Bronwen Lichtenstein PhD
Associate Professor and Director of Undergraduate Studies
Department of Criminal Justice
University of Alabama
430 Farrah Hall
Tuscaloosa, AL 35406-0327

Tel (205) 348 7782
Fax (205) 348 7178
Email blichten@bama.ua.edu

Biography

Bronwen Lichtenstein is an associate professor and director of undergraduate studies in the Department of Criminal Justice at The University of Alabama, with a cross-appointment as research fellow at the University of Indiana in Bloomington. For the past 16 years, she has conducted research on the social dimensions of sexually transmitted infections (STIs) and HIV/Aids, particularly in relation to race, class and gender in the Deep South. In 2007, Dr Lichtenstein developed a sociology course on HIV/Aids for undergraduates at The University of Alabama. 

Abstract

This article describes my experience of teaching a course on the sociology of HIV/Aids to college undergraduate students in the American Deep South. Courses on HIV are generally held to be beneficial to students, but questions remain about how best to provide instruction on a sensitive topic, especially when HIV-related stigma intersects with social conservatism, racial disparities and high infection rates in the local context. Course objectives focused on: 1) raising student awareness about HIV, 2) helping students to develop a sociological imagination in relation to HIV, and 3) reducing HIV-related stigma. These goals were achieved through social theory and analysis in the classroom, followed by service learning and research in the community. The class taught me that a course on HIV/Aids could attract full enrolment in a socially conservative environment, that theory-based, direct learning techniques are valuable for raising awareness and challenging stereotypes, and that students often enjoy becoming ‘knowledge leaders’ about HIV in the community. I also learned that a student code of conduct and strategies to avoid disciplinary problems in the classroom are as important as course content when teaching about HIV.  

Key words: sensitive Issues, HIV/Aids, college students, US South

Introduction

The acquired immune deficiency syndrome (Aids) epidemic is often represented as a disease of the ‘other’. In the public imagination, human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) is associated with social deviance through risk factors such as drug use, same-sex activity and prostitution – typically deemed sociological topics by the community at large. Nevertheless, public attitudes towards HIV are based on an ethos of personal responsibility, and failure to avoid being infected often leads to negative judgments about HIV-infected people. Sociology teachers and lecturers are compelled to go beyond this conceptualisation to demonstrate how and why differential patterns of health and illness occur, including for epidemics such as HIV. This focus presents a classroom challenge for two reasons: HIV is a controversial topic by any measure, and teaching about HIV calls for analysis of commonly held prejudices and stereotypes, including those of students.

Two years ago, I was faced with the challenge of teaching an upper division undergraduate course on HIV. The title and objectives were stated plainly enough: the students would learn why HIV is called ‘the sociological epidemic’ and, in the C Wright Mills (1959) tradition, they would develop a sociological imagination in order to lead class discussions, analyse class materials and complete course assignments. However, I also wanted to challenge the ‘risk group’ iconography that had dominated public and medical discourse on HIV since the 1980s. As the course developed, I decided to engage the students in active learning projects that would interrogate popular assumptions about how people conceptualised and responded to HIV. This approach would demonstrate how social inequalities concerning race/ethnicity, gender and social class led to differential patterns of HIV risk around the globe.

Sociologists who have taught courses on HIV or who have integrated HIV with other courses provide a rationale on why these classes should be offered. Two decades ago, Weitz (1989) and Hunt (1990) noted that students were interested in the topic through media publicity, especially since HIV was associated with social deviance and the uncertain trajectory of a new epidemic. Kain (1987) wrote about how the sociology of HIV/Aids could alert students to their own HIV risk and to the historical, social and cultural forces that construct health and illness. In this body of literature, instructors were advised to be aware of student concerns about the topic and to be sceptical of value-laden course materials that achieved the opposite effect of what the lecturer intended. For example, Weitz (1989, 1992) cautioned that lecturers could encounter students who were openly homophobic or hostile to the subject matter. She also noted how introductory sociology textbooks included misleading information on HIV that could create or confirm prejudices against people with HIV. Other advice centred on the use of appropriate pedagogical techniques for teaching about HIV. Sensitivity was considered crucial to achieving positive outcomes in HIV-related courses because:

Most students find it very difficult to discuss Aids and the subjects that come up in class lectures …This situation forces us, as teachers, not only to be sensitive to our students’ apprehensions, but also to discover ways to reduce their reluctance to ask questions. We must make them feel comfortable in asking detailed questions about ‘sensitive subjects’ from the first day.
(Klein, 1993: 2) 

All of these writers were aware of the missteps and opportunities that could occur in teaching the sociology of HIV. They were also aware that their courses were offered at a time when the HIV epidemic in the USA was barely a decade old and teaching about HIV was a novel experience for students and lecturers alike.  

By the time I developed my own course in 2007, both public interest and the trajectory of the HIV epidemic in the USA had undergone substantial change. First, the course was being taught in a Bible Belt state after public urgency over HIV/Aids had declined from a peak in the 1980s (The Henry J Kaiser Family Foundation, 2009). Second, the epicentre of the HIV epidemic in the USA had shifted from bicoastal cities in the north to southeastern states where African Americans were being disproportionately affected at an alarming rate (Southern Aids Coalition, 2008). My course was relevant to southern students because HIV incidence was highest in the southeast (Johnson, 2007; Karon et al, 2001) and because disparities involving race, class and gender were at the heart of HIV risk in the south (Lichtenstein, 2005). In part, the course was designed to interrogate issues of race, gender and social class in local context – an additional sensitivity for southern students, who probably considered HIV to be a disease of other regions or countries before they enrolled. 

