‘My parents never read my papers, but they watched my film': documentary filmmaking as feminist pedagogy

ABSTRACT

Feminist classrooms employ a variety of teaching strategies that empower students and inspire equity and justice. In this paper, we argue that integrating student-made documentary filmmaking into the college classroom is a powerful and effective form of feminist teaching. Specifically, feminist pedagogy views students as knowledge creators and demands collaborative, non-hierarchical learning experiences. These outcomes suggest that documentary filmmaking is a compelling and effective way to engage students in our increasingly visual and video-based culture. Based on our experiences teaching sociology at a women's college in the U.S., we illustrate the impact that documentary filmmaking has for student learning, empowerment, and justice work. We also develop and strengthen students’ technical, multi-media skills, arguing this outcome expands feminist pedagogy to meet contemporary culture.

KEYWORDS:

• Sociology
• critical pedagogies
• teachers/educators
• documentary analysis
• hypermedia and visual methods
• higher education
• North America

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to acknowledge the collaborative work and partnership of Paul Keys in the ongoing documentary film project. We would also like to thank Sarah Epplen, Neal Caren and the anonymous reviewers for their thoughtful comments and suggestions.

Disclosure statement

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

Notes

1 The project is designed as a group project, although we do allow students to work individually if they have significant scheduling or other issues. However, it is an intense workload for one person and the creative synergy that comes from the dialogic process is absent. Across the two courses, two students requested to work alone; both expressed that it was a very challenging process to accomplish alone.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Amie Hess

Amie Hess is an Associate Professor in the Department of Sociology and Criminology at Meredith College. Her research focuses on the well-being of girls and women in North Carolina. Her teaching focuses on innovative pedagogical strategies in the area of undergraduate student research.

Kris Macomber

Kris Macomber is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Sociology and Criminology at Meredith College. Her research and teaching focus on gender and violence, incarceration, visual sociology, and feminist pedagogy.