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Well folks, better late than never! I was taking my first PhD prelim exam during this weekend, so I appologize for being late in posting my question. So, here we go:

I totally agree with Ashley Falzetti when she says that videos can make the theoretical points more palatable. Barbeau also makes a point that YouTube can be interpreted in the same ways as a standard text. She argues that students need both the tangible page and hypermedia on the readings list: "solely reading and deconstructing scholarly articles (..., underprepares them (students) for their interactions outside of class and their future careers". However, she (Barbeau) take a step ahead emphasizing that "today's learners have become accustomed to multitasking as a way of life; emphasis on doing rather than knowing; greater familiarity with typing rather than handwriting; the importance of staying connected (...) and reliance on the web as the primary source of information. Grabbing a dictionary to look up the definition of a word or going to the library to check out a book for a research paper is laborious when Google is a few clicks away".

Then, my question is: what if we consider solely watching and deconstructing visual media in our pedagogical practices? Since all we need is availabe (?) a few clicks away, do we really need to save the 'tangible pages'? If yes, how can we do it in a engaging and useful way? Which risks we might face having an "imbalance" in either directions?

In what ways would feminist authors such as bell hooks, Kevin Kumashiro, and Berenice Malka Fisher respond to the social/political opportunities and barriers that exist for feminist pedagogy within YouTube? While Kellner and Kim (2010) provides an accurate portrayal of the complexities and contradictions associated with critical pedagogy and social/political activism within YouTube, how would Paulo Freire's Pedagogy of Oppressed be updated today if he were to write an additional chapter regarding the influence of new media and YouTube on education? In what ways does YouTube provide unique opportunities for feminist pedagogy in comparison to blogs, Facebook, and Twitter? In comparison to other new media pedagogical resources, what unique barriers or concerns emerge while using YouTube within the classroom? How would you respond to a school administrator or colleague who has remained resistant to the potential, appropriateness, or usefulness of new media resources and YouTube within the classroom? While this class consists of individuals from a variety of academic interests, knowledge, and expertise, what is one example where you foresee YouTube providing a unique opportunity for feminist pedagogy in your classroom?

Berenice Fisher's question asking whether women's experience is the best teacher intrigues me at several levels. Standpoint feminism stresses on using experience as a way of knowing (Kishimoto and Mwangi) as does Fisher when she suggests that feelings and stories of one's experiences broadens the opportunities for reflection. Both also problematize experential knowledge as an authority. While Kishimoto and Mwangi suggest that vulnerability is a form of strategic essentialization for collective action, Fisher argues that experience need not be 'innocent'. Kishimoto and Mwangi also stress that one must use one's vulnerability and self-disclosure in moving students and teachers somewhere in our learning/teaching. Fisher, too, says that experience is partial and cannot tell us about the influence of larger structures. If the aim of individual and collective action is to transform society, how does a feminist pedagogue facilitate a productive dialogue between the 'bearers of experience' and 'experential analysts' for a particular type of oppression? How can the 'bearers of experience' theorize as hooks does when she's hurting? How can the 'analysts' negotiate their lack of personal experience as they seek to learn about a particular type of oppression or oppressed group?

After reading the article "I Tweet, Therefore I Am" by Peggy Orenstein the topic of performativity raised some concerns for me. In her article she uses Erving Goffman's definition of performance that states, "...all of life is performance: we act out a role in every interaction, adapting it based on the nature of the relationship or context at hand." If we all are performing, we must be trying to appease our audience and while the audience may change in every interaction, how does this performativity affect our "true" self? In my case, a Chicano that was forced to lose my native tongue and conform to the U.S. mainstream, how is my performance informed by the assimilation that was forced on me? How is performance informed differently for different bodies? Do spaces like Twitter allow for a "true" reflection of ourselves or do we perform there too?

