Course Information
Womanism, as defined by Alice Walker in her womanist prose In Search of Our Mother's Gardens:
1. From womanish. (Opp. Of “girlish,” i.e., frivolous, irresponsible, not serious.) A black feminist or feminist of color. From the black folk expression of mothers to female children, “You acting womanish,” i.e., like a woman. Usually referring to outrageous, audacious, courageous or willful behavior. Wanting to know more and in greater depth than is considered “good” for one. Interested in grown-up doings. Acting grown up. Being grown up. Interchangeable with another black folk expression: “You trying to be grown.” Responsible. In charge. Serious.
2. Also: A woman who loves other women, sexually and/or non sexually. Appreciates and prefers women’s culture, women’s emotional flexibility (values tears as natural counterbalance of laughter), and women’s strength. Sometimes loves individual men, sexually and/or non sexually. Committed to survival and wholeness of entire people, male and female. Not a separatist, except periodically, for health. Traditionally, universalist, as in: “Mama, why are we brown, pink, and yellow, and our cousins are white, beige, and black?” Ans.:”Well, you know colored race is just like a flower garden, with every color flower represented.” Traditionally capable, as in: “Mama, I’m walking to Canada and I’m taking you and a bunch of other slaves with me.” Reply: “It wouldn’t be the first time.”
3. Loves music. Loves dance. Loves the moon. Loves the Spirit. Loves love and food and roundness. Loves struggle. Loves the Folk. Loves herself. Regardless.
4. Womanist is to feminist as purple is to lavender.
Goals, Background, Vision & Outcomes for Course:
This course will introduce/orient undergraduate students to womxnism as both a theory and praxis. This course amplifies the voices of Black womxn and womxn of color to illuminate how and why their voices have been silenced in liberation movements. This course emphasizes the womxnist tenet that oppression is an interlocking system. Since oppressions are tied to one another, liberation is as well. One of us cannot be free until we are all free. Using texts, music, film, and shared narratives that centers Black womxn and womxn of color, students and instructor will discuss the creation of womxnism and the womxn who speak its truth to power both past and present. Through readings, assignments, and discussion we intend to answer the following questions: What is womxnism? How does womxnism relate to feminism? Where does my experience fit into womxnist theory and praxis? How is my liberation tied into the liberation of others?
Required Texts:
In Search of Our Mother's Garden: Womanist Prose by Alice Walker
This Bridge Called My Back, Fourth Edition: Writings by Radical Women of Color by Cherríe Moraga (Editor), Gloria Anzaldúa (Editor)
Note: Although you are free to purchase these books from anywhere, in keeping with the commitment to center Black womxn and womxn of color I encourage you to seek out booksellers that are womxn of color owned.
Undergraduate Learning Outcome:
Note: Although this course is not housed in the College of Education, I think it is worth bringing students' awareness to the CSIEME Framework as used in Dr. Christine Clark's Spring 2019 CME 700 Social Justice Education syllabus. Social Justice is not just a hot button topic; it is grounded in the real experiences of people. This course is situated in social justice pedagogy, just as every course you take should be (and if it is not, you have the responsibility to demand that your instructors teach in a way that centers liberation). Education should and can be an experience in which one is profoundly transformed. It is a tool of liberation for the self, others, and society as we move towards radical justice. Therefore, I encourage you to read through the CSIEME Framework and I hope that it reminds you that we all have a role in this struggle towards liberation:
The CSIEME Framework 2018-2019 is dedicated to supporting the on-going, collaborative creation and actualization of a liberatory culture that informs and through which we engage all of our work with one another, with students, in schools, in communities, and through scholarship.
The CSIEME Framework 2018-2019 seeks to reciprocally and reflexively link radical/emancipatory theory with radical/emancipatory praxis.
As such, the CSIEME Framework 2018-2019 is integral to all that we do in the CSIEME program, from relationship and community building, to program orientations, to courses, to extracurricular activities, to benchmarks, to culminating assignments (CIG 697, thesis, dissertation), and to the work we do beyond the program.
The CSIEME Framework 2018-2019 draws from and, therefore, is defined by the following elements:
1) A challenge to the work of social justice as work that, despite its best efforts to the contrary, can “prioritize the needs of some over the conditions of others.” We must engage this challenge with an equity consciousness in seeking to build durable coalitions that work for justice.
See Center for Culturally Responsive Evaluation and Assessment (CREA) Fifth International Conference “Purpose.” Retrieved from https://crea.education.illinois.edu/home/conferences/fifth-international-conference
See Barber II, W. J. (2018). America’s moral malady. The Atlantic.
