Pedagogy 2025
Abstract
The Gender & Women’s Studies department at Saint Mary’s College has collaborated with both the LGBTQ Center of South Bend and our college LGBTQ+ Center since 2019 to present an annual community “Deconstructing Gender” workshop. As the workshop grows, we have created themes: Masculinities, Intersectionalities, Womanhood, and Gender and Politics. Using bell hooks’ ideas about power sharing and inclusive learning helped frame the assignment. hooks asks readers to rethink ways of knowing and to consider how we can share power and create inclusive learning environments. Our collaborative partnership has led to powerful experiences for presenters and audience members, including making space for difficult conversations and experiencing “aha” moments when community members make connections with students. Students form small groups through self-selection after discussing themes they wish to highlight; this helps students take control of their learning. They work in and outside of class to create original content. Students gain a substantive foundation in a broad range of feminist theoretical approaches. This assignment asks that they situate texts for a lay audience eager to engage with ideas about gender. The workshop assignment provides space for self-reflection and feedback. During a practice session for the class, a panel of GWS faculty members offer feedback to the students. Later, at the presentation for the teenagers, students receive immediate verbal feedback from teenagers and staff. Changes are made before the final workshop presentation. Opportunities to receive feedback from professionals in the field, and from people younger than themselves, can be rare in academia.
Jamie Wagman is a Professor and Chair of History and Gender & Women’s Studies departments at Saint Mary’s College in Notre Dame, Indiana. She teaches courses on U.S. History of Sexuality, Feminist Theory, and African-American History since Reconstruction. She has a Ph.D. in American Studies and a Gender Studies graduate certificate from Saint Louis University, and an M.A. in Writing from The Johns Hopkins University. She has been a Fulbright Specialist at the International University of Rabat, an NEH Summer Scholar, and an Indiana Humanities Suffrage Speakers Bureau historian.