Multi-voiced Classrooms & Feminist Pedagogies - ECCE | Dr. B. R. Ambedkar University Delhi

Course Type	Course Code	No. Of Credits
Foundation Elective	SES201223	4

Semester and Year Offered: Winter semester (4th semester)

Course Coordinator and Team: Dr. Shivani Nag & Dr. Anandini Dar

Email of course coordinator: shivani[at]aud[dot]ac[dot]in, anandini[at]aud[dot]ac[dot]in

Pre-requisites: No pre-requisite.

Course Details:

Summary:

This course engages with the question of pedagogy from a feminist perspective in context of education theory, experience and praxis. The course begins by examining how experiential and intersectional identities of the students come to bear upon the everyday dynamics of learnings within educational institutions and the larger socio-political worlds they traverse. This will be explored through an in-depth engagement in reading autobiographies, memoirs, and films that reflect upon the “woman”/ “queer”/ “caste”/ and other identity questions. Further, the course will unpack how critical pedagogy and feminist theories inform feminist pedagogies that in turn shape concepts of safe space, reflexivity, journaling, social justice and equality, within the school and university spaces. Finally, the course aims to provide students with an opportunity to learn about the ways in which processes of teaching, research and mentoring across subject areas contend with feminist pedagoiges as forms of praxis. This will enable students to reflect upon concepts of power, positionality, representation and voice.

Objectives:

To sensitise students to the role played by gender grounded in intersectionality in shaping the everyday socio-political and educational worlds they occupy.
To introduce students to theories and practices of feminist pedagogies in education.
To enable students to critically reflect on their roles as students and future teacher-educators/ educators/ researchers in shaping equitable, socially just, and transformative spaces for reflection, dialogue, and change.

Expected learning outcomes:

Students will be able to:

Engage with experiences from educational spaces and be able to identify the various ways in which gender politics informs educational spaces and pedagogies that attempt to foreground the experiences and voices from the margins.
Examine/review texts (fiction/non fiction) from a critical, feminist perspective.
Develop research questions and/or materials and pedagogic strategies informed by feminist pedagogies.

Overall structure (course organisation, rationale of organisation; outline of each module):

Module 1: Engaging with multi voiced classrooms and classroom experiences (4 weeks)

This module encourages students to engage with reflective accounts, autobiographies, films, other works of literature and criticisms in order to understand the complex, intersectional nature of gendered classrooms. The various dimensions of intersectionalities include- caste, religion, ethnicity, language, class, age, abilities, sexual orientations and other identities. We will unpack these understandings of identities through reflective accounts, autobiographies, films, other works of literature and criticisms.

Readings

Memoirs/ life narratives (Students will be required to engage with and review any one or two of the more from the following)

Woolf, Virginia. (1929) A Room of One's Own. New York: Harcourt, Brace and Company.
Shafak, Eli (2011) Black Milk: On Writing, motherhood and harem within. Viking
Morrison, Toni (1994) The Bluest Eye. New York: Plume Book.
Revathi, A., & Murali, N. (2016). A Life in Trans Activism. New Delhi: Zubaan
Pawar, Urmila (2010) Aayadaan (Hindi translation by Madhavi Deshpandey). New Delhi: Vani Prakashan
Bama (2005) Sangati (translation by Lakshmi Holmstrom). New Delhi: Oxford University Press.
Bama (2012) Karukku (translation by Lakshmi Holmstrom). New Delhi: Oxford University Press.
Erum, Nazia (2018) Mothering a Muslim. New Delhi: Juggernaut.

Phadke, Shilpa (2015) Risking Feminism? Voices from the classroom. Economic and Political Weekly, Vol. 50 (17).

hooks, bell (1994) Chapters 6- Holding my sister’s hand. Teaching to Transgress: Education as the practice of freedom. London: Routledge.

Ghai, Anita (2002) Disabled Women: An excluded agenda of Indian feminism. Hypatia, Vol 17 No. 3, pp. 49-66.

Crenshaw, Kimberle (1991) Mapping the Margins: Intersectionality, Identity Politics, and Violence against Women of Color. Stanford Law Review. Vol. 43, No. 6, pp. 1241-1299.

Chakravarti, Uma (2017) The Burden of Caste: Scholarship, democratic movements and activism. In S. Anandhi & Karin Kapadia (Eds). Dalit Women: Vanguard of an Alternative Politics in India. London: Routledge, p. 335-350.

Module 2- What are feminist pedagogies? (4 weeks)

Drawing from the layered complex narratives, engaged with in the module 1, this module will be aimed at introducing students to the ideas of what constitutes feminist pedagogies in terms of their epistemological assumptions and the implications for education.The module will also engage with origins and evolution of feminist pedagogies and their foundations in critical pedagogy and feminist theories. Through an overview of and an engagement with feminist theories, approaches to teaching-learning pratices, classroom space, nature of educational content and student-teacher relations will also be discussed.

Readings

Jackson, Sue (2010) Crossing Borders and Changing Pedagogies: From Giroux and Freire to feminist theories of education, Gender and Education, 9:4, 457-468, DOI: 10.1080/09540259721196.
Crabtree et al, (2009) Feminist Pedagogy: Looking Back to Move Forward. Johns Hopkins University Press. Introduction.
hooks, bell (1996) Feminist theory: A radical agenda. In Multicultural experiences, multicultural theories, ed. M. F. Rogers, 56-61. New York: The McGraw-Hill Companies.
hooks, bell (1994) Chapters 1- Engaged Pedagogy, Chapters 8-Feminist Thinking. Teaching to Transgress: London: Routledge.
Chakravarti, Uma (2016) (Ed) Section I: Feminist Pedagogies. In Uma Chakravarti (Ed) Thinking Gender, Doing Gender: Feminist Scholarship and Practice Today., New Delhi: Orient Blackswan
Hartsok, N.C.M. (2017) The feminist standpoint: developing the ground for a specifically feminist historical materialism. In Diana T. Meyers (Ed). Feminist Social Thought: A reader. pp. 461-483.
Rege, Sharmila (2016) Education as Trutiya Ratna: Towards Phule- Ambedkarite Feminist Pedagogic Practice. pp. 3-31.
Macay, F. Govinda, R., Menon, K., and Sen, R. (2020. Doing Feminisms in the Academy: Identity, Institutional Pedagogy and Critical Classrooms in India and the UK. Zubaan Academic.