While Joe Johnson's blog entry contains many problematic concepts such as an exoticism of African Americans and a refusal to acknowledge a sense of white male heterosexual privilege, what potentially positive outcomes can exist from following individuals or groups on Twitter that engage in experiences much different than yours? In what ways does Twitter provide a limited outlook and perspective in attempting to interpret the experiences of others? Is Johnson really attempting to understand the experience of this African American woman or simply giving approval of her "performative self" on Twitter? Given the backlash through discussion board comments and other blog entries, in what ways can Twitter provide opportunities to engage in critical discussions of racist and sexist dialogue? In what ways are these discussions often hidden or ignored among other new media discourse? Additionally, based on previous discussions inspired by Malcolm Gladwell and Peggy Orienstein, what barriers exist for Twitter to be viewed as a legitimate source of media and not simply a fad?

I have never participated in the blogosphere before this class. (I don't regularly visit blogs other than when a friend posts a fb link to a blog they frequent.) Sara Poutinen and Kandace Creel Falcon's essay "Teaching with Blogs and Blogging while Teaching" allowed me to consider the many possibilities of feminist blogging. I was really interested in the idea of engagement. I really liked the idea of "emphasizing feedback, over grading as evaluating." I was very intrigued at this notion that SLP discusses about giving feedback that is not aimed at evaluating or judging the students' performance (18). The footnote on this page directs us to an example of what this might look like. Read it here. I really liked this, because as the authors state if we consider the public nature of blogs (and the vulnerability of participating in them), teachers must develop "more feminist methods for giving feedback" (17).
How can we make sure that our students feel motivated and enthusiastic about engaging not only with the blog, but to have "serious engagements" with one another? What about the "silent or invisible readers"? How do you give them feedback? If blogging is suppose to allow for community building, how can we ensure that the community feels safe enough for everyone to participate and engage? (I'm still thinking about this idea of "authentic self" that we've grappled with...the article talked about feeling "exposed." KCF talks about being hesitant about granting too much access (13) to her students) I like that engagement in blogs offers new and exciting ways for student (and teachers) to develop their writing, but what does busting/blurring binaries between students and teachers mean for students who are still not ready to engage with this "organically?" Blogging is still something i'm getting use to, and although I'm excited about the possibilities for disrupting the notion of "what counts" as academic, how can we work towards making this happen in a way that is exciting and fruitful for all?

In "The Personal is Political: Feminist Blogging and Virtual Consciousness-Raising" Kennedy emphasizes the importance of blogs as more inclusionary sites of consciousness-raising as opposed to the CR sessions of the 1960s and 1970s. My question would be what is lost without face to face interaction? How can a sense of community or intimacy be developed in virtual consciousness-raising? Kennedy articulates a similar dilemma at the end of her article that her personal and work schedules have cost her spending less time in her geographical community. I also wonder if this is an acceptable consequence of working on blogs and virtual consciousness-raising. Should there be a component in feminist pedagogical classrooms to teach how to balance offline and online advocacy and investment? What would this look like in classes with limited time and students who hold their personal lives completely separate from their academic lives?

In her final paragraph Mimi Orner asks educators to articulate their (our) own multitudinous contradictory voice(s). Our class represents a unique opportunity to practice, or try-on, the "material" actions prescribed by critical feminist discourses because we are emerging as both students and instructors. Can we enact, as students, what we frequently discuss desiring from our students? We can be helpful to one another here. As such I propose the following 'practical' pedagogical question(s):

1. How do/n't we recognize and reproduce the binaries Orner locates on page 78 in our FemPed class? Are we actively working against them?

2a. How do we each relate differently to Orner's points given our experiences with our (and others') "voices" in our FemPed class?

2b. How might those experiences inform our feminist teaching practices?
Materially? Theoretically? Personally? Other?

3. Despite challenging many traditional humanistic understandings, Orner seems to presuppose a monolithic conception of "voice" (see page 88). For example I, unsurprisingly, think Orner is overlooking the use(s) of writing in a classroom. What other forms or representations of "voice" may exist and be used in the classroom that complicate Orner's point?

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As a side note, I was sad to belatedly read of Mimi Orner's death. If anyone else would like to read over the UW Madison Faculty's memorial resolution it can be found here.

