Communication and Identity in the Classroom

This book utilizes autoethnography and personal narratives stemming from a critical pedagogy perspective to highlight pivotal points in teaching and mentoring. The contributors use their intersectional identities to better understand, challenge, and engage students and institutions as they foster pedagogical spaces of radical love and learning.

This collection, edited by Daniel S. Strasser, was unearthed from the demand for more inclusive and expansive dialogues on intersectional identities, ethnicity, neuro-diversity, physical ability, religion, sexual orientation, class, and gender performance in academia. The autoethnographic and narrative accounts within Communication and Identity in the Classroom: Intersectional Perspectives of Critical Pedagogy offer personal, experiential perspectives on the power of identity to influence educators in classroom and mentoring spaces. The multiple perspectives offered here promote dialogue about how personal experience provides the ground upon which we build more dynamic relationships and communities. The contributors’ experiences offer examples for a more expansive understanding of privilege, oppression, and identity. These seeds for conversation nourish discourses that build new communicative bridges between educators and students as we prepare to face the next interaction, class, and challenges and opportunity for resilience. This collection invites educators to be critical of their bodies, of their politics, of their intersecting identities, and acknowledge in words and actions that our bodies are political. Throughout this collection the contributors expand upon theories and methods of critical communication scholarship, radical love, and intersectionality using their embodied pedagogical experiences to ground the scholarship.

Preface by Bernadette Marie Calafell

Introduction: Communication and Identity in the Classroom: Intersectional Perspectives of

Critical Pedagogy

Daniel S. Strasser

SECTION ONE: Autoethnographic Accounts of Critical, Intersectional Pedagogy

Chapter One

Finding Space and Place within the Ivory Tower: Conversations on Intersectionality, Voice and Silence

Tomeka M. Robinson and Jahnasia Booker

Chapter Two

You Are Not My Child, I Am Not Your Parent: A Case Against the Infantilization of Students

Meggie Mapes and Benny LeMaster

Chapter Three

Empath(olog)ic Pedagogy: An Autoethnography of Health, Class, and the Classroom

Brandi Lawless

Chapter Four

“Bad Hombre” in the Classroom: Pedagogical Politics of Performing “Brown Man” in a Conservative Time

Antonio De La Garza and Andrew R. Spieldenner

Chapter Five

What Difference Does it Make?: Navigating the Privileged Halls of Academia as a Queer Black Woman Professor

Elizabeth Whittington

Chapter Six

Teaching While Vulnerable: Connection through Shared Vulnerability as a Pedagogical Stepping Stone To Queer Consciousness

Richard G. Jones, Jr.

Chapter Seven

Queer-Femme-Pedagogy: Telling Our Tales // Confessing Our Truths

Bri Ozalas and Kathryn Hobson

Chapter Eight

Pedagogy, Passing and Privilege

Rachel Silverman

SECTION TWO: Personal Narratives and Reflections on Critical, Intersectional Pedagogy

Chapter Nine

Sawubona - We See, Value and Respect You: A Critical Pedagogical Invitation to Communicate

Eddah M. Mutua

Chapter Ten

Family Stories, Pedagogy, Inclusive Practices and Autohistoria

Sergio Fernando Juárez

Chapter Eleven

Unmasking the Hegemony of English: Exploring English Neo-Imperialism and the Internationalization of Whiteness

Sachiko Tankei-Aminian

Chapter Twelve

Managing Mental Health in the Classroom: A Narrative Reflection on Pedagogy

Andrea L. Meluch

Chapter 13

Navigating Intercultural Identities at a Crossroads of Mindfulness and Instruction

Aayushi Hingle

Chapter 14

Going the Extra Mile: Mentoring Black Undergraduate Students

Lance Kyle Bennett

Index

About the Contributors