Paper short abstract:

Structured around a series of first-hand narratives and drawn from four-years of experience teaching an engaged feminist anthropology course, this paper will provide an opportunity to discuss how to mobilize feminist pedagogical approaches to create caring class communities as spaces of resistance.

Paper long abstract:

Working under the assumption that adopting a feminist pedagogy of care illuminates the ways in which an institution’s cosmetic appeals to diversity obfuscate epistemic violence and labor extraction, this session will provide an opportunity to discuss how we can mobilize feminist pedagogical approaches and create caring class communities as spaces of resistance. Structured around a series of first-hand narratives and drawn from four-years of experience teaching an engaged feminist anthropology course titled, Care in Critical Times this conversation will open a space to dialogue about concrete strategies for teaching and learning with care. By centering instructor intentionality and radical acts of classroom care, this dialogue will highlight pedagogical and community-building approaches for countering vacuous institutional affects of generosity and welcome.

Topics addressed include:

1. What can a pedagogy of care look and feel like in a classroom space in a neoliberal university?

2. What strategies can instructors employ to create a care-full classroom community?

3. How might instructors develop a course that challenges the boundaries of the classroom and university as a learning space and facilitates direct community connections and involvement by students?

4. How can we reimagine the classroom as a site of institutional changemaking?