Does troubling the call for student voice in "liberatory" education, as proposed by Orner, assume and sustain a stable feminist identity while attempting to challenge this notion? Orner asks us to interrogate, "whose interests are served when students speak"? Could students be speaking on their own terms as a way to challenge the silences that continue to be evident throughout Anglo-American feminist discourses? What is at stake when students from "oppressed" and/or "marginalized" groups do not see themselves reflected in feminist discourses in the classroom or on online social media sites? Are feminist media sites/blogs still speaking to a particular "brand" of feminism? Where do women of color fit within online and presumably more "accessible" feminisms? What does this say about the "authentic feminist" voice? Could the "absence" of Chicana feminists within online blogging be read as a silence? In Harold's article, she uses the voice of April Looney, 25, when explaining the possibilities for young feminists to use the internet and social media, "her feminist idols are 'no longer these unattainable figures on pedestals--which is kind of how I view people like Audre Lorde, bell hooks, [and] Cherrie Moraga. ... I could type a reply to Jessica Valenti or Courtney Martin, and there's a decent chance they could/would reply back.'" What is at stake for those of us who do not relate to the new online feminist "celebrities," as Harold names them?

What are the meanings of silence on the web? What does it mean when we withhold our own voices in discussion, or decline to comment online? Are there times when we should be silent? Is it the role of allies to be silent and allow other voices to foreground themselves, or should they advocate for those who cannot speak? And is demanding or expecting the voices of the oppressed to make themselves heard a form of oppression itself (e.g. the "talking circle," Orner 83)?

What role ought "authentic" voices have in blogging? With dispersed modes of communication, what is the role of "allies" when an "authentic" blog is just as easily locatable? With "authentic" voices so readily available, how do we make the case for ally voices to continue these discussions? What do we make of arguments that such issues are not the focus of a particular blog and therefore do not belong there, or the flipside that the blogger is not a member of the group in question and thus has no place in discussing such issues?

More to the point, how do we break out of the dualisms Orner mentions, like authentic/inauthentic, self/other, or oppressor/oppressed, while still recognizing the existence of patriarchy or other hierarchies, and arguing for the dismantling of such power relationships?

After reading the Herold article, I was really curious as to the practicality of so many blogs. She wrote "according to Pew Foundation research, three-quarters of people under 30 have created a profile on a social networking site and one in five has posted a video of him- or herself online." Her whole point is that the younger generation of digital natives is online and does their feminist activism online. The other blogs this week were filled with a multitude of links upon links to other blogs and sites, so much so, I got a little lost. With so many online resources and blogs, how can we cut through the clutter and noise to make our blog stand out as a resource?

I'm curious about the pedagogical potential of electronic media for both inside and outside of classroom spaces. More to the point, how can we most productively put students into conversation with electronic media?

The readings talk about two strategies. Kellner and Share take mass mediated messages as a starting place for student engagement and critical analysis. Daniels writes of "new cyberfeminism(s)", wherein practitioners disrupt "the top down from the bottom up" (102). Both are talking about mediated forms of engagement outside the classroom, communicating with people who have very different reasons for reading/participating. One approach is participatory and bottom-up, the other passive/analytical and top-down.

The question guides me toward two additional questions: which things are we trying to teach students about media? Is internet involvement still productive when involvement is not voluntary, nor claimed and defined originally by the population it serves (i.e. "a room of one's own", Daniels 109)? How do we adapt critical media literacy - generally a top-down critique - to a bottom-up system of blogs?

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Sorry for the late post! Somehow I thought I was doing class notes today, but that's next week. Can I get a do-over?

What is attention? According to Gordon and Bogen, our learners are a generation of "digital natives" whose work and attention patterns are DRIVEN to distraction. Is it important in a feminist pedagogy for learners to pay attention? What does this attention look like? Gordon and Bogen wonder if instead of banning cell phones and laptops from classrooms, why can't educators determine what those devices have to offer the educational process. Does having choreographed distractions add to or take away from the educational process? What about un-choreographed distractions?