Retrieved from https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2018/02/a-new-poor-peoples-campaign/552503/
2) A main complexity of the work of social justice is welcoming different, complex interpretations/understandings of/in the work, but also correcting clear misinterpretations/misunderstandings of/in the work, including our own. We must welcome and we must self/correct.
See Tewell, E. (2016). Putting critical information literacy into context: How and why librarians adopt critical practices in their teaching. In the Library with a Lead Pipe. Retrieved from http://www.inthelibrarywiththeleadpipe.org/2016/putting-critical-information-literacy-into-context-how-and-why-librarians-adopt-critical-practices-in-their-teaching/
See Tewell, E. (2018). The practice and promise of critical information literacy: Academic librarians’ involvement in critical library instruction. College & Research Libraries, 79(1), 10-34. Retrieved from https://crl.acrl.org/index.php/crl/article/view/16616/18062
3) We must understand how “diversity and inclusion” have been co-opted and recuperated to appease, and re/engage “equity and justice” to transform.
See Lazarus-Stewart, D. (2017). Language of appeasement. Inside Higher Ed. Retrieved from https://www.insidehighered.com/views/2017/03/30/colleges-need-language-shift-not-one-you-think-essay
4) We must speak truth to ourselves, with one another, and to power; social justice work requires us to ‘tell it like it is’!
See Dyson, M. E. (2018). Tell it like it is. A call to rise: Changing the status quo lecture series. Dallas, TX: St. Luke Community United Methodist Church. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4kpteYeh-fE&app=desktop
5) We must recognize and work to reconcile, through social justice action, the complex, dialectical relationship between private interests and the public good, especially the threatening impact of private corporate interests in public education. See Lawrence, III, C. R. (2005). Forbidden conversations: On race, privacy, and community (A continuing conversation with John Ely on racism and democracy), The Yale Law Journal, 114(6), 1353-403. Retrieved from https://digitalcommons.law.yale.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?referer=&httpsredir=1&article=4953&context=ylj
See Giroux, H. (2012). Can democratic education survive in a neoliberal society? Truthout. Retrieved from https://truthout.org/articles/can-democratic-education-survive-in-a-neoliberal-society/
See Green, E., & Saul, S. (2018, May 5). What Charles Koch and other donors to George Mason University got for their money. The New York Times. Retrieved from https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/05/us/koch-donors-george-mason.html
See Giroux, H. (2018). Striking teachers beat back neoliberalism’s war on public education. Truthout. Retrieved from https://truthout.org/articles/striking-teachers-beat-back-neoliberalism-s-war-on-public-schools/
6) We must continuously re/commit ourselves to dialogue—to listening to understand, not to gain advantage, centering race dialogue as concomitantly (im)possible, and recognizing that freedom from injustice requires ‘re-cognition’ of race and racism simultaneous with understanding of the intersecting nature of racism, classism, sexism, and all other forms of oppression.
See McPhail, M. L. (2003). Race and the (im)possibility of dialogue. In R. Anderson, L. Baxter, and K. Cisna, Dialogue: Theorizing difference in communication studies (pp. 209-24). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications. Retrieved from https://www.academia.edu/332191/Race_and_the_Im_Possibility_of_Dialogue
7) We must put the work of social justice into meaningful and effective action by: a) getting proximate; b) changing the narrative; c) staying hopeful; and, d) being willing to do things that are inconvenient and uncomfortable.
See Stevenson, B. (2018). Your degree authorizes you to change the world. Commencement address. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HRJlEjU7vO8
8) We must to always tether a social justice, sociopolitically-located, critical, movement-oriented, community-embedded consciousness to the work of cultural studies, international education, and multicultural education.
See Lawyer, G. (2018). The dangers of separating social justice from multicultural education: Applications in higher education. International Journal of Multicultural Education, 20(1), 86-101. Retrieved from http://ijme-journal.org/index.php/ijme/article/view/1538/1212
The CSIEME Framework 2018-2019 is a living document that will adapt and shift over time through our co-engagement with and coenactment of it.
1. From womanish. (Opp. Of “girlish,” i.e., frivolous, irresponsible, not serious.) A black feminist or feminist of color. From the black folk expression of mothers to female children, “You acting womanish,” i.e., like a woman. Usually referring to outrageous, audacious, courageous or willful behavior. Wanting to know more and in greater depth than is considered “good” for one. Interested in grown-up doings. Acting grown up. Being grown up. Interchangeable with another black folk expression: “You trying to be grown.” Responsible. In charge. Serious.
