Teaching whiteness: A dialogue on embodied and affective approaches

Abstract

‘Representing Race and Gender’ was the first course in the undergraduate curriculum of the Department of Gender and Cultural Studies at the University of Sydney to foreground race. This paper provides a critical reflection of our embodied and affective experiences teaching this course as women of different racial and cultural backgrounds (Korean American and Anglo Australian). We draw on feminist pedagogies to illuminate the strategic ways we have performed our own intersectional identities in lecture and tutorial spaces. In particular we focus on the different ways we have approached and taught material on whiteness and white privilege and how students of various backgrounds have responded to the same material when it is taught by a white or non-white lecturer. Through this discussion, we think through how ‘Representing Race and Gender’ functions as a space where pedagogical decisions and approaches are inextricably linked to our goal of developing students’ capacities for engaging with racial difference and racism in critically conscious ways that extend beyond the classroom.

Keywords:

• teaching
• feminist pedagogy
• whiteness
• critical race studies
• dialogue

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Jane Chi Hyun Park

Dr. Jane Park is a senior lecturer in the Department of Gender and Cultural Studies at the University of Sydney. Her research examines the social impact of minority representations in popular culture and embodied aspects of racialization, focusing on Asian diasporic communities in the US and Australia. Jane has published work in a wide range of journals including Cultural Studies, World Literature Today, and Inter-Asia Cultural Studies as well as a number of anthologies on film, media, and popular culture. Her monograph, Yellow Future: Oriental Style in Hollywood Cinema (University of Minnesota Press, 2010), explored the emergence of East Asian aesthetics as technologized backdrop in Hollywood films during the late twentieth century.

Sara Tomkins

Dr. Sara Tomkins completed her PhD in the Department of Gender and Cultural Studies at the University of Sydney in 2017. Her thesis analysed the ways in which the cultural and political connections between Jewish Americans and African Americans are articulated in contemporary comedy. Her research interests include transnational race-based comedy as well as diversity and inclusion in education. She is currently a research assistant and sessional instructor at the Australian Catholic University in the Faculty of Education and Arts.