Classrooom Pedagogy

Critical Pedagogies Project

"Critical pedagogy" is the name given to the body of literature that takes as its focus the examination of power relations in processes of education both inside and outside of the academy. Central, also, to this area of inquiry is analysis of how these educational processes relate to social change aimed at dismantling processes of racial, class, and gender subordination. Sharing the assumptions that students bring valuable experiences and knowledge to the classroom and that the classroom itself is a potentially democratic and coalitional space, critical pedagogic theorists explore the following sorts of questions:

"What are various sites of knowledge production about race, gender, and class processes and what are the barriers and possibilities of critical engagement in these sites?
"How can we engender conversations/movements that take up the intersections of race, class, and gender processes? " In addition to developing racial, gender, class critiques, how can we begin to collectively imagine alternatives?
"What role do art, theater, dance and music have in social change? How do we integrate these modes of collective inquiry and imagination into various kinds of classrooms?
"How can we create the classroom as democratic space in which students can dialogue about and practice new ways of relating across race, class, and gender?

With the support of the Center for Curriculum Transformation, the Women Studies and American Ethnic Studies Departments are developing a new course entitled "Critical Pedagogies of Race, Class, and Gender." In Summer 2003, a group of faculty and graduate students from both departments met to develop the course. The seminar leader was Dr. Cricket Keating (Women's Studies, St Mary's College). Together they identified the following resources that could be used in the course:

Augusto Boal, Theater of the Oppressed; Games for Actors and Non-Actors
Kimberle Crenshaw, "Demarginalizing the Intersection of Race and Sex"
Antonia Darder, et. al., The Critical Pedagogy Reader
Antonia Darder, Gender, Culture, and Schooling
Paulo Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed
Paulo Freire and Myles Horton, We Make the Road by Walking
Henry Giroux and Stanley Aronowitz, Education Under Siege
bell hooks, Teaching to Transgress
Myles Horton, The Long Haul
Robin Kelley, Race Rebels
Maria Lugones, Pilgramages/Perenigrajes
Carmen Luke and Jennifer Gore, eds. Feminisms and Critical Pedagogy
Dian Marino, The Wild Garden
Chandra Mohanty, Feminism without Borders: Decolonizing Theory, Practicing Solidarity
Leslie G. Roman and Linda Eyre, ed., Dangerous Territories: Struggles for Difference and Equality in Education
Renato Rosaldo, Culture and Truth
James Scott, Domination and the Arts of Resistance
Ira Shor, When Students Have Power; Empowering Education: Critical Teaching for Social Change
South End Press Collective, Talking About a Revolution
Angela Valenzuela, Subtractive Schooling
Eileen de los Reyes and Patricia A. Gozemba, Pockets of Hope: How Students and Teachers Change the World

For more information, contact Dr. Rick Bonus, American Ethnic Studies, or Dr. Anu Taranath, English