Abstract
Difficult Subjects: Insights and Strategies for Teaching about Race, Sexuality, and Gender is a well-crafted volume by scholars across a range of disciplines, forming a collection of essays on critical approaches to teaching “difficult subjects.” The purpose of the book is to serve as a resource for faculty who choose to engage in teaching difficult subjects in higher education classrooms. Co-editors Badia Ahad-Legardy and OiYan A Poon introduce the book with the premise that teaching in institutions of higher education is essential to transformative education through the resistance of dehumanization and engaging in teaching that exposes racism, sexism, classism, and other forms of oppression. The co-editors and authors throughout the book grapple with engaging in radical pedagogical strategies in relation to student learning and faculty teaching development. Thus, Ahad-Legardy and Poon have done an impressive job to create a book that serves as a teaching resource and tool for critical self-reflection for faculty.
The book is divided into three sections: “(Dis)comfort, Fragility, and the Intersections of Identity”; “Embracing Embodiment and Emotion as Pedagogical Praxis”; and “Radical Pedagogy in ‘Neutral’ Places.” The 14 chapters move beyond theoretical ideals about social justice and towards critical praxis in classroom teaching and learning. In each chapter, the authors provide pedagogical strategies and methods to be used in college classrooms in order to engage difficult subjects. Furthermore, the organization of the chapters acknowledges that teaching is a political act that is entangled in identity politics, positionality, learning environments, and relationships.
In the first section, “(Dis)comfort, Fragility, and the Intersections of Identity,” there is an emphasis on the difficult subject of racism, from the identities of professors to student engagement. In chapters 1 and 2, the authors focus on the impact of the racial identities and consciousness of faculty on teaching on topics of race, racism, and whiteness. In chapters 3 and 4, the authors provide pedagogical strategies to engage students in critically analyzing racism, providing methods to navigate in-class conflicts to allow for transformative learning. Moreover, these authors reflect on classroom dynamics that influence dialogue on racism. The final chapter of the section connects the difficult subject of racism to faculty identities and consciousness, racial inequity in higher education, and student engagement. It is important to note that the authors are committed to addressing whiteness and its power relationships that maintain anti-blackness beliefs and values. It thereby challenges the idea of neutrality in teaching through a courageous commitment to name racism and how it manifests in society, institutions of higher education, and classroom learning environments.
The second section, “Embracing Embodiment and Emotion as Pedagogical Praxis,” focuses on the emotional journey involved in teaching and learning around difficult subjects. In these chapters, the authors share teaching tools that connect students to the emotional toll of oppression that is reinforced through the body and identity politics in pedagogy and curriculum. The authors of chapters 6 and 7 discuss how to include emotions in teaching and how to leverage such emotions for the development of critical thinking and personal transformation. Doing so disrupts teaching for the sole purpose of intellectual development and encourages the need for holistic teaching (emotional, spiritual, intellectual, physical). Relevant pedagogical strategies include a class contract, learning-to-listen activities, racial memories, questionnaires, and much more that invites students and faculty to bring all of themselves into the classroom.
The final section, “Radical Pedagogy in ‘Neutral’ Places,” discusses transformative teaching, including in the science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) fields. The first two chapters demonstrate how difficult subjects can be included in STEM curriculum and pedagogies through meaningful reading, writing, activities, and reflection around racism, sexism, and other forms of oppression. Chapter 13 shows how to engage students in critical consciousness and criticality development around their profession; through reflections and connection to the course materials, the author provides opportunities for students to think about social injustices within their chosen career pathway and consider ways to confront such injustices in practice. As such, transformative teaching and learning moves beyond the higher education classroom into society, which connects to the main goal of the book.
Finally, chapter 14 provides a thought-provoking discussion on uncomfortable learning pedagogy that leads students to deep learning and emotional breakthrough. The author outlines the differences between creating safe spaces and brave spaces that ask students to lean into the discomfort of engaging in difficult subjects. This concluding chapter brings all of the chapters together through highlighting the learning process that can occur through discomfort around difficult subjects, and provides hope that radical teaching and learning can still happen in these unsure moments.
Ahad-Legardy and Poon provide a call to action at the end of the book: In this age of spectacle and chaos threatening the exchange of ideas, development of research, and the questioning of prevailing systems of oppression, the responsibility of college educators to challenge and teach students how to critically engage in difficult public discourse and critical thinking about social problems is greater than ever. (268)
Furthermore, the authors navigate concerns of indoctrination by offering strategies to help faculty and students to consider various ways of knowing and being. In other words, they contribute ways of thinking about engaging in difficult subjects, not absolute truths or best practices. A strength of the book lies in its inclusion of diverse disciplines, course types, and author backgrounds (e.g. teaching experiences), which provide the reader with space to adopt the pedagogical strategies as needed. Moreover, several of the authors take an intersectional approach to teaching difficult subjects that challenges a hierarchical approach to oppression and makes visible lived experiences that are at the intersections of multiple social inequities.
Difficult Subjects: Insights and Strategies for Teaching about Race, Sexuality, and Gender is a timely and brilliant book that offers resources for a broad-range audience. It could be valuable for graduate preparation programs, faculty professional development, and social justice facilitation training. As an emerging scholar and aspiring faculty member, I found it a captivating read, and it gave me confidence that I could engage in its recommended practices, such as the incorporation of written pronouns and community standards as introductory activities that create learning opportunities around racism, sexism, classism, and much more. In the current educational and political climate, this book provides hope that teaching difficult subjects can be transformative and integral to the community of higher education educators.