"Dear White Student Who Doesn't Want to Discuss Politics in the Writing Classroom:" A Love Letter
Taking up Hawisher’s notion of the classroom as a site of feminist activism, this speaker discusses being a feminist teacher at a women’s college in the aftermath of the 2016 election. Using story as a methodological approach to theory building (Powell, King), the speaker will offer a series of vignettes, written loosely as a letter to a white student who voiced discomfort at discussing politics in the writing classroom after her classmates, particularly students of color, displayed radical vulnerability in the days immediately after the election. Specifically, the presentation will introduce the context around the encounter, share the student’s expression of discomfort with the vulnerability of her classmates, and offer the instructor’s response in order to illustrate and highlight the multifaceted tensions of race, class, gender, and orientation in the context of the (often white liberal) feminist writing classroom. The presentation will end with a discussion of negotiating feminist positionalities within institutional and interpersonal constraints.
Taking up Hawisher’s notion of the classroom as a site of feminist activism, this speaker discusses being a feminist teacher at a women’s college in the aftermath of the 2016 election. Using story as a methodological approach to theory building (Powell, King), the speaker will offer a series of vignettes, written loosely as a letter to a white student who voiced discomfort at discussing politics in the writing classroom after her classmates, particularly students of color, displayed radical vulnerability in the days immediately after the election. Specifically, the presentation will introduce the context around the encounter, share the student’s expression of discomfort with the vulnerability of her classmates, and offer the instructor’s response in order to illustrate and highlight the multifaceted tensions of race, class, gender, and orientation in the context of the (often white liberal) feminist writing classroom. The presentation will end with a discussion of negotiating feminist positionalities within institutional and interpersonal constraints.
manthey_fem_rhet_talk.pdf |