April 2, 2015 - 09:51
Nkechi (so nice to finally be able to "name" you here!)--
As you know, I was really impressed with the session on black feminism you designed for our Community Day of Learning last month, and also very glad to hear that you wanted to follow up on the lament that emerged during our session, that "clueless" faculty here need diversity education. So I am very glad that you are designing such a program, with the intention and hope of actually making it happen.
I have one very real question, as well as one resource to suggest. The question is, simply put, how to get faculty to do this? All incoming, full-time, continuing faculty members are already required (or "invited") to enroll in a cross-disciplinary, semester-long, pedagogy seminar that includes a one-on-one partnership with an undergraduate student (who observes their classes, interviews their students, and gives them ongoing feedback on their teaching). That seminar is run by Alison Cook-Sather, and I know that there is some diversity training involved in the program; at one point Alison was also offering seminars specifically aimed at designing more 'culturally sensitive' classrooms. So you should certainly consult with her, and with some of the students, like Sophia Abbot, who have served multiple times as Teaching and Learning consultants for professors. But the larger challenge is how to re-train older faculty, who cannot really be required to do this...or can they? Ask the provost for her thoughts along these lines...is this something she could see incorporating in a faculty meeting? Or calling a special faculty meeting or day of learning? How to get folks involved who are not interested, or think this project irrelevant to their interests?
The resource I have in mind was created by two first-semester freshman in my ESem last fall, and offers one rather sobering response to your query, "How many writings/findings by POC are included in your courses?" The students' assignment was to design a 10-week long project documenting their own activities of consumption, as a way of exploring their extended "contact zones." Others in the class researched the sources of their clothing, shoes, make-up, computers, food, water; one pair tracked how much paper is used in on-campus printing. Allie and Sydney chose to analyze the reading materials required for their classes last semester. Originally, they intended to ask how 'global' a perspective they were getting; as you'll see from the slide show they prepared, they ended up breaking down the data they gathered in terms of educational background, birthplace, gender, economic class, and race. Of particular interest to your project might be slide #7: "Birthplaces of our authors--41% U.S., 18% U.K." When they presented their findings to our class, and got to the documentation that 9% of their readings this semester had been by people of color, Allie said, "this is our most upsetting slide." Sydney also observed that what they had experienced and discovered did "not reflect the kind of diversity that Bryn Mawr says it offers." Their final conclusion (which you'll see as the last slide) is that "something should be done about this."
Afterwards, Sydney wrote another commentary on what they'd discovered, and Allie included these comments in her final self-evaluation: "After our presentation of the data we found it was clear that there was a very select voice we were hearing from our studies, the variety I craved, that I struggled for, wasn’t there. And so I began to question why this could be. Why there was great a voice was given to such a vast number of people with so close to the same upbringings and opinions. I want to search for this voice; I crave this elusive understanding of those people who aren’t highly published, who may not have a Doctorate, but still have something to say. I think I will be searching for that voice for my entire life, but I don’t think that there can ever be enough of it. We’re so saturated with sameness, I want perspective. I want to take an idea, place it on a pedestal and fire shots at it from all angles. Attack, in the sense that it’s clear these voices I’m seeking aren’t going to be handed to me. There are so many fights going on in this world as we speak, so many struggles, and this is just one. It’s just another question without an answer, but there is a journey that can be made, to understand this world better."
Theirs is of course a very selective example, documenting the experience of only two first-semester students, and skewed by the fact that they were both taking Gothic Literature. But then the very offering of such a course skews the facts of the world...
Looking forward to hearing more about how you are going to change this up!