Course development

Development of the course was prompted by two concerns. The first centred on research about local students’ attitudes towards seven sexually transmitted infections (STIs), ranging from the merely irritating (pubic lice) to the life threatening (HIV/Aids) (Lichtenstein, Neal and Brodsky, 2008; Neal, Lichtenstein and Brodsky, 2010). High levels of stigma were identified for all STIs regardless of medical severity. It was apparent that the term ‘STD’ was heuristic for social deviance and thus for being stigmatised, and that many respondents (40.3%) were unwilling to seek treatment because they feared being embarrassed or stigmatised. In considering these data, I felt that raising awareness about STIs and HIV among a high-risk group (ie young adults) in a high-prevalence region could provide a counterpoint to stigmatising frames of reference about ‘sexual’ disease.

The second concern involved the survival of a local Aids service organization (ASO) charged with providing social services to clients with HIV. Like other ASOs in the USA, the agency had struggled to provide services to growing numbers of clients in difficult economic times. In 2008, for example, the director was compelled to relinquish staff and to reduce HIV outreach after substantial funding cuts. In developing the course, I consulted personnel at the agency for ideas about service learning projects that would benefit both students and clients. The challenge was how to generate what Smith (2004: 274) has termed ‘meaningful partnerships between [agency] and university’ on behalf of undergraduates who probably had little exposure to HIV before being enrolled in the course. Meeting this goal required adjustments as the course progressed, but I considered the agency’s involvement to be crucial to ensure that the students enjoyed a learning experience in line with CW Mills’ (1959) goals for transcending the academy through public sociology, and to enhance local HIV services and prevention efforts through student participation.

Course goals

The course was designed with two broad goals in mind: to educate students about the sociology of HIV/Aids and to bring ‘community’ into focus as a source of expertise, service and research. The operational goal was to educate students in active learning (a university prerogative) that involved service learning, research and civic engagement on HIV/Aids (course prerogatives). The partnership model was facilitated by a course plan in which agency employees provided mentoring for service learning projects and research projects in community settings, while classroom instruction focused on theory, social context and research. The course thus involved three constituencies in terms of the partnership model – the university, the student participants, and the agency as community partner.   

Student profile

The class is a writing course with a maximum enrolment of 25 students per semester. Full enrolment was achieved, with a total of 100 students in four classes during the academic years 2007/2008 and 2008/2009. Almost all students were middle-class men and women in their early twenties, with women accounting for about two-thirds (65%) of total course enrolment. White and African American students accounted for 70 per cent and 30 per cent of enrolment respectively. Most African Americans were women (79%), with black men substantially under-represented in all four classes. This disparity is consistent with nationwide trends in college attendance for African American men (Mincy, 2006). Nevertheless, the percentage of African American students was higher than for the university as a whole (10%) and also higher than for residents in Alabama (26%). The bicultural characteristics of the state mean that relatively few Hispanic or other minority ethnic students attend the university at undergraduate level.

The University of Alabama has a politically conservative student body, active Greek system (ie, fraternities and sororities) and is the capstone university of the state. Recruitment is mainly from Alabama and other southern states including Texas and Mississippi. Students in my sociology courses often belong to the Greek system and sometimes espouse politically conservative views. At the beginning of each class I ask each student why she or he has enrolled in the course. While most students enroll because writing courses are required for graduation, a few students who major in biology or nursing are interested in HIV for its own sake. Relatively few students are sociology minors (the university does not offer a degree in sociology) and they often major in other social science disciplines such as psychology or criminal justice.  

Familiarisation

As lecturer, my first task was to familiarise students with the sociology of HIV. As noted, the conceptual principles of the class were based on CW Mills’ (1959) public action theory, which proposes that people who develop a sociological imagination are likely to engage in advocacy for social change. The theory helps students understand how personal troubles such as poverty increase HIV risk and how structural inequalities involving race/ethnicity, gender, sexual identity and income are social drivers that can be mitigated through advocacy and public policy (Auerbach et al, 2009; Parker and Aggleton, 2003). Lectures on social theory and the history of HIV formed the first part of the course, and an educator from the agency introduced the class to the clinical aspects of HIV. Course readings consisted of journal articles on HIV rather than a designated text. These articles were grouped into four categories for each component of the course (for example, the history of HIV, social theory, global aspects of HIV, and HIV in the USA).

Movies such as And the Band Played On, from Randy Shilts’ (1987) book of the same name, and video clips from the American Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) series titled AIDS in Black America provided a backdrop to HIV history in the USA. The Shilts movie illustrated how stereotypes emerged in the 1980s through HIV iconography about so-called sexual deviants that ultimately proved misleading or inaccurate. Video clips from the AIDS in Black America series were more pointed in terms of the local context and were managed by framing barriers to HIV prevention such as homophobia, the ‘Down Low’ (ie closeted same-sex activity), gender inequality and religiosity as salient factors for both black and white people in the south. Since the topic of race is a sensitive issue, students are unlikely to voice opinions on the subject for fear of offending someone or raising the specter of racial tension. However, opinions such as ‘People who get infected only have themselves to blame’ are another matter. In such cases, I refer to the syllabus which includes a statement about being sensitive to other people’s ideas and feelings and which sets limits on what will be tolerated in classroom discussions. Such comments are also used as teaching moments to explain why neither statement might be true (or justified), as in the case of most women in the US south who are infected by male sexual partners rather than through drug use or prostitution (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), 2008). 