2. Also: A woman who loves other women, sexually and/or non sexually. Appreciates and prefers women’s culture, women’s emotional flexibility (values tears as natural counterbalance of laughter), and women’s strength. Sometimes loves individual men, sexually and/or non sexually. Committed to survival and wholeness of entire people, male and female. Not a separatist, except periodically, for health. Traditionally, universalist, as in: “Mama, why are we brown, pink, and yellow, and our cousins are white, beige, and black?” Ans.:”Well, you know colored race is just like a flower garden, with every color flower represented.” Traditionally capable, as in: “Mama, I’m walking to Canada and I’m taking you and a bunch of other slaves with me.” Reply: “It wouldn’t be the first time.”
3. Loves music. Loves dance. Loves the moon. Loves the Spirit. Loves love and food and roundness. Loves struggle. Loves the Folk. Loves herself. Regardless.
4. Womanist is to feminist as purple is to lavender.
Goals, Background, Vision & Outcomes for Course:
This course will introduce/orient undergraduate students to womxnism as both a theory and praxis. This course amplifies the voices of Black womxn and womxn of color to illuminate how and why their voices have been silenced in liberation movements. This course emphasizes the womxnist tenet that oppression is an interlocking system. Since oppressions are tied to one another, liberation is as well. One of us cannot be free until we are all free. Using texts, music, film, and shared narratives that centers Black womxn and womxn of color, students and instructor will discuss the creation of womxnism and the womxn who speak its truth to power both past and present. Through readings, assignments, and discussion we intend to answer the following questions: What is womxnism? How does womxnism relate to feminism? Where does my experience fit into womxnist theory and praxis? How is my liberation tied into the liberation of others?
Required Texts:
In Search of Our Mother's Garden: Womanist Prose by Alice Walker
This Bridge Called My Back, Fourth Edition: Writings by Radical Women of Color by Cherríe Moraga (Editor), Gloria Anzaldúa (Editor)
Note: Although you are free to purchase these books from anywhere, in keeping with the commitment to center Black womxn and womxn of color I encourage you to seek out booksellers that are womxn of color owned.
Undergraduate Learning Outcome:
- Intellectual Breadth and Life-Long Learning - Integrate differing perspectives of the natural sciences, social sciences, humanities and fine arts, and develop skills and desire for life-long learning.
- Inquiry and Critical Thinking - Use qualitative and quantitative methods to guide the collection, analysis, and use of information and produce reasoned arguments and explanations.
- Communication - Communicate effectively in written, spoken, visual, and digital modes.
- Global/Multicultural - Develop knowledge of global and multicultural societies and an awareness of one’s place in and effect on them.
- Engage in constructive discussion and demonstrate knowledge of gender and sexuality’s relationship to social justice and diversity issues.
- Apply broad knowledge of the intersectionality of social categories/lived experiences, including but not limited to gender, race, class, sexuality, ability, and nationality.
- Identify the relationship between privilege and oppression on both individual and systemic levels.
- Analyze womxn, gender, and sexuality from a cultural and institutional perspective.
- Develop knowledge about feminist perspectives, including the following:
- Identify feminist theories
- Apply feminist research methods and ethics
- Interpret evidence from a feminist perspective
- Produce feminist research that integrates the praxis of local and global activism for the purpose of social change.
Note: Although this course is not housed in the College of Education, I think it is worth bringing students' awareness to the CSIEME Framework as used in Dr. Christine Clark's Spring 2019 CME 700 Social Justice Education syllabus. Social Justice is not just a hot button topic; it is grounded in the real experiences of people. This course is situated in social justice pedagogy, just as every course you take should be (and if it is not, you have the responsibility to demand that your instructors teach in a way that centers liberation). Education should and can be an experience in which one is profoundly transformed. It is a tool of liberation for the self, others, and society as we move towards radical justice. Therefore, I encourage you to read through the CSIEME Framework and I hope that it reminds you that we all have a role in this struggle towards liberation:
The CSIEME Framework 2018-2019 is dedicated to supporting the on-going, collaborative creation and actualization of a liberatory culture that informs and through which we engage all of our work with one another, with students, in schools, in communities, and through scholarship.
The CSIEME Framework 2018-2019 seeks to reciprocally and reflexively link radical/emancipatory theory with radical/emancipatory praxis.
As such, the CSIEME Framework 2018-2019 is integral to all that we do in the CSIEME program, from relationship and community building, to program orientations, to courses, to extracurricular activities, to benchmarks, to culminating assignments (CIG 697, thesis, dissertation), and to the work we do beyond the program.
