Teaching with Tension is a collection of seventeen original essays that address the extent to which attitudes about race, impacted by the current political moment in the United States, have produced pedagogical challenges for professors in the humanities. As a flashpoint, this current political moment is defined by the visibility of the country's first black president, the election of his successor, whose presidency has been associated with an increased visibility of the alt-right, and the emergence of the neoliberal university. Together these social currents shape the tensions with which we teach.
Drawing together personal reflection, pedagogical strategies, and critical theory, Teaching with Tension offers concrete examinations that will foster student learning. The essays are organized into three thematic sections: "Teaching in Times and Places of Struggle" examines the dynamics of teaching race during the current moment, marked by neoconservative politics and twenty-first century freedom struggles. "Teaching in the Neoliberal University" focuses on how pressures and exigencies of neoliberalism (such as individualism, customer-service models of education, and online courses) impact the way in which race is taught and conceptualized in college classes. The final section, "Teaching How to Read Race and (Counter)Narratives," homes in on direct strategies used to historicize race in classrooms comprised of millennials who grapple with race neutral ideologies. Taken together, these sections and their constitutive essays offer rich and fruitful insight into the complex dynamics of contemporary race and ethnic studies education.
Author(s): Philathia Bolton; Cassander L. Smith; Lee Bebout
Series: Critical Insurgencies
Publisher: Northwestern University Press
Year: 2019
Language: English
Pages: 353
Contents......Page 6
Acknowledgments......Page 10
Introduction: Race and Education at the Dawn of the Twenty- First Century (Philathia Bolton, Cassander L. Smith, and Lee Bebout)......Page 16
Part 1. Teaching in Times and Places of Struggle......Page 30
1. What “Everyone Knows”: Teaching Ferguson in St. Louis (Corinne Wohlford)......Page 32
2. Resisting the Single Story in an Arizona Classroom (Anita Huizar-Hernández)......Page 48
3. Resisting Impulses and the Challenges of Teaching Race in the Early American Ethnic Studies Classroom (Cassander L. Smith)......Page 62
4. Walls and Bridges: Teaching Culture and Diversity to Pre- Service Teachers (Stuart Rhoden)......Page 82
5. Multiple Strands of Resistance: Teaching African American Literature in a Maximum- Security Prison (Briana Whiteside)......Page 100
6. Relief and Resistance: Student Emotions in a Majority- Minority Ethnic Studies Classroom (Magdalena L. Barrera)......Page 116
Part 2. Teaching in the Neoliberal University......Page 136
7. The Hoop of Learning: Inclusion, Collaboration, and Education for Indigenous American Youth (Travis Franks and Kyle Mitchell)......Page 138
8. How We Lost Our Academic Freedom: Difference and the Teaching of Ethnic and Gender Studies (John Streamas)......Page 156
9. Onward into the Discomfort: Teaching for Racial Justice in an Era of Media Outrage, the Alt- Right, and the Neoliberal University (Lee Bebout)......Page 176
10. Virtually White: Teaching Race in Online Classes (Dan Colson)......Page 192
11. Toward a Pedagogy of Presence, or How I Nearly Lost My Body to the Neoliberal Academy (Drew Lopenzina)......Page 210
12. Teaching Whiteness in the Neoliberal University: Positionality, Privilege, Resistance, and Transformation (Marguerite Anne Fillion Wilson)......Page 230
Part 3. Teaching How to Read Race and (Counter-)Narratives......Page 250
14. Some of My Students Are Leprechauns (Or Why It Is Difficult for White College Students to Understand That Racism Is Still a Big Deal) (Carmen R. Lugo-Lugo)......Page 268
15. Exploring the Development of Immigrant Fiction: The Pedagogy of Counter- Narratives (Umme Al-wazedi)......Page 280
16. The Potential of a Moment: Race Literacy and Black American Literature (Philathia Bolton)......Page 296
17. Teaching Asian American Literature in the Urban Multicultural Classroom: Reflexive Practice, Cultural Politics, and the Problem of Identity within a Transnational Framework (Jungah Kim)......Page 318
Conclusion: Back to the Classroom (Philathia Bolton, Cassander L. Smith, and Lee Bebout)......Page 336
Contributors......Page 344
Index......Page 350