Familiarisation with the course meant learning about stigma in lectures, through course materials and in class projects. This issue was particularly salient when a guest speaker recounted his experience of living with HIV during the third week of class. The speaker stated that his family and community had shunned him, his employer had fired him after learning about his diagnosis, and he had become suicidal and refused to take medications until he became seriously ill with wasting syndrome and other conditions. However, his narrative presented a puzzling paradox to the class when he stated that he refused to associate with clients who ‘didn’t do the right thing’ by missing appointments or refusing to take medicines. It was the first time that the students had been exposed to narratives in which a member of a stigmatised group sought to distance himself from others like him on moral grounds. The class acknowledged that HIV stigma could explain the need to present such narratives in conversations with outsiders and later came to understand how ‘transmission stories’ (for example, of someone claiming to being infected through blood transfusion rather than through same-sex activity) were constructed as protective shields against HIV stigma. The speaker’s visit was thus a beginning point in understanding the power of HIV stigma to shape knowledge, attitudes and behaviour in the community and how afflicted persons sought to avoid being labelled as socially deviant. 

Service learning

The service learning component began with a field visit to the agency. Here, the director met the students in a large conference room and asked: ‘How many of you here think I’m gay?’ (He is not.) If met with embarrassed responses, he would speak about how such assumptions define people with HIV (for example: ‘everyone is assumed to be gay, abusing drugs, or promiscuous in this epidemic’). He would then challenge these stereotypes by reviewing US statistics from the CDC on the epidemiology of HIV and by noting how many people in the south (especially women) had acquired HIV in regular heterosexual relationships. He would end his talk by describing clients’ needs for food, housing and transportation, social support and drug assistance. He would also discuss service learning activities involving HIV outreach to schools, public housing and drug treatment programmes. Ideas for service projects were conceptualised before the students left the agency. 

A menu of service learning activities evolved over the duration of the course. Two factors were involved in designing tasks for this assignment. First, the idea of taking a course on HIV was challenging for some students who had enrolled ‘only because I had to’ in order to satisfy degree requirements. In this case, comments such as ‘I don’t want to catch Aids by shaking hands with them’ or questions such as ‘Will I have to bring sanitiser with me on the field trip?’ helped to convince me that the service learning component might be less threatening if students were involved in clerical work or community outreach rather than direct contact with clients.Of course, the myth about acquiring HIV through casual contact had been debunked during class and the field trip, but prejudices die hard and some students remained unconvinced that they would be safe from harm. Second, my hopes of collaboration between clients and students were dashed when the director rescinded a student initiative involving transportation for clients because: ‘The clients are scared of being identified as HIV-positive outside the protective circle of [agency].’ In addition, the agency’s board of directors (which included consumers) had decided that risks to confidentiality were too great if students were directly involved with clients.

After I had notified the students of this refusal, I realised that both clients and students were responding to HIV-related stigma (some students were afraid of ‘catching’ Aids, while the clients were afraid of being identified by uninfected persons as ‘those people’) and how these fears could undermine course goals for a university–community partnership. An egalitarian partnership based on mutual goals and student–client participation was out of the question. However, a partnership involving agency employees and students was possible, potentially useful and followed the principles of the service learning model that writers such as Smith (2004) advocated for university students. The principles of this model involve experiential learning and academically-based public service, as formulated by ‘the goal that the student will contribute something to the community while learning about [the topic] from that exposure and from reflecting upon it with the supervising faculty member’ (Smith, 2004: 729).
Students were given a list of ‘dos and don’ts’ prior to conducting fieldwork. All students were required to obtain my approval for service learning and research projects to ensure their feasibility, to have potential threats to personal safety assessed, and to be advised about student conduct outside the classroom. Those who expressed a fear of ‘catching’ HIV were directed to community projects that did not involve service work at the agency. These students typically arranged for the agency director to speak to affiliates at fraternity or sorority houses or in churches and workplaces. No student was permitted to try to educate the wider community about HIV without health department-approved materials and direct input or supervision by the agency. Course ethics for the classroom and during fieldwork (respecting others, seeking permission for interviews, ensuring confidentiality of participants and emphasising the voluntary nature of research participation) were outlined in the syllabus or discussed in the classroom before each assignment.

Service learning projects were completed during the first half of the semester. Students undertook a variety of projects such as mail drops in local towns or cities or community drives for donated food and personal items for clients. For the community drives, donations included gift baskets of food and personal items that were solicited from students’ friends and family, campus organisations and church groups. Each gift basket was decorated with ribbons, festive paper and personalised note cards and was donated to individual clients according to need or circumstances. For example, toys, diapers and baby items were given to caregivers, while toiletries and food baskets were given to clients on disability benefits or who were unemployed. These baskets and gift donations were often substantial, even inspiring, for students who often had little time to spare because of family-, work- or study-related activities.

A particularly innovative idea for HIV prevention involved a student who contacted a local condom manufacturer (the last such factory in the USA) for donated samples that were of higher quality, better fitting and more appealing than the no-frills variety of condoms available at no cost from the agency or local health department. However, this request was refused. The student reported that company personnel were rude to her even though she had submitted a written request for a class project on HIV prevention. As an interesting side-note, the manufacturer was faced with closure a few months later because federal contracts for condom production had been granted to overseas competitors (The Tuscaloosa News, 2009). The students pondered the irony of how, until this point, the condom factory had survived through the concerted efforts of ‘straitlaced congressmen from this Bible Belt state’ who wanted to preserve local jobs from being moving overseas (Dugger, 2008: 1).