When discussing about the media literacy movement, Kellner & Share (2007) quoted Ferguson (2008) and his "iceberg's metaphor" to explain the need for a critical media approach in education. According to Ferguson, "the vast bulk which is not immediately visible is the intellectual, historical and analytical base without which media analysis runs the risk of becoming superficial, mechanical or glib" (p.7). So, my question is: will media analysis be enough to deepen, articulate and strengthen our (educators and students) abilities to see the world beyond its naturalness and transparency? "No" seems to be the obvious answer. So, thinking as educators, how can we get the best of this pedagogy of "multiliteracies" in order to engage students and overcome 'the social reproductive function of education'? In a society pervaded by multimedia technologies, some authors argue that we live a 'new economy of education', that privileges "fluff' over "stuff". Where is the balance point for educators?

What is the "proper object[ive]" of education?

Kumashiro (2002) argues that "schools need to pursue excellence both in academics and in social justice" and that this "requires rethinking the purposes of schools" (13). So for my theoretical question this week I want to ask exactly that: what is the purpose of school? If we allow ourselves to be embodied as hooks and Anderson have both suggested we should, the amount of labor called for in Kumashiro's approach could be deeply problematic (see examples on pp. 55, 60, and 66), as well as the institutional conditions that might need to exist to enable this form of pedagogy.

These constraints are important, but my real aim in asking this question is not to shoot down Kumashiro's proposals. Instead, I want to push him and ourselves a bit further by asking us to consider seriously why the appropriate goal of education should not primarily be one of ending oppression? Is there value in refusing to abandon "academics" (whatever that means)? What is it? Similarly, to return to the question Kumashiro raises in the introduction, is it (especially?) the place of school to end oppression?

In many of the poetry narratives that Kevin Kumashiro uses in Troubling Education it is repeated that oppression is often first learned and felt in the home. Through anti-oppressive pedagogy, educators would hope to counter these oppressive environments with a pedagogy that reveals the problem resisting to question normalcy. This type of education leads students to moments of crisis and emotions which can disrupt them until they have time for "the natural process to occur" of evaluating these emotions(73). The student's home may be an unsafe place for the student to process the emotions brought on by anti-oppressive pedagogy since normative behaviors are originally learned in the home. There seems to be an uncomfortable link between what a student would learn in anti-oppressive pedagogy and being at home, and I ask should families be involved in anti-oppressive educational settings? I cannot think of how this would be possible, but I think it would be very effective in K-12. Or should there be a delineation between home and school because it allows students to "get their own values away from Mom and Dad" and a sense of agency(75)? Is the tension between the normative patterns of one's home life and what is purported in anti-oppressive education a productive discomfort that drives critical pedagogy?

Danny's remarks about discomfort and insecurity about putting forth his version of the class experience over Twitter brought to mind a post Jezebel ran a few weeks ago about using new media in journalism. The piece talks about a journalist live-Tweeting a story she's covering, particularly her experience with a rape victim in Haiti, and the discomfort those Tweets caused. Specifically, this bit set me a-thinking:

For a lot of of journalists, technology is still like spinach. Sure, it's good for us and our future health but wolfing it down with enthusiasm can be a struggle. That's a shame. The personality and speed that good tweeters bring to a story - breaking or otherwise - is a tool we should all be using more often.

Ignoring the slight against spinach, and taking the gist instead, why are folks whose trade is communication (e.g., journalists, teachers) lukewarm about new tools? Is it really the tools at all - would we feel equally insecure putting our impressions in a book or an essay, for instance? Is it the immediacy - no time to edit or redact a careless or ignorant statement? Is it the immediacy of feedback (our detractors aren't editing or redacting, either)?
I'd be inclined to attribute my own discomfort to immediacy, but then, I think through my Tweets pretty carefully, too. I mean, you have to, to fit them in 140 characters...

