Crafting Critical Feminist Narrative Pedagogies Through Women’S and Queer Life Writing
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ABSTRACT TEACHING A TRANSFORMATIVE STORY: CRAFTING CRITICAL FEMINIST NARRATIVE PEDAGOGIES THROUGH WOMEN’S AND QUEER LIFE WRITING Rhiannon Catherwood, PhD Department of English Northern Illinois University, 2017 Diana L. Swanson, Director This dissertation bridges narrative psychology, pedagogical theory, and the study of marginalized life writing. Narrative psychologists argue that human beings instinctively process their experiences in terms of story, including educational experiences. Literary critics focusing on life writing argue that authors of differing backgrounds produce distinctly different genres of life narrative, evidencing different patterns of thought and reasoning. The principal concern of teaching professionals should be to create an inclusive atmosphere which maximizes the learning potential of a diverse body of students. This means developing educational practices which reflect the diverse ways in which students perceive and relate to the world around them. This dissertation incorporates queer and feminist literary theory and criticism, textual analysis of a variety of autobiographies, memoirs, and personal essays, research on the application of narrative theory to pedagogy, and critical feminist pedagogy. Building on existing research on narrative pedagogy with analysis of the distinct qualities of women’s autobiography and queer autobiography, this project suggests changes to both classroom practices and curriculum development. By changing the genre of our educational narratives, we can transform the atmosphere of campuses and classrooms into one in which previously marginalized students are centralized and empowered. NORTHERN ILLINOIS UNIVERSITY DE KALB, ILLINOIS MAY 2017 TEACHING A TRANSFORMATIVE STORY: CRAFTING CRITICAL FEMINIST NARRATIVE PEDAGOGIES THROUGH WOMEN’S AND QUEER LIFE WRITING BY RHIANNON CATHERWOOD © 2016 Rhiannon Catherwood A DISSERTATION SUBMITTED TO THE GRADUATE SCHOOL IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH Doctoral Director: Diana L. Swanson ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Many people contributed a great deal of time, energy, and insight during the process of writing this dissertation. Primarily, I would like to thank my director, Dr. Diana L. Swanson, who not only provided my first exposure to the literary and gender theory which grounds this project, but whose encouragement and high standards have prompted my best work throughout my years as a graduate student. Thanks also to Drs. Joe Bonomo and Brad Peters, whose knowledge of life writing and progressive teaching practices have been invaluable throughout this process. I am also indebted to many other professors who have supported and encouraged me on both my personal and professional journey over the last several years including Dr. Michael Day, Dr. Kristen Myers, and Dr. Betty Birner. DEDICATION To my father, David Catherwood, whose stories shaped me. TABLE OF CONTENTS Page Chapter 1. ANDROCENTRISM AND HETERONORMATIVITY IN HIGHER EDUCATION …………………………………………………….. 1 Genres of Educational Narrative …………………………………… 4 From a Standpoint Feminist Theoretical Framework ……………… 9 Toward a Critical Feminist Narrative Pedagogy …………………… 18 2. NARRATIVE IN PSYCHOLOGY AND PEDAGOGY ………………………… 31 Definitions and Groundwork ……………………………………….. 31 Narrative Psychology ……………………………………………….. 35 Narrative Pedagogy …………………………………………………. 42 Educational Narratives and Genre ………………………………….. 54 3. GENDER, SEXUALITY, AND GENDER IDENTITY IN NARRATIVE GENRES OF LIFE WRITING ………………………………….. 64 The Life Writing of Women ………………………………………... 70 Gay and Lesbian Life Writing ……………………………………… 88 Transgender Life Writing …………………………………………... 105 Summary and Conclusions …………………………………………. 121 v 4. EPISTEMOLOGY AND PROBLEM SOLVING PATTERNS ACROSS GENDERS AND SEXUALITIES…………………………………….. 122 Women’s Ways of Learning ………………………………………... 129 Queer Ways of Learning ……………………………………………. 143 Conclusion and Synthesis ………………………………………….... 155 5. TEACHING AND LEARNING AS WOMEN’S NARRATIVES AND QUEER NARRATIVES …………………………………………………… 158 Existing Applications of Women’s Ways of Knowing and the Ethic of Care in Education …………………………………………… 161 Applications of Critical Feminist Narrative Pedagogy ………………. 169 Care-based Solutions in Political Science ……………………. 170 Narrating Group Belonging in Sociology …………………….. 172 Women’s Studies as Women’s Stories ……………………….. 173 Finding Alternatives in Business ……………………………... 175 Counseling Communities in Psychology ……………………... 177 Reconsidering Movements and Genres in Literature …………. 179 Coming Out in First-year Writing …………………………….. 180 Multiple Perspectives in History ……………………………… 182 Transitioning into Professional Life ………………………….. 