Students who engaged in community outreach (about half of each class) soon discovered what it was like to experience HIV stigma on a first-hand basis. This was a sobering experience for undergraduates who had not expected to be confronted with such realities. In one case, class members had set up an Aids awareness booth on campus only to find that passersby avoided eye contact or made negative comments such as ‘fags’ and ‘gross’.  In another case, a male student had dressed his pet dog (a very non-threatening prop) in an Aids awareness T-shirt to deliver HIV prevention materials off-campus only to find that his age peers spurned his efforts – sometimes by shutting the door in his face. Older people (whom he defined as over 30) were more likely to appreciate both his efforts and the free condoms. Another student who had visited her hometown to distribute condoms and brochures in one of the poorest, most HIV-affected counties in the state was welcomed by the people she knew, but it was assumed that she was HIV-positive because ‘they [peer educators] always have HIV/Aids’. Yet another student, who was employed as a bouncer at a local bar, distributed brochures, condoms and a little advice about safer sex to patrons. Few of these patrons accepted the condoms and moved away if he broached the topic of safer sex. It was through these shared experiences that students further realised how much the ‘stickiness’ of HIV stigma could affect them personally as they engaged in service projects. Such experiences also generated insights into why HIV-positive clients would go to great lengths to avoid contact with members of the public. Debriefing sessions were held during class time so that students had a venue to discuss positive or negative experiences of doing community work.  

As noted, service work included liaising with schools, churches and community groups to arrange for agency specialists to speak about HIV prevention. Students in this group held sessions in men’s spaces, including a fire station, a barber shop, fraternities and sports teams; other sessions were held in women’s spaces such as a cosmetology class, a residential drug-treatment group, sororities and female-only groups in churches. In some cases, the activities met with little resistance, perhaps because the students were considered to be natural helpers in their social networks or communities, as proposed by Israel (1985) and Tessaro et al (2000). However, at other venues (for example, high schools), attempts to organise visits from HIV educators at the agency were thwarted because: ‘The coach said that the parents wouldn’t allow it’ or ‘The principal didn’t want them to visit the school’. This type of response occurred whether or not the students had attended the school they selected for their community project. 

Community-based research

The research-in-community projects took place in the second half of the semester. Each student conducted a brief survey with open-ended questions to elicit information about knowledge of and attitudes towards HIV/Aids. Participants involved family members, friends, neighbours, teachers, co-employees or acquaintances who lived locally or in other counties. As noted by Kupiec (1993, cited in Lena, 1995: 109), community-based research offers ‘fertile ground on which to test theories acquired in the classroom and to concretise abstract thought’. The dual purpose of these projects was thus to teach students how to analyse social data using a theoretical framework and to conduct fieldwork in real-world settings. The theory involved Goffman’s (1963) conceptualisation of social stigma as a mark of disgrace for discredited behaviour or characteristics – a commonly used concept with particular salience in the HIV epidemic. Not surprisingly, the fertile ground of theory testing involved community responses about social deviance. Survey responses about ‘gays, drug users and hookers’ illustrated how community attitudes were firmly rooted in iconography from epidemiological categorisations of HIV risk in the 1980s (Treichler, 1999). Discredited myths such as ‘You can catch HIV/Aids from mosquitoes’ and forms of denial as in ‘Bisexuality doesn’t exist in the black community’ occurred as well. Statements such as ‘Gay men are moral deviants and throwaways’ and ‘Gays and hookers are the transmitters of Aids’ were disturbing to the student researchers but also were theoretically useful, especially in terms of making connections between community attitudes and the persistence of social marginalisation in relation to people living with HIV. In their reports, students sometimes confessed to having similar attitudes before taking the course even if they framed these confessions as ‘before’ and ‘after’ statements in terms of their own transformations.

Stigma thus provided a conceptual segue to analysing survey responses and to interrogating the student’s own attitudes or society’s role in reproducing HIV risk. For example, one student confessed: ‘I had no idea how my attitudes about HIV/Aids could potentially impact other people.’ Another student reflected: ‘I realise now how much my family influenced my thinking on Aids.’ Awareness of the links between theory, HIV risk and stigma certainly emerged from interviewing people whom the students often knew well enough to call co-workers, friends or family and who also represented the generalised other in terms of community attitudes towards people with HIV. For example, all the respondents in one survey believed that HIV-positive people were sexually promiscuous (even predatory), while respondents in another survey often reported that they would avoid socialising with someone who was HIV-positive. As noted by the student researcher, ‘Sociologically, this can explain why many people fear being tested for HIV/Aids and as a consequence pass on the virus to others.’

Finally, students noted how respondents generally viewed HIV/Aids in terms of ‘bad choices’, an ethos of personal responsibility that is commonly used to explain the cause of social problems in US society. They wrote about being ‘shocked’, ‘saddened’ and ‘astounded’ by the power of stigma to create social outcasts in twenty-first century America. They were also ‘amazed’ and ‘disheartened’ by the lack of awareness of how HIV/Aids had afflicted communities in the southeast. They understood why the epidemic had taken hold in the region, particularly in view of moralising attitudes towards sexuality and the lack of funds for HIV prevention. A final debriefing session at the end of the course indicated that students were fully aware of the power of HIV stigma in damaging tropes and actions that could be addressed in what Lena (1995: 108) describes as ‘[a]wareness of profound social problems of our times and … the importance of civic education and civic responsibility in a democratic society’. One student summarised in her research report: ‘I would argue that this study and these results will influence my decision-making evermore because I have now become a passionate advocate for Aids prevention education.’

