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Intersectional Pedagogy Introduction Applying intersectional theory to educational spaces helps prevent perpetuating invisible privilege by focusing on personal oppression and constructing only mythical norms as worthy in pedagogical design. Intersectionality can identify complicated identity patterns operating in an individual and/or concurrent codependent and interactive structural systems of oppression. Privilege and oppression are the two sides of the ism coins. The intersectional approach provides students and instructors a critical framework for validating subjugated knowledge, unveiling power and privilege, examining the complexity of identity, and developing action strategies for empowerment. It is an inclusive approach that reduces resistance. Effective intersectional pedagogy:          

Conceptualizes intersectionality as a complex analysis of both privilege and oppression Teaches intersectionality across a wide variety of oppressions Aims to uncover invisible intersections Includes privilege Analyzes power in teaching about intersectionality Involves educator personal reflection on intersecting identities Encourages student reflection Promotes social action Values the voices of the marginalized Infuses intersectional studies across the curriculum

Without privilege analysis, intersectionality leaves dominant groups unacknowledged. Hint: humor and cartoon tend to help reduce learning to these contexts. Part 1 Intersectional Theory and Foundations Disciplinary Adaptations Intersectionality is  

Integral to social justice efforts Important framework for understanding the relationship between dominance & subordination and advantage & disadvantage

Looking: 

Focusing on one aspect like gender or race o Ilides other categories.

Intersectional Pedagogy

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o overlooks other causes of disparities. ask students to think about how their own intersecting identities act as protective or risk factors focus on macro-level show the fluidity of social categories, and the impermanence of power, domination, and subordination in a given individual experience. (time and history help see show social categories are not fixed) the effect of social policies.

Avoid single axis Help identify how different groups experience discrimination See the many sources of privilege. Decolonial Coloniality – emphasizes the extent to which everyday realities of the modern global order are the harmful legacy of the racialized colonial violence that enabled Euro-American domination. Decolonial strategies 1. normalize patterns of experience in diverse Majority World settings that hegemonic discourses portray as abnormal 2. denaturalize patterns that hegemonic discourse considers as standards of optimal functioning. Intersectionality and colonialism   

helps center the experiences of people in marginalized positions rejects universalized notion of “women” illuminates how racism and its intersections are manifestations of coloniality, Eurocentric modernity, and neoliberal globalization

One overarching pedagogical goal is to prompt students to critically interrogate their beliefs of what is natural and good. Epistemic violence when scholars see their way of knowing being the pinnacle of knowledge. Decolonial intersectional analysis  

normalizes the silenced voices of marginalized “Other” denaturalize the dominant pattern.

Classroom practices:     

emphasize perspectives of marginalized Other encourage learning about different cultures model humility to encourage students to resist paternalistic responses way marginalized show areas of privilege. Multicultural diversity and differing perspectives

Intersectional Pedagogy Intersectionality and Classroom Applications Intersectional Feminism and Psychology of gender Gender often approached as a knowable entity that can be understood, used, and predicted. Single axis paradigms are antithetical to intersectionality. An additive approach is one that takes a singular look at each content domain Intersectionality should begin at the place of intersectional complexity and work forward to specific sites and issues. Patricia Hill Collins – theorized the matrix of domination as a framework for understanding and resisting the ideological, political, and economic configurations of oppression and privilege that produce intersectionality which she understood as the specific ways that dimensions of inequality are organized in particular times and spaces. Intersectionality’s focus on structural systemic social forces is at odds with psychology’s epistemic anchoring in individuals’ and small groups’ behaviors, attitudes, emotion, and cognition. [Moving beyond individualism the task of pastoral theology and care] Research Question – “How is X variable shaped by social forces including but not limited to racism, sexism, classism, and how might observed … differences reflect the interplay of social forces?” Intersectionality and gender   

Embracing intersectionality calls for decentering of gender Shows how gender first subordinates racial and sexual issues to gender. Manifests in understanding gender-identity privilege

Fieldwork Assignments to foster skills in flexible interpretive, critical qualitative reflection  

Go to public space where a meal occurring and observe geneder – goal is development of basic skills in observing gendered dynamics that usually go unnoticed. Second and third attend a public event, an unfamiliar event, observe the visible interactions, of gender, race, and sexuality.

Research Critiques – helpful to develop students ability to navigate research databases, identify appropriate studies, reading science critically, and offering substantive feedback.  

One of a gender-focused research Second of their own choosing.