As I think what my classroom should look like, my reflections lead me to a critical analysis of the ways that I have learned throughout my education. As a below average student in my K-12 education and an average student in my community college education, it was obvious to me that I did not function well in a "banking" style educational environment. It was not until my undergraduate and graduate education that I experienced the "excitement" that bell hooks speaks of. Finally, I found a space where my voice reflected the work and I felt a deep investment in continuing that knowledge base. Still, it was not until my graduate education that I began question what was at stake for certain bodies that commit to bringing "excitement" into the classroom. In her essay, "'The Future of Our Worlds': Black Feminism and the Politics of Knowledge in the University under Globalization," Grace K. Hong speaks to the "systemic and epistemic violence" that women of color experience in academia. With this is in mind, what is at stake for those of us who are committed to engaging a critical or feminist pedagogy in the classroom that encourages students to "transgress" boundaries? How is it, if at all different for specific bodies to enact this "transgression"?

bell hooks openly criticized Freire even though she is inspired by him while others prevented her from making her comments in a direct dialog with Freire. This act of engagement which involves love, admiration, respect and allows a space for dissent and passion is something that one would like in the classroom. As she mentioned, she would like her students to love her, though that is not the point of the class, that students agree with her or make her feel good. The point of the class is to create a learning context for all. How does one show love and caring towards students while encouraging dissent? As a student, I tend to agree or try to agree with a teacher who cares and with a teacher I love or admire because if I don't, then perhaps I'm not learning. While authority may serve to make students comply, can love and caring make students comply too, though willingly?

I've been chewing on something since the last class period, and I want to put it out there before today's class carries us far, far away forever.

As an undergrad, I had a history professor—just the one, to my knowledge—who was a self-professed conservative. It was a leftist institution, and he'd been there for decades—at least since the seventies (arguably the nadir of the school's political consciousness). I might not've known what to make of him, but I'm fairly sure he knew what to expect from us.

His self-admission left me wary. I scrutinized his lectures for bias; some ideas snagged my filter for later, more careful evaluation. Some things he said have turned over in my head to this day, and I still debate their ideological content. Around that semester, a Holocaust-denier organization was buying ad space in college newspapers to publish their inflammatory screeds, and our campus was in an uproar over whether we were going to allow the ad purchase. Prof asked what we students really meant when we spoke as a campus of tolerance: active support? Permitting hate speech? Merely not slugging somebody we didn't like? As a minority voice in our context, I imagined the question was germane for him.

I think of this guy for two reasons. One, it makes me reflect on my own position and agenda, and where the the line should fall when it comes to responsibly deploying these in a classroom. Peering across an ideological gulf at a faculty member is daunting, and being allowed the space to resist felt respectful.
Two, the memory points to some strategies for dealing with oppositional viewpoints. Complicating the perspectives of contrarians rather than reversing them. Making space. Posing a question and letting it abide unresolved. And would that I could get one of those lodged in a student's head for a decade or two.

I am often confronted with the question: why hasn't feminism taken another name, especially considering 1) the movement's fragmentation, 2) its provocation of hostility and defensiveness, and 3) "we" are aware of the second. "Wouldn't it be smart(er) to take another term?"

Many feminists reject the notion that their project must take another name - as doing so would, for some/many, invalidate the premise from which their actions and positions are born.

So when I read critiques of rationality and the damage its concept has done, I wonder what our options are for reclaiming or dismembering the term itself and/or its connotations. Enduring imaginings and projections of the ideal rational subject, as a necessary and neutral conduit of democracy, invoke violent communicative practices and double the labor of liberatory projects (a message must first perform validity: rationality). Rationality isn't just the master's tool, it is the master's house (or one of them); it is a doxastic practice of knowledge undergirding all of the university's parts, and is necessarily one with which we participate.

Can rationality be reconstituted by feminists? Is an alternative rationality possible and/or productive? Were we to rearticulate rationality, what form would it take? Are poststructural feminist pedagogies dependent upon extrarational approaches?

Challenging students' existing beliefs seems to be a primary goal of feminist pedagogies. On p. 17 of Teaching Transformation, AnaLouise Keating, for example, describes her teaching philosophy as a "transformational theory and praxis of teaching, which employs multiple, interconnected perspectives to challenge students' thinking, action, and worldviews."

