Black Women in America is an upper-division elective course for students majoring in African American or women's studies at California State University Fullerton (CSUF). The author has taught this course at CSUF at least once a year since 2002 and have changed the course readings, lectures, and assignments on a regular basis. In April 2007,…

In this article, the authors capture the complexity of being a marginalized individual with institutional authority who encourages students to question all levels of power; simultaneously, they are acutely aware of the social implications of students challenging their authority, their intellectual aptitude, and their critical orientation. They…

In the winter of 2012, the students in the author's fourth-year seminar, The Politics of the Canadian Women's Movement, undertook the project of editing, updating, and expanding a number of Wikipedia articles, including the page on "Feminism in Canada." Though it often serves as a first point of reference for research on Canadian feminism, this…

Whether teaching undergraduate or graduate classes, the author integrates lesser-known women poets as part of the inquiry, not as curiosities, but as opportunities to discover something in the "raw" as contemporaries might have done. That the author's courses focus on or include in a substantial way the work of women is important, but does not by…

Some years ago, the author had her first opportunity to teach an undergraduate American Romanticism course, which meant she had a chance to teach "Moby-Dick" the way she thought it should be taught. Meeting two days a week, her course was set up so that students read about thirty pages of "Moby-Dick" for one class meeting a week paired with…

As a feminist theorist who frequently teaches theorizing that starts from embodied experience, the author has begun to incorporate fat feminism into her teaching. As a neophyte and a relatively thin woman, she has been self-conscious about broaching issues related to fat bodies in her teaching, even though they clearly raise important issues about…

Given substantial evidence of sex discrimination in the legal profession and the role of attorneys and judges in perpetuating gender stereotypes, educators have an obligation to prepare female students for the challenges they will face, educate students of both sexes about the role of bias in litigation, and seek to mitigate the influence of…

Feminist pedagogy implies performing some kind of feminist teaching practices, while at the same time contesting the very possibility of performing such practices. One needs to start out from the assumption that only what cannot be foreseen will enable one not just to overcome resistance to feminist knowledge and teaching but also to make such…

For feminist literary critics and teachers writing about and teaching literature "after feminism," the path is potentially treacherous. Feminist literary criticism, if it is applied too narrowly and used to reject complex literary texts that do not uphold an imagined feminist standard of "positive images" of women, can end up undermining other…

Today, after many years of making it through new musical genres and trends, "rancheras" are not only about the appreciation of music, but also about the sociocultural issues present within the individual listening to this music. Whether it be the person who is driving down the street with the radio blaring and the car thumpin', the father who sits…

Intersectionality takes into account how inequalities of race, gender, class, and sexuality "intersect," or work in combined ways, in the lives of Black women and other women of color. As a holistic teaching approach, it also has relevance for all people, male and female, straight and gay, rich and poor, and along the various continuums between…

This essay ruminates on the connective tissue between teaching undergraduates and teaching yogis/yoginis. In this essay, the author employs bell hooks's work, particularly her work on love, compassion, and "engaged pedagogy" from "Teaching to Transgress: Education as the Practice of Freedom" and "Teaching Critical Thinking: Practical Wisdom," to…

In 2001, Clif Bar & Company, makers of LUNA: The Whole Nutrition Bar for Women, debuted LUNAFEST[R], an international touring film festival that showcases short narrative and documentary work of female filmmakers and raises money for the Breast Cancer Fund and other nonprofit women's organizations. A pre-packaged film festival with clear and easy…

In this article, the author describes how she came to a better understanding of her own relation to her feminist pedagogy and identity as a teacher by allowing herself to feel the discomfort of improvisation. She struggles to find balance between the institutional demands of a large, public university and the needs of her students, which can…