Gender Identities –   

Introspective readings 4-5 page critical self reflection on an important moment of gender socialization Final reflection on how material shaped their conceptualization of their own identity.

Intersectional Pedagogy 

Autobiographies focus on experiences of gendered racism, masculinity and sexuality, class privilege and sexism, religion and heteropatriarchy, and other collisions of power and privilege.

Underscore the relationality of identity categories and systems of inequality, particularly how gender and sexism never function in isolation. Promote a critical ambivalence toward the structures we inherit and inhabit helps sustain intersectionality grounded conversations. Complicating the Psychology of Women Course Designing the syllabus 

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Goal is tto use the social constructivist paradigm as an approach to understanding the meaning and intersections of constructs such as gender, woman, man, race, class, sexual orientation. Added sections on intersectional theory Critical race theory, and queer theory

Design to      

Make connections across forms of oppression and privilege Identify the complexity of social identity Unveil invisible systems of power Challenge traditional fixed ideas Validate subjugated knowledge Construct a vision of change.

Required Readings 

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10 modules with 2-3 peer review journal articles o Journal articles – provide exposure to empirical feminist research, both quantitative and qualitative, and invisible intersections with women’s and men’s lives. First module on intersectionality

Video from the Globalist Feminism Project  

Pastoral Care foreign journal articles – study of other country approach (HH paper) Watch video and consider the various ways that oppression, privilege and intersectional theory inform your understanding of the activist.

Current Events Curriculum   

Increase student engagement with use of current events, helps students recognize relevance and deconstruct dominatnt narratives. Helps bring privileged students into difficult conversations. Connects readings to real world.

Intersectional Pedagogy Through Assessment and Assignments 

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Reflective Discussion posts o How intersectionality understand more perspectives in the material o How might privilege affect your ability to fully comprehend the various perspectives on this topic Chapter quizzes o Assessed understandings of stereotypes, as well as other isms Paper Options o Privilege paper – understandings of privileged social identities and structural power through privilege, own personal privilege. o Photovoice project – photos of own aspect of your own intersectionality, and of intersectional concepts. Intersectionality Project o Goal create a product that raises awareness of intersectionality, promote understanding of multiple social identities, provide experiential learning, develop prosocial behavior o Chose an intersectional topic, select target audience, create the education project, and reflection paper.

Consistent and persistent infusion of intersectionality is perhaps most important within courses previously developed to address only one social group identity. Pedagogical Practice ad Teaching intersectionality Intersectionality has moved beyond an embodied approach to encompass social movement strategies and decolonializing methodologies. Teaching Theories Mapping the Course  

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Goal to help provide students with a roadmap for their own efforts to produce intersectional research. Guiding Assumption – an intersectional framework should attend to historical, cultural, discursive, and structural dimensions that contour the intersections of race, class, gender, sexuality, nations, and religious identity, among other identities. Classes – o History how developed o Defining intersectionality, contrasting different approaches o Adopt a social structural stance toward intersectionality Intersectionality requires a nuanced conceptualization of the relationship between systemic and constructionist processes o Institutional ethnographic methodology – avoids viewing women’s embodied experiences as the endpoint of analysis and resists reifying systems, it argues for a contextualized and historicized angle of vision

Intersectional Pedagogy

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o Epistemological approach is rooted in insights from the different theoretical perspectives designed to analyze gender, race, and class inequalities as well as sexuality, and culture. o Matrix of domination includes a structural dimension, disciplinary dimension, hegemonic dimension, and interpersonal dimension. o Smith’s approach incorporates historical, cultural, textual, discursive, institutional, and other structural dimensions that contour the intersections of race, class, gender, sexuality, national, and religious identity o Queer intersectional analysis helps destabilize fixed or binary approaches to gender, sexuality, and the body. Challenge is to keep the reflexive process alive through intersectional practice in different arenas.

Intersectional Feminist Praxis – Five Dimensions inform     

The intersection of diverse social experiences produce diverse ways of knowing The recognition that these knowledges are further deepened in community and dialogue Action oriented – empowers activism Placing dialogue situated knowledges in multiple social locations by diverse social actors for generating collaborative strategies for action. Fostering research that provides better understanding of how inequality is produced and sustained.

Revealing Hidden Intersections Studying individual aspects of identity reinforces that each identity functions independent of others. Making Invisible Visible  

Privileged overshadows marginalized. Forefront experiences of the oppressed

Instructor Social location  

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Teachers with privileged identity view as political agenda Students resist social justice o Surface level discussion o Minimal student involvement o Challenging instructor’s credibility o Dismissing course content teachers with marginalized identities. Especially improtatnt for teachers whose identities overlap the topic

Teaching Intersectionality of the Oppressed 

forgoes a singular, generalized focus.

