pain teach us about racialized and gendered experiences of trauma?

In this essay I re-read such affective registers as psychosomatic symptoms and hauntings as legitimate archives of violence—opening up these lived spaces to alternative meaning beyond previous positionings as inauthentic, illegitimate, and pathological. In doing so, I propose to contribute to the construction of what Lisa Marie Cacho[] (following Ann Cvetkovich)[] refers to as an "archive of feeling," an archive of the particular and the ephemeral, which encompasses the performances of mourning that represent the value of the always already racially devalued. In reading these as affective archives, I seek to begin to make meaning of the seemingly unintelligible—listening to the fragments and storied afterlives of violence rife in spaces of seeming silence and unspoken narrative.

This essay describes a transformation in my experience as an adjunct teaching underprepared students from one of shame toward a desire to assert the value of this work. Insights from my feminist theological training helped me to affirm the importance of encouraging transformative learning in teaching the academically marginalized and prompted my analysis of student writing in an introductory World Religions course, in order to determine whether or not the course was a site of transformative learning. I argue that despite many contextual limitations, the movement toward deepening self-awareness and increasing openness to religious diversity seen in student writing demonstrates that transformative learning began in this course, and that is valuable for students' lives whether or not they are academically successful. To learn is to face transformation. – Parker Palmer In their typology of the scholarship of teaching and learning in theology and religion, Killen and Gallagher (2013) identify six genres, two of which are the " Personal/ Confessional/Vocational, " which proceeds from the assumption that " insight comes from reflection on the experience and person of the teacher " (116) and the " Show and Tell, " which " attempts to identify precisely why a particular teaching strategy did or did not work as anticipated " (115). This essay embeds elements of the " Show and Tell " genre regarding a particular world religions survey course within the larger framework of a personal narrative which sketches my adjunct identity and the challenge of teaching large lecture classes of at-risk students enrolled in a state university. 1 The " Show and Tell " aspect of the essay follows the personal narrative because my pedagogical reflection arose out of and is inseparable from an intense struggle of many years with adjunct shame. Wrestling with this shame became a transformative process for me which, eventually, empowered me to affirm the worth of my work by researching a sample course and writing this essay. I am thankful to the hundreds of students who, simply by being themselves and enrolling in classes I was fortunate to teach, were catalysts for my pedagogical and theological self-examination and growth. The transformation I went through helped me see the value of my work with these students in a different way. I explore in this essay how I reoriented my world religions course to provide opportunities for greater personal engagement by students, encouraging their 1 I thank the members of the College Theology Society (CTS) for the informal feedback many provided on my preliminary work with this material at the 2013 CTS Annual Conference. I am also indebted to anonymous reviewers and editor Tom Pearson for helping me to bring more order and clarity to these reflections.

Co-written with Jennifer Ayala, Patricia Herrera, and Laura Jiménez. Published in Chicana/Latina Education in Everyday Life: Feminista Perspectives on Pedagogy and Epistemology. Eds. Dolores Delgado Bernal, C. Alejandra Elenes, Francisca E. Godinez, and Sofia Villenas. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 2006. 261-280.

We trace back our own multi‐year teaching and writing collaboration in academia to theorize feminist collaboration. Drawing from feminist theories and our autoethnographic reflections, we surface three metaphorical processes that constitute feminist collaboration. We consider feminist collaboration as: (i) reflexive becoming, that is, feminist collaborators constantly make sense of what counts as feminist as the group and context evolve; (ii) proactive improvisation, that is, feminist collaborators collectively strive for everyday transformations within situated constraints; and (iii) co‐learning partnerships, that is, feminist collaborators relate to one another in ways that uphold commitments to reflexivity, equity and care. Enacting these processes are fraught with tensions that intertwine with one another to constrain and enable feminist collaboration. We conclude the article by calling for continued theorization and engagement with feminist collaboration.

Blurb:
'Whoa', '[squeak]', 'oh là là': is this what learning gender sounds like? After all, gender is a troublesome term. When addressed in its full reactive potential, it has a tendency to unfix the reassuring certainties of teaching and learning, as well as researching and writing. Gender pedagogy unfolds as an account of what it means to learn gender, and furthermore what it means to teach gender learning, when it is impossible to fully know what is happening in a classroom, or virtual learning environment, that is designated a 'gender' space. As the chapters slip between a wide-angle perspective on Gender Studies in general and a micro-view of moments on a Master's course, it becomes clear that gender pedagogy is shaped by – and shapes – the environment in which it is situated, in this case a higher education institution. The theorisation of gender pedagogy is rooted in Derrida's concept of the 'trace', which reflects the unfixing properties of gender and even shakes up the writing of this 'book'.

Includes a Foreword by Professor Elaine Unterhalter and Dr. Jenny Parkes.

Review from Professor Valerie Hey:
"This book is characterized by its author as 'a thinking exercise'. It certainly is! This is a radical and creative invitation to consider how academic feminism across the political generations resources and replenishes claims to intellectual authority. Using Derrida's notions of 'the trace,' Emily F. Henderson opens her imaginary out to the complex encounters, misfires, misses and entrancing disturbances of 'feminist pedagogy' in a globalized classroom studying gender and development. Sensitive to how power can confound 'intention,' the book provides some innovative ways of reading how 'gender' always eludes its subjects making the task of the teacher and student entangled in self-contradiction but therein she argues lies the allure of tracing how gender speaks and how we might speak about gender."
Professor Valerie Hey, Centre for Higher Education and Equity Studies, University of Sussex, UK

Review from Dr. Maria do Mar Pereira:
"This book is a valuable and original piece of work, which stands out for its interactive engagement with the reader and for its extraordinary capacity to disentangle complex threads of analysis in an accessible but still extremely nuanced way. A true gem by a remarkable young writer!"
Dr. Maria do Mar Pereira, Deputy Director of the Centre for the Study of Women and Gender and Assistant Professor, University of Warwick, UK

Contents page:
1. Introducing gender pedagogy in medias res
2. Researching gender pedagogy
3. Tracing paper
4. Gender
5. Learning gender
6. Feminist gender pedagogy
7. Gender pedagogy
8. Invitation