184 Summary and Reflection ……………………………………………… 186 Conclusions and the Future of Narrative Pedagogy ………………….. 187 BIBLIOGRAPHY …………………………………………………………………………….. 193 CHAPTER 1 ANDROCENTRISM AND HETERONORMATIVITY IN HIGHER EDUCATION Years ago, at an interdisciplinary academic conference, I met a professor of mathematics. When he flipped through the program to find my name and learned that my presentation focused on feminism and academics, he told me that he was entirely fed up with hearing about gender in the classroom. In his view, as soon as universities stopped prohibiting women from attending, the issue was resolved; all that remained was bickering over trivialities. He told me that recently, for example, a freshman student had raised her hand in a lecture hall to take issue with the real- world, situational examples he would use to give concrete representation to mathematical theories and concepts. According to her, his examples revolving around American sports left many women, some men, and most international students scratching their heads. He then told me quite proudly how he shamed the student into silence. “Mathematics,” he pronounced, finger raised, “is logic and abstraction. I told her, if you have a head for it, the example doesn’t matter. And if she didn’t, she should focus harder instead of wasting the class’s time.” Setting aside for a moment the inappropriate antagonism with which he handled a question from a young student, I asked him, “If the example doesn’t matter, why use it at all? Why demonstrate the idea with a story?” He explained, “It’s just something you do when you teach. It helps them understand.” 2 He was right about that much. Giving his students a tangible example of the concept, a story through which they could observe the application of class material, was one (very simplistic) manifestation of narrative pedagogy, which could be most broadly defined as teaching practices which engage students in the narrative mode of thinking. Jerome Bruner explains this mode of thinking as “the form of thought that goes into the construction not of logical or inductive arguments but of stories or narratives” (“Life as Narrative” 691). What the professor clearly understood, on some level, was that narrative thinking is a powerful and meaningful cognitive practice. This may be the reason he told me the story of the student’s objection to demonstrate his point. For the same reason, I begin this chapter with the story of the professor to demonstrate my own. What the professor failed to understand is that while mathematics may be, as he said, a matter solely of logic and abstraction, pedagogy is a very different matter. Teaching and learning are subjective, human experiences where success depends upon much more than simply aptitude for the subject matter. Successful teaching depends, rather, on crafting a situation that optimizes the students’ potential for mastering that subject matter, which necessitates understanding the background, experience, and knowledge base of those students; this certainly does mean considering the impact of gender among many other factors. Otherwise, as surely as if one were to hold office hours when only half the class could attend or speak in a language which only half of the class understood, one is inevitably teaching more effectively to some students than to others. Naturally, the students in this situation to whom the professor’s lectures were tailored were those students most commonly privileged and centralized in math and science (to say nothing of the academy as a whole let alone American culture as a whole) – gender normative 3 American men. Contrary to his assertion that issues of gender in higher education were resolved as soon as women were allowed a seat in the lecture hall, an abundance of research illustrates the hostility which women students have faced. In a widely read study, “The Classroom Climate: A Chilly One For Women,” Roberta M. Hall and Bernice R. Sandler argued that a variety of behaviors of faculty members, some purposeful and others inadvertent, contributed to “a learning climate that subtly or overtly communicates different expectations for women than for men” which “can interfere with the educational process itself” (3). Hall and Sandler document a variety of classroom inequalities such as disparities in which students receive more eye contact (7), differences in which students are more likely to be called on (7), and prevailing tendencies to address the class as though no women were present (8). What all of these behaviors have in common is that they combine to communicate that the university classroom is a space in which men are centralized and women are peripheral. Hall and Sandler’s study was published in 1982. More recent research, however, does not contradict their findings, though it does complicate them.