Paper Title
Teaching Intersectionality: Strategies for Enhancing Student Understandings of Power and Difference
Location
Room 221, DiGiorgio Campus Center (DiGs)
Start Date
April 2016
End Date
April 2016
Abstract
In recent decades, there has been enormous growth in scholarship anchored in an intersectional framework, but often our classrooms still treat race, class, and gender in isolation from one another. With the growth of race, class, and gender studies, scholars also now better understand how other social factors such as sexuality, nationality, and disability are connected to larger social structures and can integrate these into classes centered on power and difference. Drawing on lessons learned from nearly a decade of teaching intersectionality, we argue that students better understand the unique dynamics of systems of power when each is presented in relation to the others. Moreover, we present concrete classroom strategies aimed at helping students understand how race, class, gender, and other social factors are interconnected and deeply embedded in the structure of society. These classroom strategies encourage students to see the importance of the intersectional framework in their lives, to engage critically its core concepts, and to analyze different social institutions and current social issues using this framework. Classroom strategies for incorporating an intersectional framework are interdisciplinary, focused on small to medium-sized undergraduate classes, and range from course organization to engagement activities.
Teaching Intersectionality: Strategies for Enhancing Student Understandings of Power and Difference
Room 221, DiGiorgio Campus Center (DiGs)
In recent decades, there has been enormous growth in scholarship anchored in an intersectional framework, but often our classrooms still treat race, class, and gender in isolation from one another. With the growth of race, class, and gender studies, scholars also now better understand how other social factors such as sexuality, nationality, and disability are connected to larger social structures and can integrate these into classes centered on power and difference. Drawing on lessons learned from nearly a decade of teaching intersectionality, we argue that students better understand the unique dynamics of systems of power when each is presented in relation to the others. Moreover, we present concrete classroom strategies aimed at helping students understand how race, class, gender, and other social factors are interconnected and deeply embedded in the structure of society. These classroom strategies encourage students to see the importance of the intersectional framework in their lives, to engage critically its core concepts, and to analyze different social institutions and current social issues using this framework. Classroom strategies for incorporating an intersectional framework are interdisciplinary, focused on small to medium-sized undergraduate classes, and range from course organization to engagement activities.