The CSIEME Framework 2018-2019 draws from and, therefore, is defined by the following elements:
1) A challenge to the work of social justice as work that, despite its best efforts to the contrary, can “prioritize the needs of some over the conditions of others.” We must engage this challenge with an equity consciousness in seeking to build durable coalitions that work for justice.
See Center for Culturally Responsive Evaluation and Assessment (CREA) Fifth International Conference “Purpose.” Retrieved from https://crea.education.illinois.edu/home/conferences/fifth-international-conference
See Barber II, W. J. (2018). America’s moral malady. The Atlantic.
Retrieved from https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2018/02/a-new-poor-peoples-campaign/552503/
2) A main complexity of the work of social justice is welcoming different, complex interpretations/understandings of/in the work, but also correcting clear misinterpretations/misunderstandings of/in the work, including our own. We must welcome and we must self/correct.
See Tewell, E. (2016). Putting critical information literacy into context: How and why librarians adopt critical practices in their teaching. In the Library with a Lead Pipe. Retrieved from http://www.inthelibrarywiththeleadpipe.org/2016/putting-critical-information-literacy-into-context-how-and-why-librarians-adopt-critical-practices-in-their-teaching/
See Tewell, E. (2018). The practice and promise of critical information literacy: Academic librarians’ involvement in critical library instruction. College & Research Libraries, 79(1), 10-34. Retrieved from https://crl.acrl.org/index.php/crl/article/view/16616/18062
3) We must understand how “diversity and inclusion” have been co-opted and recuperated to appease, and re/engage “equity and justice” to transform.
See Lazarus-Stewart, D. (2017). Language of appeasement. Inside Higher Ed. Retrieved from https://www.insidehighered.com/views/2017/03/30/colleges-need-language-shift-not-one-you-think-essay
4) We must speak truth to ourselves, with one another, and to power; social justice work requires us to ‘tell it like it is’!
See Dyson, M. E. (2018). Tell it like it is. A call to rise: Changing the status quo lecture series. Dallas, TX: St. Luke Community United Methodist Church. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4kpteYeh-fE&app=desktop
5) We must recognize and work to reconcile, through social justice action, the complex, dialectical relationship between private interests and the public good, especially the threatening impact of private corporate interests in public education. See Lawrence, III, C. R. (2005). Forbidden conversations: On race, privacy, and community (A continuing conversation with John Ely on racism and democracy), The Yale Law Journal, 114(6), 1353-403. Retrieved from https://digitalcommons.law.yale.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?referer=&httpsredir=1&article=4953&context=ylj
See Giroux, H. (2012). Can democratic education survive in a neoliberal society? Truthout. Retrieved from https://truthout.org/articles/can-democratic-education-survive-in-a-neoliberal-society/
See Green, E., & Saul, S. (2018, May 5). What Charles Koch and other donors to George Mason University got for their money. The New York Times. Retrieved from https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/05/us/koch-donors-george-mason.html
See Giroux, H. (2018). Striking teachers beat back neoliberalism’s war on public education. Truthout. Retrieved from https://truthout.org/articles/striking-teachers-beat-back-neoliberalism-s-war-on-public-schools/
6) We must continuously re/commit ourselves to dialogue—to listening to understand, not to gain advantage, centering race dialogue as concomitantly (im)possible, and recognizing that freedom from injustice requires ‘re-cognition’ of race and racism simultaneous with understanding of the intersecting nature of racism, classism, sexism, and all other forms of oppression.
See McPhail, M. L. (2003). Race and the (im)possibility of dialogue. In R. Anderson, L. Baxter, and K. Cisna, Dialogue: Theorizing difference in communication studies (pp. 209-24). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications. Retrieved from https://www.academia.edu/332191/Race_and_the_Im_Possibility_of_Dialogue
7) We must put the work of social justice into meaningful and effective action by: a) getting proximate; b) changing the narrative; c) staying hopeful; and, d) being willing to do things that are inconvenient and uncomfortable.
See Stevenson, B. (2018). Your degree authorizes you to change the world. Commencement address. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HRJlEjU7vO8
8) We must to always tether a social justice, sociopolitically-located, critical, movement-oriented, community-embedded consciousness to the work of cultural studies, international education, and multicultural education.
See Lawyer, G. (2018). The dangers of separating social justice from multicultural education: Applications in higher education. International Journal of Multicultural Education, 20(1), 86-101. Retrieved from http://ijme-journal.org/index.php/ijme/article/view/1538/1212
The CSIEME Framework 2018-2019 is a living document that will adapt and shift over time through our co-engagement with and coenactment of it.