Article
Finding Agency in the Margins: Lessons from Teaching as Immigrant Women of Color
PS Political Science & Politics
(2017)
Abstract
This article maps ways to maintain a sustained commitment to flipping the script of dominant perspectives in the pedagogy of political science. We use our experiences as first-generation immigrants and women of color to examine how our subjectivity as outliers in the discipline and the academy 1 has shaped our approaches to teaching. Our stories, experiences, and professional orientations are not the same. One author came to the United States from India as an adult, the other as a child in exile from Iran. One studies international security from an empirical standpoint; the other is a feminist and cross-cultural political theorist. Despite our different histories, intellectual pursuits, and pedagogical styles, we share a commonality in our critical approach to teaching in the discipline. We embrace a political science of margins—one in which our subject positions and pedagogical approaches challenge the hegemony of Western- and particularly US-centered ideas and narratives. We do this by challenging what we teach as well as how we teach it. Our goal is to have students think critically about how dominant perspectives reflect established power dynamics and modes of domination. Our syllabi and teaching methods model a critical approach to the discipline and practice of politics.
Keywords
- Pedagogy of Political Science
Disciplines
Publication Date
October, 2017
DOI
10.1017/S1049096517001184
Citation Information
Bidisha Biswas and Shirin Deylami. "Finding Agency in the Margins: Lessons from Teaching as Immigrant Women of Color" PS Political Science & Politics Vol. 50 Iss. 4 (2017) p. 1011 - 1014 Available at: http://works.bepress.com/bidisha-biswas/54/