Black Feminist Pedagogy In White Southern Spaces

In Teaching to Transgress, bell hooks situates the classroom as “the most radical space of opportunity in academia” (hooks 1994,), as it is within this space that we might challenge and transcend ways of knowing centered in patriarchy, sexism and racism. But what happens when the classroom is located in spaces loyal to the historical frameworks that buttress white supremacist heteropatriarchy? This article examines my twelve years of experience in teaching undergraduate courses in political science at a small liberal arts college in the mid-South. At its center are critical reflections on attempts to formulate and employ a black feminist teaching pedagogy positioned around hooks’ theory of “teaching to transgress”, in a setting and a discipline in which teaching and learning expectations are anchored to traditional notions of pedagogy and professorial authority. I interrogate whether teaching to transgress can transcend disciplinary boundaries an effective black feminist pedagogy in non GWS disciplines and suggest that the ability to teach to transgress is shaped by place and discipline but is nonetheless possible