Pedagogy of/with the ‘Foreign Other’: Teaching Undocumented Migration Studies in Translocal Contexts

• In Event: International Committee Talkshop II: Pedagogies of Dissent in A Global Context

Abstract

Guided by Brazilian educational theorist and political activist Paulo Freire, who writes, “Knowledge emerges only through invention and re-invention, through restless, impatient, continuing, hopeful inquiry human beings pursue in the world, with the world, and with each other,” this presentation examines the production of classroom knowledge by the “object” of study itself. Co-teaching a class on migrant workers with an undocumented student activist places authentic learning experiences and questions of “objectivity” front and center for participants. Disrupting the teacher-learner dichotomy challenges all involved to reconsider historical construction of power both in and beyond the classroom, as we analyze the immigrant experience at the nexus of local and global contexts.

Author

• Mark Overmyer-Velazquez, University of Connecticut