Pedagogies Against Right-Wing Ideologies: Strategies in an Era of Trump, Modi, and Duterte

Session Submission Type: Non-Paper Session: Dialogue Format

Abstract

This roundtable asks new questions and produces new insights for teaching ethnic studies, cultural studies, area studies, and history in the contemporary moment and under intensifying right-wing ideologies across the world. Collectively, we seek to interrogate the more recent intensification of state and executive power in the United States, India, and the Philippines, and the experiences that we encounter in the classroom. Specifically, we are interested in seeing how right-wing rhetorics and ideologies, especially and often remarkably, are being deployed by students of color. Our added focus would be on students part of South Asian and Filipino diasporas in the United States and Canada, where the rule of Prime Minister Narendra Modi of India and President Rodrigo Duterte of the Philippines, respectively, have elicited right-wing nationalist ideologies that see alliances with right-wing ideologies in the U.S. and Canada. What we see in these North American classrooms, moreover, reflects how these transnational ideological alliances are consolidated and primarily based on white supremacy. As anti-racist educators in the university classroom, who all work to critique state power, we want to share our experiences and strategies for better engaging these students who may be attached to particular ideologies because of “homeland” or nationalist politics.

Roundtable participants Balbir K. Singh and Nishant Upadhyay will critically examine the rise of Hindu nationalism in India and in diaspora. Upadhyay will more closely attend to teaching about India to Hindu diasporic students and the difficulties of engaging with right-wing discourses of India lodged in deeper casteism, xenophobia, and Islamophobia. Singh will broadly examine the reinforcement of Islamophobia and Hindu-right ideologies in California’s public schools textbook cases around the inclusion of particular versions of South Asian history. Singh will additionally link this to the rise of Trump through campaigns like ‘Sikhs for Trump’ as well as U.S. Chief Strategist Steve Bannon’s deep admiration for Modi. Furthermore, participants Joyce Garay and Sue Shon will look at Chicano, Latino/a/x, and Asian American students on campuses in New Mexico and New York, respectively. Garay will speak to the process of self-identification and the politics of affiliation within her classroom, speaking to how generational, regional, and class differences inform the ways in which students initially navigate discursive terrain and slowly witness their thinking evolve; their claiming of Hispanic and Spanish identity labels is especially illuminating of classism and racism among more conservative class members. Shon will share her experiences teaching in New York City with predominantly working class Latinx and Asian American student populations during the rise and election of Trump. Shon will also provide insight into implementing anti-racist pedagogical practice under precarious conditions both within the university and under new conservative regimes. Finally, chair Allan E.S. Lumba will bring in his experience teaching U.S. diplomatic and Asian American histories to help strategize teaching against the pull of right-wing nationalist ideologies, and teaching toward the incorporation of radical political possibilities.

Sub Unit

• American Studies Association Annual Meeting

Chair

• Allan Lumba, University of Michigan at Ann Arbor

Panelists

• Balbir K Singh, University of Texas At Austin

• Sue Shon, New Mexico State University

• Allan Lumba, University of Michigan at Ann Arbor

• R. Joyce Garay, New Mexico State University