Module 3: Teaching, Mentoring and Research as a Feminist Praxis (4 weeks)

The third module focuses on the praxis of feminist pedagogies by engaging with various forms of academic literature on teaching and mentoring and aims to unpack the dynamics of the everyday classroom spaces as a feminist, empathetic, and ethical sites. By bringing in accounts of teachers and other writings, this module highlights the nuances of feminist pedagogies as it is negotiated in teaching-learning and research processes. The students will be encouraged to unpack the significance of power relationality, and voice as they reflect on themselves as future teachers, researchers, and mentors.

Readings

Shah, Chayanika (2016) Feminist Activism in the Pedagogy and Practice of Science: An interactionist approach, pg. 94-112.
Gilligan, Carol (2013) The Ethic of Care (Monograph). Barcelona: Víctor Grífols i Lucas Foundation, pp. 11-60.
Chakravarti, Paromita (2012) The ideology of literature: A gendered study of Bengali-language school textbooks in West Bengal, pg.109-130.
Kishimoto, Kyoto, and Mwangi, Mumbi (2009) Critiquing the Rhetoric of "Safety" in Feminist Pedagogy: Women of Color Offering an Account of Ourselves. Feminist Teacher, 19 (2), 87-102.
Wagh, A. C. (2018) “Sociology, feminism and mentoring: Contested sites of knowledge production and consumption.” In Chadha, G. & Joseph, M.T. (Eds). Re-imagining Sociology in India: Feminist Perspectives. New Delhi: Routledge.
Pujari, Leena (2018) “Transforming the sociology classroom: implementing a critical feminist pedagogy.” In Chadha, G. & Joseph, M.T. (Eds). Re-imagining Sociology in India: Feminist Perspectives. New Delhi: Routledge.
Sen, Rukmini (2017) Sexual Harassment and Limits of Speech. Economic and Political Weekly, Vol. 50 (52).
England, K. (1994) Getting personal: Reflexivity, positionality, and feminist research. Professional Geographer, 46(1), 80-89.

Suggested Readings:

Sen, Rukmini (2014) Mapping Women’s Activism in India: Resistance, reforms and (re) creation. In Leela Fernandes (Ed). The Routledge Handbook of Gender in South Asia. Routledge
Freire, Paulo (1996) Pedagogy of the Oppressed. London: UK: Penguin Books. Chapter 2. pp. 52-67.
Freire, P. & Macedo, D. P. (1995) A Dialogue: Culture, Language and Race. Harvard Educational Review, Vol 65(3), pp. 377-402.
Rege, Sharmila (2006). Writing Caste/Writing Gender: Narrating dalit women’s testimonies. New Delhi: Zubaan, an Imprint of Kali for Women.
John, Mary E. (2008). Introduction. In Mary E. John (Ed). Women Studies in India: A Reader. Penguin. p. 1-22.
hooks, bell. (2003) Teaching Community: A Pedagogy of Hope. Routledge.
Rege, Sharmila (1995) “Feminist Pedagogy and Sociology for Emancipation in India.” Sociological Bulletin, 42 (2), pp. 223-239. Accessible at: http://www.unipune.ac.in/snc/cssh/HistorySociology/A%20DOCUMENTS%20ON%20HISTORY%20OF%20SOCIOLOGY%20IN%20INDIA/A%201%20Debates%20on%20sociology%20and%20anthrpology%20of%20India/A%201%2018.pdf
Chatterjee, P. (2016) Women and the nation: The trouble with their voices. pg. 309-31
Bhog, D. (2016) Gender and Curriculum. pg. 352-360.
Panjabi, K. & Chakravarti, P. (2012) (Ed.) Women Contesting Culture: Changing features of gender politics in India. Jadavapur: School of Women Studies.
Sinha, Mrinalini (2006) Gender in the critiques of colonialism and nationalism: locating the ‘Indian Woman’. Pg. 211-242.
Bhardwaj, Purwa (Ed.). कलामे निस्वां (Kalaame Niswan) New Delhi: Nirantar http://www.nirantar.net/uploads/files/Kalame_Niswan.PDF
Razzack, Azra (1991). Growing up Muslim. Seminar 387 (1991), 30-31.
Zembylas, Michalinos (2018) “Reinventing Critical Pedagogy as Decolonizing Pedagogy: The Education of Empathy.” Pedagogy of the Oppressed: 50 Years, special issue of Review of Education, Pedagogy, and Cultural Studies, edited by Peter Pericles Trifonas, Vol. 40 (5), 404–21.
Chaudhari, M. (2002) Learning through Teaching the 'Sociology of Gender. Indian Journal of Gender Studies, Vol. 9(2) https://doi.org/10.1177/097152150200900208
Narayan, Uma (1997) Dislocating Cultures: Identities, traditions, and third world feminism. NY: Routledge. Chapter 3: Cross-Cultural Connections, Border-Crossings, and “Death by Culture”. pp. 105-118.
Shinde, Tarabai (2000) A Comparison Between Women and Men (English translation of Stree-Purush Tulna). New Delhi: OUP.