Course outcomes

Student evaluations are conducted at the end of each semester. At first, the course did not achieve desirable ratings, particularly for the service learning project. The earlier assignments failed to engage students who had spent time filing papers, sorting through donations of food and clothing, and answering the telephone at the agency. Such activities were described as ‘meaningless’ or ‘busy work’ on the evaluations. This feedback called for a change of plan and students became more receptive to course objectives once they took charge of their own projects. A case in point was the HIV booth on campus that provided students with an opportunity to collaborate with each other outside the classroom, receive materials and educational support from the agency, and engage in meaningful activities that went beyond the traditional classroom experience.

The survey assignment was also a work in progress. This component was developed only after some students reported being more interested in active learning than in standard assignments, primarily because of my emphasis on stigma as a theoretical concept with real-world applications. In addition to enriching student learning experiences, the research helped to broaden the possibilities for HIV outreach through post-survey discussions with respondents. For example, one student interviewed his male friends on and off campus ‘because I realised that they feed off one another’ but then: ‘I enlightened them a bit further about HIV/Aids once I had written down their responses.’  Another student conducted a pre- and post-test survey that involved a brief intervention for employees at her workplace. The initial modest goals for the course thus extended beyond the one class, one locale, lecturer-led model of the original course plan. At time of writing, the service learning and research projects have involved residents in about 20 counties in the state, including areas that are most affected by HIV. 

It is worth noting that the course has led to a change of study or career plans for some students. At least two students travelled to Africa to conduct HIV prevention work prior to entering graduate school. Other students have enrolled in health-related graduate programmes or specialisations. No students dropped the course or failed to complete assignments, service work or surveys. One class at a time, the course engaged the undergraduates in transformative scholarship, service learning and community-based research for public action sociology and civic engagement, as advocated by sociologists Lena (1995) and Mills (1959). The course has been accepted as a regular offering for sociology and the service learning and research activities have become compulsory rather than optional tasks. The university–agency partnership has continued to flourish, despite the turnover of students each semester.

Perhaps the most important outcome involves the racial composition of the class. At first, only a small number of students who were enrolled in the course were African Americans. The class composition has since become evenly divided between black and white students. The reason for this transition is unclear (word of mouth might be a factor), but HIV knowledge is being sought and owned by students whose communities have sometimes been profoundly affected by HIV. The racial diversity has led to African American students conducting outreach and community-based research in rural areas of the state that lack formal sources of HIV prevention. These students have become lay leaders in educating residents in culturally relevant ways and, in so doing, have provided a meaningful service to underserved communities. 

The comfort level of African American students is a sensitive issue (I am a white, non-southern woman), but ratings on course evaluations regarding ‘instructor’s respect for students’ have been positive. The one exception involved a class in which a minority ethnic student challenged my authority by arriving late and leaving early, shouting out or showing off to other students, and uttering demeaning and suggestive remarks. The students became polarised when I became so fed up with his behaviour that I asked him to leave the class and, after he refused, called the campus police (although he left the classroom before the police arrived). The black students then viewed me as being racially biased, while the white students regarded my nemesis as a troublemaker. The course evaluations reflected this polarisation. The principles of the course as stated in the syllabus (respect for one another, thoughtful discussion and courteousness) were certainly compromised during this time and the sense of unity and shared purpose of prior classes was sadly lacking. This was an example of how racial tensions that exist in the wider community can surface in the classroom, especially if the coercive power of law enforcement is brought to bear on situations involving a white authority figure and a young black man.

The take-home message from this experience is that white lecturers must be extremely careful not to be perceived as racially biased in teaching sensitive topics such as HIV. Both teaching effectiveness and the goals of the course will suffer, and stereotypes and prejudices about HIV will appear to be replicated in the classroom itself. In recounting her own experience of teaching at a southern US university, Lynn Weber Cannon (1990: 133) warned: ‘Conflicts arise, ground rules are ignored, and the social hierarchies and mistrust that exist in society at large are often repeated in the class.’ Cannon offered strategies to deal with disciplinary problems that included setting ground rules for classroom conduct at the beginning of the semester and inviting student feedback on a final code of conduct, which would then be reinforced during class time. I would add that it could be helpful to speak privately to disruptive students about classroom conduct (which I did to no avail) and, when all else fails, refer the matter to the departmental chairperson or Office of Student Affairs. Most universities have procedures to deal with student discipline, although lecturers should be aware that officials might be reluctant to offer support if the student makes a claim of racial discrimination.

A final point about managing such situations is that, regardless of the provocation, students should never be ‘disrespected’ in front of peers. After this experience, I changed my syllabus to include a credit point system for full attendance and evidence of reading course materials for each class, and had student-led evaluations for group projects. These learner-centred methods proved effective for class discipline because they encouraged students to focus on ‘earning’ respect (rather than attention) from their peers and also on gaining maximum points for final grades. So far, I have not encountered further problems in relation to perceived bias, even if the legacy of this experience is partial devolution of grading to student peers and a highly structured course syllabus. This formal approach works in a southern context in which manners are all-important, conflict is perceived to be a failure of moral character (as they say in the South, ‘You can attract more bees with honey than with vinegar’) and where formal-rational methods of pedagogy are respected, non-confrontational means of establishing authority in the classroom.�
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Conclusion

This article has described how teaching sensitive issues such as HIV was pursued through service learning and community-based research. Students responded to the idea of being natural leaders for community outreach and, after initial fears were allayed about ‘catching’ HIV from clients or through service work, rarely challenged the meaning or purpose of the course. Instead, the students seemed to relish the opportunity to embark on an educational journey both inside and outside the classroom. The problem of apathetic students who wished they had enrolled on more traditional courses or who needed counselling because they were emotionally close to the issue (Weitz, 1989) did not occur in this instance (at least, not to my knowledge), perhaps because the course was an elective or because HIV did not touch them on a more personal basis. Perhaps the students were not as socially conservative as I had feared, or self-selection had served to exclude students aversive to the topic. The course has enjoyed full enrollment each semester since the inaugural class in 2007 and, with the above exception, student ratings consistently have been among the highest in the department. Comments have included: ‘This course has changed my life’, ‘There should be more classes like this at the university’, and ‘This course should be mandatory’. 

