Interfering With "Eating the Other": A White Woman Teacher-Activist Addresses Misogynoir

• In Event: (Mis)Educating (Black) Sexed and Gendered (Some)Bodies

Abstract

This paper discusses a moment when a white woman teacher activist engages her activist practices to address white male students engaging in misogynoir. Drawing upon affect theories, critical whiteness, and Black feminist theories, this paper is part of a larger multi-sensory ethnographic study that followed the activist practices of white woman teacher-activists across spaces and places. This paper finds that, though her students seemed to be affected by her activist practices to reflect on their biases, the teacher was affected negatively, and engaged in self-recrimination. This paper contends that asking teacher-activists to attend to the ways in which their activist practices affect other human and non-human bodies is important for creating liberatory classroom spaces.

Author

• Jenna Kamrass Morvay, Miami University - Oxford