As trans studies becomes more deeply institutionalized as a field and trans visibility spikes in popular culture, more students come into women's and gender studies (WGS) classrooms identifying as trans, genderqueer, or nonbinary, and they hope that classrooms will be responsive to their experiences. At minimum, this requires that WGS instructors…

As an instructor of courses examining women's lives through a transnational feminist lens and a scholar whose research explores the challenge of utilizing the law to address gendered violence, author Sharmila Lodhia, is deeply invested in the question of how discussions of advocacy in the women's and gender studies classroom are framed. She…

Herein, Leland Spencer provides a review of four book selections while reflecting on paradoxes regularly faced by feminist teachers (and scholars, activists, and thinkers). The books include: (1) Bradley, Harriet. "Gender." Cambridge: Polity, 2012. Print; (2) Murphy, Michael J., and Elizabeth N. Ribarsky, eds. "Activities for…

In this article, Suchitra Samanta reports on an introductory course in women's and gender studies (IWGS) where she first introduces, centers, and problematizes the concept of gender and sexuality to undergraduate students, and at a depth not offered in other disciplines. This article suggests a need for greater visibility for Asians and Asian…

This essay argues for new pedagogies of "women of color" courses in light of the "transnational turn" of women's, gender, and sexuality studies (WGS) departments in the U.S. The author uses the transnational turn in WGS to refer to the increased presence of scholarship about/on contexts outside the U.S.--specifically, a…

Many teachers of introductory women's and gender studies find themselves in the position of introducing bad news to an already hostile audience. To deal directly with this dilemma, author Katie Hogan has approached student resistance to women's and gender studies (WGST) with carefully constructed syllabi designed to encourage…

In this article, Rachel Stein focuses on two course projects in which students apply materialist feminist practices within a capstone women's studies seminar entitled Body Politics. Undertaking these projects, students become more critically aware of gendered materialities that they had previously taken for granted as they deconstruct material…

This essay looks primarily at one approach to teaching about privilege in a feminist research course. I talk about the motivation to ask students to participate in this exercise and the potential as well as the challenges it has for raising awareness of one's own privileges before setting out to do feminist research. Additionally, the paper…

In this paper, the author is going to turn around and around ideas about feminist pedagogy and feminist politics in the academy in a similar way to take us to the kind of "social somewhere" of which Barone and Eisner write, to look at the same material in familiar and unusual ways--here a fiction, there a fanciful retelling of facts,…

In this article Julianne Guillard describes her loosely structured approach to student participation in her Introduction to Gender, Sexuality, and Women's Studies course. She describes this approach toward participation (which helps create a welcoming, "safe space" environment) along with feedback, both positive and negative, from…

The ways in which both postfeminism and neoliberalism contest the legitimacy of traditional feminist dogma, which is to say second-wave principles and practices, becomes particularly acute in the classroom. Feminist pedagogies have largely been predicated on two socio-political givens that postfeminist and neoliberal logics disallow: (1) that…

In this article, the author intends to focus on the ruptures that sometimes emerge when his outsider and insider identities clash, shift places, or simply exist together in the classrooms he inhabits as teacher. He provides what Jerrie Cobb Scott calls an extended "think about" where he unpacks his own uncritical dys-consciousness and how it has…

Describes a program that teaches about women and issues of gender in the context of a broader human rights education program. Identifies key principles of the program that focus on building teacher awareness, the classroom process, and the importance of being aware of the interplay of various forms of discrimination. (KO)

Argues that there are special problems associated with designing and teaching a course about authors outside of the literary canon. Traces the development of a course on Victorian women writers from initial development difficulties to final thoughts on restructuring the syllabus. Notes works used in the course. (DSK)

Explores the possibilities and implications of poststructuralist feminism for the practice of feminist teaching. Reflects on the experience of a man occupying the position of male-feminist teaching about feminist philosophies. Approaches the issues by examining three speech situations from a poststructuralist position: "speaking…