Here are some of my notes from the Feminism in the Classroom Roundtable on Friday, October 20th. Thanks so much to all who participated. We had a really interesting conversation, mostly about issues related to gender and graduate student teaching. I am going to go ahead and make a outline of different topics that came up, and some of the thoughts that our panelists and participants had about those topics.

1. Managing different audiences in the classroom: How do we build alliances in the classroom without closing doors?
The question of which students we address as feminist teachers came up several times during the discussion.
--We talked about women and men as separate audiences, and Jackie reminded us not to make assumptions about our students' views on gender based on their genders or backgrounds.
--Pat asked about discussing feminist interpretations of texts without alienating students who aren't interested in feminism, and inspired several suggestions: 1) That we as teachers attach feminist interpretations very clearly to ourselves, giving the students an opening to question 'just our opinion'; 2) That we introduce various interpretations of a text "hypothetically," mentioning a feminist interpretation alongside other points of view; 3)That we avoid using the word feminism upfront in class discussions, giving students a chance to get used to new ideas without the baggage of a politicized terminology.
--Lacey talked specifically about consciously designing classroom activities to appeal to less talkative students, who do not have as strong a sense of their entitlement to participate in a graduate classroom; and then Amanda talked specifically about teaching to more obviously conservative students. Each of these strategies were posited as ways to overcome our own biases and traditional power dynamics in the classroom.


2. The Female Body in the Classroom: How do female instructors balance authority and openness toward students?
--Both Patty and Lacey talked about some of the specific issues female instructors encounter because of the more visible and often sexualized and/or politicized nature of our bodies in the classroom.
--Issues of dress came up: How much more formally do female instructors have to dress than male instructors? What are the connotations of a loose bra strap or a shirt hiking up over a belly in class? Does varying our gender-presentation enhance our authority as teachers?
--Lurking behind questions about self-representation and authority, to me at least, are questions about the ways that disrespect and respect manifest in the classroom. How do we gauge the level of authority we have in class before a problem arise? Is the issue that female instructors face more outright disrespect, or that they do not receive respectful gestures men can often take for granted?

3. Politics in the Classroom: When and how do we "come out" with our views?
--Amanda asked a question about saying the word "feminist" in connection to ourselves in the classroom, which elicited several different responses.
--Lisa Moore's tactic in E316K of announcing her politics to her students early in the semester was brought up as an effective, but intimidating (to graduate instructors), tactic; it was noted that it is important to emphasize both the instructor's beliefs and the instructor's openness to different opinions in that situation.
--Other participants in the panel argued that they took more subtle approaches to politics in the classroom, leaving students to guess their beliefs and presenting both sides of political debates.

4. Feminism in the Graduate Classroom: Who brings up feminist questions?
At the end of the session, Patty brought up some issues that I think would be really useful for further discussion, perhaps at another roundtable! She asked whether students or teachers bring up feminism in our classrooms, and what the best tactics for us to bring up gender-focused or feminist interpretations of texts might be in class situations, especially in situations when anti-feminist texts are excused by reason of their historicality. This is an interesting question from both an instructor and a student perspective, and we addressed both briefly at the panel.

I have some thoughts about the panel, but I may leave them for the comments, as this really long! Please feel free to post here anything I forgot, or your thoughts on the panel or the issues above, or ideas for future discussions.