As a women’s and gender studies major, I always find myself seeking and making connections to what I learn and develop in the classroom. Women’s studies is a field that is constantly changing, and, in the grand timeline of academia, relatively new. The field itself is always shifting and responding to the world around it, yet it maintains a strong pedagogical foundation in that it consistently resists succumbing to institutionalized narratives.
“[Feminist pedagogy] is an overarching philosophy—a theory of teaching and learning that integrates feminist values with related theories and research on teaching and learning,” as noted by the Vanderbilt Center for Teaching’s “A Guide to Feminist Pedagogy.”
Applications and Relevance
Something I find both fascinating and frustrating is the relevance of feminist pedagogy outside of feminist practices themselves. In other words, feminist pedagogy is applicable outside the realms of women’s studies, social justice advocacy, or political issues. It’s fascinating because it reminds me of the pressing relevance and interdisciplinary nature of feminist pedagogy, but frustrating because there’s always hesitancy to interact with the word, let alone the practice, of “feminism.”
For the WRD 395 final project, new tutors we were asked to examine one of the University Center for Writing-based Learning’s (UCWbL) core practices in the context of a different academic field or discipline. Reflecting upon the interdisciplinary conditions of women’s studies, I decided to take a closer look at the overlap between feminist and (our) writing center pedagogy.
In my final presentation, I connected the UCWbL practice “communicate clearly, respectfully, and honestly” to feminist pedagogies, ultimately arguing that this particular core practice allows for us to place tutoring in a broader social context and cultivate a writing and tutoring experience that is rewarding, productive, and conscious.
I was able to find the broadest array of scholarship in DePaul’s library. I picked up three actual, physical books for this project and it was delightful to flip through the pages of wonder and women’s writing. The four sources I chose to apply to this connection all examine how feminist pedagogy informs and influences writing, teaching, and learning.
The Pen is Mightier Than the Sword: Writing as a Practice
In Changing the Wor(l)d: Discourse, Politics and the Feminist Movement, Stacey Young quotes Barbara Grier on her sentiments regarding the feminist and lesbian movement(s), presenting a foundational perception of writing as a practice: “we are literally moving forward on the written page…we are in control; we have the pen that is mightier than the sword…We actually influence people’s lives because we do infect their minds with what we put on the printed page” (25).
This perception of writing is important to our work as tutors because we invest our time in the potential of writers to produces texts that do something; if we cannot communicate according to the core practice, then we cannot allow for this type of action/result. Not every piece of writing is meant to be a resistant call for social change, however, adhering to similar principles maintains writers’ agency and gives them the opportunity to produce a text that meets their intended goals and enacts some sort of change in thinking or perspective.
Identity Informs Teaching
The anthology Black Women’s Writing, edited by Gina Wisker, presents essays that reflect on the personal narratives and writing processes as experienced by black women. In connection with the previous idea of the power of writing, Wisker says, “As Audre Lorde puts it, writing is empowerment for others to speak out… and value their lives (4). Later, author Jackie Roy highlights the disparity in experience and teaching power due to a “lack of…theoretical framework through which to read Black women’s writing” which essentially “leaves tutors and students alike with insufficient support in their attempts to discuss Black feminist concepts” (47).
Although this is a specific identity and set of circumstances, it highlights tutors’ necessary recognition of: the role writing plays in any context (breaking silence, empowerment), and respecting this, as well as being honest about the histories and identities that inform all writing in the writing center.
Pedagogy as a Social Practice
In an article from the Gender & Education journal, Trev Lynn Broughton and Laura Potts interrogate the conceptualization of bringing the “self” into the classroom. In “Dissonant Voices: the teacher’s ‘personal’ in women’s studies,” they mention how “‘[P]edagogy produces social relations as much as knowledge,’” and they considered “the relation of the teacher to ‘the personal’, in various manifestations (373). They later refer to bell hooks’ book, Teaching to Transgress, and her writing of how ‘feminist education for critical consciousness’ means ‘going beyond the mere transmission of information’, and ‘dar[ing] to give fully of ourselves’ (1994, p. 194)” (379).
The concept of “bringing the self into the classroom” and going beyond “the transmission of information” connects to how we build rapport as tutors and can impact the relationships we cultivate. Furthermore, as tutors, we must respect the positions and experiences of ourselves and our writers and understand that the way we interact in the writing center will likely affect how writers’ writing will change or improve.
Engaged Pedagogy: Writers as Textual Subjects
In my final source, Radical Feminism, Writing, and Critical Agency: From Manifesto to Modem, Jacqueline Rhodes re-conceptualizes writers as “active producers of the strategic discourses of resistance” (3). Echoing Broughton and Potts, Rhodes also says that “engaged pedagogy thus assumes the personal…emphasizing the situatedness of any writer or rhetor,” and notes that radical feminism’s emphasis on collaborative agency, “emphasizes the personal” (81).
Rhodes emphasizes multiple facets of communication, all of which we can integrate into our work at the writing center: being respectful in honoring the writer as a textual subject, and being clear and honest in situating oneself and acknowledging various positionalities.
Moving Forward
In conclusion, the UCWbL core practice, “communicate clearly respectfully, and honestly” is important
- to recognize the power of writing to affect change and cultivate new ideas, no matter the assignment, guideline, or reason for which one writes,
- to understand the potential for empowerment and giving students a voice through writing, and
- acknowledging our own as well as the writer’s positionality in terms of personal histories, privileges, and identities.
In taking these actions and applying such beliefs to our work as tutors, we can ensure that we are giving the highest quality of feedback to the writers who walk through our doors.
Works Cited
Broughton, Trev Lynn, and Laura Potts. “Dissonant Voices: the Teacher’s ‘Personal’ in Women’s Studies.” Gender & Education , vol. 13, no. 4, Dec. 2001, pp. 373–385.
A Guide to Feminist Pedagogy, Vanderbilt University Center for Teaching, Mar. 2015, my.vanderbilt.edu/femped/.
Rhodes, Jacqueline. Radical Feminism, Writing, and Critical Agency: From Manifesto to Modem . State University of New York Press, 2005.
Wisker, Gina, editor. Black Women’s Writing. St. Martin’s Press, 1993.
Young, Stacey. Changing the Wor(l)d: Discourse, Politics and the Feminist Movement. Routledge, Inc., 1997.