The Feminist Classroom

Chapter 1 Preface Chapter 2 Breaking Through Illusion, Again Chapter 3 Creating a Kaleidoscope: Portraits of Six Institutions Chapter 4 Mastery Chapter 5 Voice Chapter 6 Authority Chapter 7 Positionality Chapter 8 Toward Positional Pedagogies Chapter 9 Learning in the Dark Chapter 10 Looking Back, Looking Forward Chapter 11 Notes Chapter 12 Bibliography Chapter 13 Index

Frances A. Maher is professor of education at Wheaton College, where she coordinated the college's Balanced Curriculum Project, which integrated the study of women into introductory courses. She has written several articles exploring the principles and practices of feminist pedagogy and co-edited a special issue of Women's Studies Quarterly on feminist pedagogy. Mary Kay Thompson Tetreault is provost and vice president for academic affairs at Portland State University. She is the author of Women in America: Half of History.

The Feminist Classroom takes us on a journey with seventeen differently situated feminist professors. As an anthropologist, I find compelling its ethnographic approach to the study of feminist classrooms in diverse institutional settings. As president of Spelman College, I applaud the classroom practices of my colleagues and their commitment to empowering Black women students. -- Johnnetta B. Cole, president, Spelman College What makes this book so valuable and fascinating is the extraordinarily extensive fieldwork, which creates a vivid sense not only of how questions about race and gender intersect for college undergraduates, but also how the teachers actually present their classes, how the students react to what they read, where they grow angry, why they are led so often to disguise their own beliefs. In this respect it's a wonderfully human and believable work...The book will richly fuel the national debate. It is very important and I hope it will be widely read. -- Jonathan Kozol, author of Savage Inequalities The authors provide a rich analysis of the classrooms they observed and the larger understandings they can provide. If one wants to consider the theory underlying feminist pedagogies, using a quite nuanced analysis of various kinds of feminist environments, then this expanded edition can help to think through the major issues. Contemporary Sociology For teachers of theology and religion newly exploring what constitutes feminist pedagogies, or for veterans of feminist pedagogy looking for an up-to-date critical treatment of feminist practices of teaching and learning, this book is a reasonably helpful resource with a wealth of practical examples and an extensive bibliography. Teaching Theology and Religion A fascinating glimpse of a first generation of feminist academics at work. Journal Of Educational Thought(Jet) The tensions, dilemmas, and exhilarating pleasures of feminist teaching converge in this fascinating book, which documents actual classroom give-and-take. In addition to observing, the authors interviewed the teachers and several students in each class. The result is a Rashomon portrayal of the same moment, differently perceived, as well as fresh insight into interactions between social positioning, experience, and learning. -- Barrie Thorne, author of Gender Play: Girls and Boys in School