Assuming that we accept transformation as a central goal of feminist pedagogy, how is a feminist teacher to accomplish this challenge? What actions or behaviors as teachers can/should/could we engage in order to challenge our students to question dominant ideologies? Is this best done by asking student to explore these questions in writing assignments, by engaging in a "border/transformative pedagogy" to explode dualities in class discussions, through exposing students to other positionalities via the assigned readings and other material, or through "a pedagogy of discomfort" of direct instructor response to student statements? What are the potential promises and pitfalls in each of these methods? Thinking in particular of class discussions, how should we challenge our students to question their beliefs without causing them to simply retreat in anger? In other words, what does this challenge actually look like in a classroom setting?

If we accept that transformation is painful, what risks must an educator take in the feminist classroom? How do we promote self-reflection and interconnectivity without making students feel disempowered, guilty or ashamed? Or are these feelings ok?

After reading this weeks readings by Keating, Elenes and Boler I spent most of my time trying to grapple with their usage of the word transformation specifically how they described the process of transformation, the terms they used to describe what processes we must rethink in the pursuit of social/educational transformation and how it can be achieved in the classroom. Although they all presented compelling perspectives I was inspired the most by Keatings work.

Keating disrupts how oppressed groups think about their oppositional politics by alluding to what is perhaps hindering connectivity in the current moment. She also describes status quo stories as divisive practices that produce assumptions that limit our worldviews. She names these things to suggest that interconnectivity is what a transformative pedagogy should be striving for. Keating does a really powerful thing by not focusing primarily on the anxieties that white students might bring to the table, but the ways that oppressed groups might be just as committed to binary forms of opposition.

All of the readings for this week stress the importance of critical thinking geared toward social transformation. As a result, many of these arguments simultaneously uphold only certain kinds of thinking and knowledge production. Specifically, Keating and Boler both abhor the power of common sense to reinforce existing hierarchies, rigid boundaries, and conceptions of essentialism. Similarly, Elenes says that she wants her students to move beyond their personal experiences (common sense, in this way, can never be 'good enough').

This idea also harks back to Fisher's chapter 1 from last week, in which she defines critical thinking in relation to Western notions of knowledge production which "involve conformity to a universal set of thinking rules," claiming that "all Western feminist thinkers draw on this tradition...,even as we point to its limitations" (52).

To what extent, then, do you think common sense can (or cannot) lead to social transformation? I wonder if my confusion comes down to definitions. Would the authors for this week call all knowledge with the power to transform 'critical,' despite is connotations as 'common sense'? Or are common sense and critical transformative thought mutually exclusive?

How does our positionality frame what we see as liberatory pedagogy even if multiple scholars have presented us with a rough rubric of its various components? How does that complicate the production of writings on feminist pedagogy? Or becomes central to it?

After reading this weeks readings by Shrewbery, Fisher, Omolade and Mahler I could not help but notice that despite their common understandings of what a feminist pedagogy might look like (mutual struggle, confronting differences, sharing power, student empowerment etc) each authors positionality made their vision of the liberatory classroom particularly unique from the other scholars. Omolade's vision for a liberatory pedagogy found literacy particularly the reclaiming of Black historical narratives for Black women critical for these students to engage in the process of connecting across difference. Alternatively, Fisher relies heavily on the visionary model that consciousness-raising groups provided to suggest that for all students centering the personal is the best way to shift attention, disrupt power, make connections, name experiences of oppression and become self-reflective. I do not mean to suggest that either visionary approach is better than the other, but I think its important to start thinking about how our position in the world crafts how we envision our "transgressive" teaching practices and in many ways leaves certain communities more vulnerable than others in the feminist classroom.

Before we delve into more 'theoretical' matters, I hope that we can take a minute, in building off the introduction of No Angel in the Classroom, to reflect on how our own life histories have helped shape our current pedagogical frameworks. What experiences, both in and out of the classroom, have influenced the way you teach and learn? How has your pedagogical framework changed (through being challenged or in challenging others) over the years? Moreover, how can or should you as teachers help students reflect on the impact of their own histories and positionalities in shaping their experiences in the classroom as learners and producers of knowledge?