In teaching the course each semester for the past two years, I have learned how to manage sensitive topics involving race, class, and gender with strategically placed questions (for example, ‘What does the literature say about why women are at greater HIV risk than men?’ and ‘What could go wrong if HIV transmission becomes a crime?’) rather than with declarative statements that might be perceived as too confrontational or biased on the matter. I also offered experiential learning that was less didactic than traditional class work. Involvement with clients at the agency might have enhanced this experience further, but, as noted by Pinto (2009), sociocultural differences between students and community actors can (and did) interfere with this goal. The disjuncture between middle-class students and socially marginalised clients at the agency was perhaps inevitable in view of the class structure of the US Deep South, in which privilege and poverty co-exist, especially along racialised lines. Nevertheless, the course did provide real-world experiences for students and, as suggested by Jimenez, Tan-Billet and Babinean (2008), the service learning projects for HIV outreach in towns and cities across the state were likely to have led to improved community knowledge about the impact of STIs and HIV in the south.

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Christian Klesse
Senior Lecturer in Cultural Studies
Department of Sociology
Manchester Metropolitan University
Geoffrey Manton Building
Rosamond Street West
Manchester M15 6LL

Tel 0161 247 6424
Fax 0161 247 6321
Email c.klesse@mmu.ac.uk

Biography

Christian Klesse works as senior lecturer in cultural studies at Manchester Metropolitan University. He was an assistant lecturer on the Gender Studies and Queer Theory Programme at the University of Hamburg from 2004 to 2006, and held the 2004/2005 Sociological Review Research Fellowship at Keele University. His research interests lie in the areas of sexualities, social movements, race/ethnicity, embodiment, body modification and research methodology. He is author of The Spectre of Promiscuity (Ashgate) and a range of journal articles and book chapters in the fields of study listed above.

Abstract

This article deals with the difficulties of teaching critically around ‘race’/ethnicity and racism in higher education settings in the UK. The author draws on recent literature and his own teaching experience in order to address the manifold problems related to open classroom discussions about ‘race’/ethnicity and racism. Attempts to create a safe and critical learning environment based on open dialogue are fraught with difficulties, which stem from the pervasive nature of racism and its impact on many students’ and teachers’ experiences. The author suggests that an open and critical acknowledgment of students’ and teachers’ differential positionality is an important aspect of experiential and reflective learning strategies in the field. It also appears necessary to critically engage with the privileges and power dynamics around ‘whiteness’.

Key words: race/ethnicity, racism, whiteness, positionality, reflective learning, experiential learning 

Acknowledgment
I am grateful to Susie Jacobs, Shafqat Nasir and Shirley Tate who gave generous feedback on previous drafts of this article. I would further like to thank the two anonymous reviewers for their careful reading and their helpful advice for revision.

Introduction

Progressive approaches to learning and teaching in the tradition of Paulo Freire conceive of these activities as a cooperation between teachers and learners in a critical process of problem-solving and knowledge production (Freire 1972; hooks 1994). Freire called into question any hierarchical conceptualisation of the learner–teacher relationship. At the same time, he highlighted that intersubjectivity is central to all group-based learning activities. Knowledge is no longer perceived as an asset that can be owned or passed on. Rather, it is reinterpreted as a social value that can be gained through the experience of facing the effort to explore relevant questions through critical reflection, collaborative practice and mutual engagement. It is against this backdrop that Paulo Freire hails the potential of ‘critical and liberating dialogue’. Yet the problem of dialogue may be exacerbated depending on the subject matter. If we teach topics which are overtly controversial or which touch on strong identifications of either students or ourselves, constructive dialogue and a safe learning environment may be much more difficult to achieve. The classroom is not detached from the wider social problems that riddle society. Critical and constructive dialogue is always complicated by the fact that both teachers and learners bring with them particular experiences (of privilege or oppression and vulnerability) to the learning situation. Dialogue is overdetermined – and complicated – by structural power relations, violent histories and their epistemic effects (Ahmed, 2000). As an inevitable result, there are barriers to dialogue and a latent potential for conflict.

It is widely acknowledged that teachers of ‘race’/ethnicity and racism meet a range of specific challenges due to the divisive effects of racism and the complex ways it has impacted on public discourse, social identities and our (psychic) modes of subjectivity. These and other concerns have given rise to a growing (Anglo-lingual) debate on the problems associated with teaching ‘race’ and ethnicity in higher and further education both on this and the other side of the Atlantic.
In this article, I explore some of the difficulties related to teaching ‘race’ and ethnicity in a university setting.

