Exploring Approaches to Caring and the Affective Dimensions of Racial Geography Walks

• In Event: Cultivating Caminata Pedagogies: Teaching and Learning while Walking with Emplaced and Embodied Knowledges in Texas

Abstract

Purpose
This paper examines the affective dynamics of a racial geography tour of our university’s campus, where students examine the historic racial and gendered origins of the University’s architecture and key landmarks, such as the Eurocentric architecture and memorializations of confederate leaders (Gordon, Henry & Thompson, 2025). The racial geography walk provides students the opportunity to critically interrogate their own places of learning and consider the ways that buildings and spaces on campus that may appear neutral, are themselves political and connected to complex histories. This paper considers how this caminata reflected a pedagogical enactment of critical cariño through its eliciting of students’ emotional responses and (un)learning amidst a broader sociopolitical context that has resulted in the dismantling of several DEI-related programs, and the mass arrests of student protesters on our campus.

Theoretical Framework
This work draws on a theoretical framework of critical cariño that foregrounds the emotions, embodied experiences, and familial histories of students. Pedagogically, enacting a critical cariño involves inviting students’ entire being and whole selves in the learning process, not disconnecting the intellectual from the emotional (Prieto & Villenas, 2012; Rendón, 2009), nor separating the personal from the political (Beauboeuf-Lafontant, 2005; Dillard, 2012). This framing of care moves beyond traditional whitestream classroom approaches, creating spaces that invite the emotions, embodied experiences, and broader sociopolitical contexts that inform learning.

Modes of inquiry & Data Sources
Illustrated by reflective narratives, this testimonio draws from practitioner pláticas (Lopez & Calderón, 2023) documented in notes, curriculum materials, and self-reflective writing, such as voice memos, and journal entries where we collectively reflected on and documented our teaching practices to consider how caminata were re-shaping our praxis as ‘educators-students-activists.’

Warrants for Point of View
Following the aftermath of the nationwide protests across university campuses and the roll-out of anti-DEI programs, the racial geography walks created a caring, culturally affirming, and reflective space within a White-dominated and White-designed educational institution. Students were invited to learn from the wide spectrum of emotions they were experiencing, where emotions operated as a way for students to unlearn, question and re-examine their own relationship to these complicated realities. Given the persistent feeling of precarity that has underpinned this moment, we found that providing students with opportunities to process and reflect on current sociopolitical events helped foster an environment where students could feel cared for when navigating complex and emotionally charged topics, while also allowing space for collective healing and processing.

Scholarly Significance of Work
This work highlights how caminata can be a form of resistance that can challenge pressures to simply continue teaching “business as usual,” especially amidst a political moment that is actively unraveling the very ability to critically teach or learn about legacies of racism and colonialism, as well as abilities to protest and organize on public universities. Moreover, this work has implications for navigating the politics of emotions in approaches to teaching that invite the emotions and embodied experiences of students from a variety of racial, cultural and class backgrounds.

Author

• Celine Vallejo Norman, The University of Texas at Austin