Feminist Emotions, Conscientization, and Ways of Knowing: Femtoring Through Evocative Poetic Ethnographic Approaches During COVID-19

• In Event: Educationally Responsible Pedagogy of Cross-Cultural, Women's Peer Mentorship, Including Mentoring During a Global Pandemic

Abstract

Objectives
Femtoring[1] during the COVID-19 pandemic from different parts of the world provides evocative support as feminist citizen scholars. Using femtoring, we sustain our coalition as women raising awareness of our epistemological, ontological, and axiological consciousness to counter inequities and tensions during a pandemic. Where women’s knowing (Hill Collins, 2016) refuses to relegate the private self as secondary to the conditions of a pandemic, our objective is to show how our practices around femtoring results in collective relationships, consciousness and action (Holman Jones, Adams, & Ellis, 2016), aligning with our personal lives and political struggles of COVID-19. We explore: (1) how WOC scholars femtor one another through an adverse pandemic? (2) how we femtor to address educational responsibilities of inequity and injustice existing within our personal and professional lives? and (3) how we sustain personal and professional self-care during a pandemic?

Theoretical Framings
This research utilizes critical race feminism (Evans-Winters & Esposito, 2010) and intersectionality (Crenshaw, 1989). These theoretical framings allow for understanding and researching participants’ gender roles, race, ethnicity, language and social class (Crenshaw, 1989; Hill Collins & Bilge, 2016), while challenging majoritarian ideologies of privilege often distorting the lives of women of color (WOC). Feminist femtoring (Vega, 2019) through emotional and moral consciousness and kinship bonds (Ramirez, 2018) are framed in critical consciousness dialogues (CCDs) (Author, 2020).

Modes of inquiry
We frame our study with an evocative autoethnography (Holman Jones, Adams, Ellis, 2016) situating our research in affective autoethnographic realms of our feelings, emotions, stories/poems, and embodied experiences that capture both our inward and outward gaze of the repercussions related to the pandemic.

Data sources
Data was gathered from seven researchers’ autoethnographic poems reflecting on our feminist modes and femtoring experiences leading within the institutions of our families, educational contexts, and communities. We engaged in evocative poetic analysis (Cahnmann, 2003), a form of arts based social research examining our social and reflexive daily emotional elicitation of our conditions during the adversity of a pandemic. Our engagement is called upon through critical consciousness dialogues in electronic modes (i.e., Zoom, phone conversations, emails, and What’s App). Our feminist poetic narratives evoke truth telling, emotional, and empathetic calls intimating experiences through this adversity.

Findings
Through femtoring and reflective autoethnographic evocative poetic analysis, our themes emerge out of tensions and reflexive vulnerability with findings as: 1) The enduring context, a deadline. The gist, parsimony. 2) Track changes, changing tracks, backtracking - checking in, and checked! We inform and empower our social and political consciousness that implicates the majoritarian hegemonic systems through agency and collective critical feminist and socio-cultural wealth.

Scholarly Significance
Women’s ways of knowing and femtoring provides a critical feminist approach that support our quest for liberatory justice for ourselves and our communities. This work therefore underscores how femtoring allows for the (re)framing of our epistemological and ontological existence and sustenance in the midst of COVID-19.

[1] Femtoring challenges top-down mentoring through horizontal collaboration. Student of Color activists acknowledge female labor and reciprocal teaching/learning in femtoring (Vega, 2019).

Authors

• Antonette M. Aragon, Colorado State University

• Talia Randa Esnard, The University of the West Indies - St. Augustine

• Makini Z. Beck, Rochester Institute of Technology

• Christine Wanjiku Nganga, The George Washington University

• Zorka Karanxha, University of South Florida

• Deirdre Cobb-Roberts, University of South Florida

• Vonzell Agosto, University of South Florida