Although I have taught a range of sensitive topics during my career as a teacher in HE (including embodiment, gender and sexuality), I perceive teaching around ‘race’/ethnicity and racism to be one of the most challenging aspects of my teaching practice. My first experience of teaching on ‘race’ and ethnicity reaches back to 1998, when I worked as an associate lecturer in the Department of Sociology at the University of Essex while studying for my PhD. A focus on ‘race’/ethnicity and racism has been a much more consistent feature of my professional practice since I took up employment at Manchester Metropolitan University in autumn 2006, where I have been teaching a variety of cultural studies units in the Department of Sociology. I have dealt with awkward or difficult experiences in many of the units in which I (or we) directly address questions around ‘race’/ ethnicity and racism.

In this article, I engage with the specialist literature in order to work out strategies to enable a critical dialogue about ‘race’ and ethnicity in the HE classroom. I further draw on my own teaching experience where I think this is helpful to illustrate or provide substance to my argument. I argue that reflective learning and teaching strategies which acknowledge and utilise the experiential dimension of knowledge about ‘race’/ethnicity and racism need to address the question of positionality (cf Nasir, 2006). As students or teachers, we are all positioned in different ways in the discourses and practices around ‘race’ and ethnicity: it is not wise, I argue, to circumvent this issue in the classroom. In contradistinction, a respectful acknowledgment of differential positionalities (plus their experiential basis and their power effects) is a precondition for critical dialogue to take place. This highlights the necessity to critically explore the theme of whiteness as an integral part of such an approach.

‘Race’, ethnicity and racism

The notion of ‘race’ assumes a commonality among people based on a set of physical characteristics. ‘Race’ was elaborated throughout the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries as a sociobiological concept across a range of disciplines, which drew central inspiration from the intellectual project of ‘race science’ (Gould, 1981; Kohn, 1995; Gilman, 1985). Different parts and shapes of the body have been considered relevant for establishing a person’s ‘race’ in a discourse evolving over the centuries, including (among others) ‘blood’, skull size, brain structure, skin pigmentation, facial features, hair texture and genetic codes. Racial classification has been highly context-specific and involves perceptual and cognitive mechanisms that include rules about perception and non-perception, selection, ordering and schemes of emotional response or affect (Wallman, 1978; Omi and Winant, 1994; Ahmed, 2000, 2004). The production of knowledge about ‘race’ (and following from that the alleged separation of humanity into different ‘races’) has been propelled by ambitions to colonial rule and expansion. From the inception of the category, the idea of ‘race’ was mobilised for claims of white (racial) superiority (McClintock, 1995; Goldberg, 1997; Dyer 2006). Yet, as recent critical scholarship on whiteness has pointed out, whiteness is an unstable and shifting racial category which has been ascribed or denied to groups depending on the power relations which prevail in a certain social context. Anti-Irish racism in Britain and the USA, for example, based the allegation of ‘primitiveness’ on both biological distinction and cultural differentiation (McClintock, 1995; Murji, 2002; Garner, 2006). The workings of anti-Irish racism and anti-Semitism illustrate that ‘colour racism’ has been a significant and pervasive but not an absolutely necessary feature of all forms of racisms (Cohen, 1988; Anthias and Yuval-Davis, 1992). As we have seen, racial classification has always been multi-faceted, and in the significatory schemes of some racisms, body traits and features, distinct from skin colour or shade, may play a more salient role. Moreover, many researchers suggest that, over recent decades, racist discourses have often evolved around culturalist rather than biologistic narratives (Solomos and Back, 1996). There is a wide consensus in the (constructivist) social sciences today that the classification of human beings along lines of ‘race’ has no rational justification in the light of the biological, social or cultural knowledge available to us. It is because ‘race’ can be described as a fictive reality in the service of power relations that the terminology of ‘race’ is problematic and widely contested (Gilroy, 2000). Over recent years, race-critical scholars have therefore suggested the adaptation of a perspective of ‘racialisation’ (Murji and Solomos, 2005). ‘The concept of racialisation … refers to the historical emergence of the idea of ‘race’ and to its subsequent reproduction and application. Furthermore, the racialisation of the processes in which they participate and the structures and institutions that result’ (Robert Miles, quoted by Nayak 2005: 142). By deploying the term ‘racialisation’, scholars hope to highlight the discursive character of ‘race’ and to diminish the danger that the critical debate of ‘race’ and racism will have the unintended effect of reinforcing the categories it aims to challenge. This is a problem right at the heart of all critical work committed to deconstructing or challenging racism (cf Gilroy, 1992). Due to the problematic legacy of the language of ‘race’, many teachers and tutors tend to prefer the term ethnicity. In popular understandings, ethnicity draws its meanings and substance from cultural differences. The focus on culture allows questions of biology and physical difference to be side-stepped. Distinct customs, traditions, values, beliefs, a sense of shared history (among other things) are said to be important criteria for ethnic group membership. Yet anti-essentialist scholars have questioned the concreteness of ethnicity. They define ethnicity as a ‘boundary process’ and see ethnic groups as social constructs, empty ‘organisational vessels’ into which in theory all kinds of symbols and markers could be poured (Barth, 1969; cf Solomos and Back, 1996). Various scholars explain ethnicity as a mode of narrativising the everyday life world (Brah, 1996), an effect of governmental acts of categorisation (Anthias and Yuval-Davis, 1992), an instrumentalist rallying point for advancing certain political projects (Yuval-Davis, 1997), a field of cultural experimentation and affiliation (Hall, 1992), or a technique of ‘making up people’ (Carter and Fenton, 2009). Far from representing strong primordial ties, ethnicity is internally contested and gains shape and relevance under specific historical circumstances, often marked by struggles around material resources (Carter and Virdee, 2008). Moreover, as some critics rightly point out, common usages of the term mirror central features of (previous) race discourses. In the mass of the literature, the term ‘ethnicity’ is rarely applied to white people. The common assumption seems to be that Black people are ‘ethnic’ but white people are not, just as Blackness is considered to represent ‘race’, whereas whiteness appears as a norm rather than a specific racial category (Gamman et al, 1993; Dyer, 2006). Anthias and Yuval-Davis (1992: 148) talk of the ‘ethnicisation’ of Blackness. Ideologies around both ‘race’ and ethnicity have been central to the history of European nation-state building (Mosse, 1985). Representations of the nation often deploy narrative strategies of ‘ethnicisation’ or ‘racialisation’ and play a prominent role in the legitimisation of racist practices (Balibar and Wallerstein, 1993). This has the effect that the racist discourses on certain groups may differ significantly, depending on the (national) context of their articulation (cf Erel, 2009). Although there is no truth and no compelling logic in ‘race’ or ethnicity thinking, ethnicised and racialised representations continue to shape our perceptions of the world. Racist ideologies are continuously invoked to explain social realities and legitimise the decisions about the policies of institutions and governments. This has profound implications for the approaches open to us if we are involved in teaching ‘race’ and ethnicity.