Intersectional Pedagogy   

Include other theories like critical race theory and queer theory, both call for anlses of oppression/privilege at the structural level CRT – shows that shared oppression differs based on intersectional identities Queer theory moves away from binary notions of sexuality, diversities sexual and gender experiences, deconstructs labels used for sexual orientation, etc.

Strategies for incorporating Intersectionality. 

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Meaning what you Say o Don’t use outdated or offensive terms. o Remain deliberate in grammatical structure, listing isms may convey priority of isms o Helps students by modeling language and leveling the identity hierarchy Connect Structural Forces with Individual Identity o Recursive funnel approach – larger societal to institutional to group then individual context o This helps students connect individual issues to the larger issues o Assignments – a reading applicable, identify primary societal issue and impact on article; in class discussion of societal issues in article; small groups ; fold in societal group then individual issues Incorporate history and context o Requires inclusion of current social and educational context Sharing Instructor personal experiences o Watch for transference an counter transference between Instructor and student – helps buffer any harmful emotions and helps inform response to student o Sharing helps demystify instructor and make them real to students, o Can’t be overshare o Effective is as honest and realistic as possible Navigating difficult dialogues o These are emotionally charged topics. o Two basic strategies  Acknowledge emotional response, reflect feeling back and validate experience  No hesitancy over words like ”lesbian” “black” etc.

An intersectional approach to teaching about identity must intentionally elevate voices of the oppressed and recognize the synergistic relationship between societal, institutional, group, and individual systems of oppression.

Decentering Student Uniqueness

Intersectional Pedagogy Intersectionality recognizes the intragroup differences by highlighting how a person’s lived experience may differ from others depending on where intersecting social identities are located in a hegemonic structure. Uniqueness is not the point 

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Key learning goals o Recognize people have multiple social identities and each social identity has a different power and privilege o How intersecting social identities change a person’s experience o Identify key intersections that bring student discomfort o Highlight key intersections of privileges students hold Pair intersectionality with privilege is essential for understanding differential power and privilege embedded in each person’s lived experience “god trick” – o the most privilieged members imagine their perspectives to be complete and detached from their social context allowing them to draw assumptions they believe to be objective o Facilitates denial of privileges.

Tools for Learning   

Students lead majority of classes Readings – first three weeks foundational texts on intersectionality privilege and oppression. Analysis of books

Assignments   

Reflection Papers – all papers require at least one reference to intersectionality as well as privilege or oppression Student led Discussion – key ideas in book, foundational concepts, original applications The intersectionality Project – have collaboration, sense of ownership, authentic ourlet for students, teacher reminds students of greater learning goals.

Learning Outcomes   

Close examination of life-long held beliefs Learn about own privilege identities and oppressed identities Through grouping of similar earn how different.

Intersectionality looks closer at lived experiences of people at critical intersections Allows for a richer understanding of a person’s humanity within systems of oppression and privilege rather than a description. Experiential Activities

Intersectional Pedagogy Promotes reflection on    

Intersection of privileged and oppressed social identities Multiple oppressions experienced Recognize within group diversity Movement toward social change

Facilitation of multi-partial power     

Sharing of air time and silence Use of first person narratives Suspending judgment of privileged groups Not expecting marginalized groups to educate privileged groups Naming dominate narratives

Race and class get conflated Weaving Intersectionality into Social Justice Readings       

Couple readings of power, privilege and oppression with introductory pieces on intersectionality Concept of simultaneity – concurrent processes of identity, institutional, and social practices that contribute to experience, privileges and oppressions. Intersectional Handout that acts as a dialogue guide Ask students to come up with metaphor for intersectionality Testimonial that includes social identity of privilege and one of marginalization 0 to engage intersectionality with some specificity Taking a position – each student marks agreement or disagreement and writes a statement; instructor reads statement then class discusses, Privilege fishbowls – reflective of own intersecting identities and the privilege held

Assignments  

First essay reflect on own social identities, intergroup and facilitation experiences, and ideas about social change Bi-weekly online forums to prompt intersectionality informed reflective analysis

Infusing Intersectionality    

Requires teacher intentionality Attending to intersectional nature of social identity Foster awareness o how differently experience one identity based on other identities. How the simultaneous nature of identities contribute to intersections among forms or systems of oppression, domination, or discrimination....