How the “neutral” university makes critical feminist pedagogy impossible: intersectional analysis from marginalized faculty on three campuses

Abstract

While critical pedagogy emphasizes the marginalized status of the learner, feminist pedagogy challenges the presumption of a one-dimensional power dynamic in the classroom by illuminating the intersecting axes of power along which everyone in a learning community, including the pedagog, can simultaneously enjoy privileges and experience marginalization. Yet there has been little empirical intersectional research on how the university as an institution interferes with critical and feminist teaching. Extending Torres’s intersectional theorization of critical pedagogy and building on sociological research on workplace inequality, we investigate the role of the neoliberal university in facilitating/obstructing feminist critical teaching. We conducted ethnography on three campuses across two countries, the United States and Peru. While we expected that our unconventional teaching methods combined with our foreignness, womanhood, and queerness would invite resistance from students, we found that the messages sent by the race- and gender-neutral neoliberal university were at the root of the illegibility of our teaching and our intellectual existence. We argue that the neoliberal university as it exists is antithetical to critical pedagogy in general, and feminist teaching in particular, attesting to the urgency of returning critical pedagogy to its roots in political organizing beyond formal education.

Notes

Acknowledgments

The authors would like to thank Danielle Docka-Filipek, Erin Dyke, Ruthanne Kurth-Schai, Eli Meyerhoff, Jelena Radovic-Fanta, and the anonymous reviewers for their constructive feedback on this manuscript at various stages of the process, and special issue editors Sarah Donley and Melencia Johnson for including our work in this issue. We would also like to thank our respective significant others and our feminist communities for supporting us and keeping us grounded in the struggle for human liberation.

Notes

1 Another important exception beyond the scope of this paper is the system of tribal colleges. While the development of HBCUs are directly tied to the pedagogical tradition we work with and the development of sociology itself, the history of tribal colleges is part of an entirely distinct history.

2 Similar to the U.S., the end of semester evaluation is the standard. However, in addition, an elected student representative conducts a midterm evaluation. The latter was to suggest changes to improve teaching, while the former was to assess one’s teaching in relation to the faculty in one’s department and division. This information was one of multiple sources used to assess one’s performance for promotion and salary.

3 For more details regarding racial hierarchies in Peru, see Telles and the Project on Ethnicity and Race in Latin America (2014).

4 Prestigious private universities in Lima, similar to their counterparts in the United States, were founded by and for elites within the tradition of heteropatriarchal colonialism we described above.

5 The course is similar to an Introduction to Sociology course in the U.S.

6 The five questions on the CIQ are: (1) At what moment in class this week did you feel most engaged with what was happening? (2) At what moment in class this week were you most distanced from what was happening? (3) What action that anyone (teacher or student) took this week did you find most affirming? (4) What action that anyone took this week did you find most puzzling or confusing? (5) What about the class this week surprised you the most? (This could be about your own reactions to what went on, something that someone did, or anything else that occurs.)

7 As mentioned in endnote five, the course was an introductory course for students to have a general idea of the discipline of sociology. The university did not offer sociology as a major for undergraduates or graduate students.

8 Even though the teaching evaluations at Meg’s former department were not standardized, they were still individual-based and decontextualized. We address the problem associated with that in a later section.

9 When she taught in the U.S., Erika’s experiences mirrored those of Wenjie, but in Peru as a member of the dominant racial group, her experience was different.

10 Erika understood issues of privacy, or students feeling observed (even though the goal was their reactions to a way of teaching different from the norm). This made her resort to the use of CIQs, midterm and end of the semester evaluations, and her notes from class.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Erika Busse

Erika Busse (she/her) is an Assistant Professor of sociology at Macalester College (St Paul, MN). Her research examines how transnational migration influences family, gender, identity, work, and culture. She is currently researching how people with heritage or other connections to Peru represent their identity, particularly in folk dance. She has published in Sociology of Race and Ethnicity, Racial and Ethnic Studies Journal, among other journals.

Meghan Krausch

Meghan Krausch (they/them) is a public sociologist, activist, and writer based in Dearborn/Detroit, MI. Meg holds a PhD in Sociology from the University of Minnesota, and studies intersectionality and marginalization throughout the Americas, with particular emphasis on how grassroots communities have developed ways to resist their own oppression.

Wenjie Liao

Wenjie Liao (she/her) is an Assistant Professor of sociology at Rochester Institute of Technology. Her research focuses on the interaction between legal institutions and their cultural contexts. She is currently studying the public discourse around and political consequences of private immigration detention. She has published in Sociology of Race and Ethnicity, International Sociology, among other journals.