Reflective and experiential approaches to teaching on ‘race’ and ethnicity and the problem of positionality

It is an important aim of critical teaching around ‘race’ and ethnicity to enable students to critically reflect on the conceptual language of ‘race’ and ethnicity and to understand how these concepts operate in racist discourses and practices. Reflective learning is ultimately about the ability to call into question existing knowledges (cf Brockbank and McGill, 2003). Teaching around ‘race’ and ethnicity therefore needs to consider learning activities that foster critical thinking. Critics have rightly pointed out that it is insufficient to conceive of reflection as a purely rationalistic and individualistic activity. Critical reflectivity incorporates interactive or dialogical dimensions (Smith, 1996/1999). Experience has a significant potential for learning processes here. There is a strong affinity between reflective and experiential forms of learning (Boud, Keogh and Walker, 1985). Such insights have been utilised in the recent appraisal of autobiographical techniques as examples of a ‘reflective practice’ in education (cf Leshem and Trafford, 2006). Shafqat Nasir (2006) stresses the significance of the experiential dimension for teaching and learning around ‘race’ and ethnicity. The provision of a well-composed and reflective teaching content alone cannot guarantee a critical learning experience, she argues. A ‘banking approach’ (Freire, 1972) to knowledge transfer which hopes to achieve the optimised accumulation of the right kind of insights and theories is particularly inappropriate for a topic such as racism which plays a powerful and often devastating role in many students’ and teachers’ lives. This calls for approaches that encourage active and engaged learning, and involves a redefinition of the role of the teacher/tutor as a facilitator, guide and co-learner. Nasir utilises Kolb’s (1984) experiential learning cycle (which stresses the mutually reinforcing learning potentials of concrete experience, reflective observation, abstract conceptualisation and active experimentation) and combines it with a developmental model of anti-discriminatory practice (based on a transformative ethics focusing on ideas, action, evaluation and commitment). In this model, experiential and reflective processes feed into each other (see figure 1).

Figure 1: Combined model of experiential learning and developmental model of anti-discriminatory practice (Kolb, 1984) (source: Nasir, 2006: 86)

Nasir holds the view that the model is applicable for many forms of classroom interaction, even if they do not involve any intense small group or project work or out-of-classroom activities. A broad understanding of discourse as practice (cf Sawyer, 2002) allows us to conceive of critical dialogue and group discussion as a form of experiential action (Nasir, 2006: 86). This highlights the intersubjective and experiential dimension and the critical potential of group discussions (Brookfield and Preskill, 1999). Encouraging experiential learning processes brings to the fore emotionality. Academic discourse is focused on rationalistic analysis. This is mirrored in a reductionist concern with cognitive processes within the theory of learning and teaching. It is open to question to what extent a purely rationalistic approach to teaching ‘race’/ethnicity and racism can be successful or satisfactory. Histories of racism evolve around the memories of violence, destruction and genocide. This makes it difficult to approach the question of racism with a detached habitus. Those who have been personally harmed by racism may deal with feelings of anger, frustration or lack of patience when they are confronted with certain views. Those who are members of privileged collectivities may be unsettled by feelings of denial, aggression, helplessness or guilt. Yet emotive language is not usually welcome in academic settings. It is considered to be unruly, non-objective and unscientific. Research and autobiographical teacher narratives indicate that discussions about ‘race’/ethnicity and racism can even trigger extremely strong emotions in the classroom (Jacobs, 2006b; Housee, 2006a; Körner and Garrard, 2006; Cumberbatch, 2006).

Depending on the context, seminar groups in HEIs in the UK may be very diverse in terms of ethnic composition. This is particularly the case in courses offered at so-called new universities, which are frequently located in urban centres (Jacobs et al, 2006). The diversification of the student body at some institutions has been an inevitable effect of widening participation strategies (and their uneven implementation across the UK HE system). Racism results in deep divisions and strongly shapes the life experiences of individuals (Fanon, 1986). Differences in experience (of racism) thus matter a great deal in discussions about ‘race’/ethnicity and racism in ethnically diverse classroom settings. This is why, Nasir (2006) suggests, we need to pay attention to the impact of positionality on teaching and learning around ‘race’ and ethnicity (cf Jacobs et al, 2006; Jacobs, 2006b). