Alongside Each Other: Differential Consciousness in the Graduate Feminist Studies Classroom

• In Event: De-Romancing the Humanities: Rejecting the Respectability Politics of Thought

Abstract

This co-written paper represents a faculty member's and her former student's attempt to reckon with an incident in which the former student was subject to demeaning treatment by another student in a course taught by the faculty member. We use this incident to examine interpersonal violence in the graduate feminist studies classroom, with emphasis on the impact of Islamophobia on Muslim women of color. We seek to add to existing critical analyses of how diversity projects reproduce the university as an institution defined by structural violence, by engaging in a collaborative practice of differential consciousness (Sandoval).

Presenters

• Aalih Hussein

• Danielle Bouchard, UNC Greensboro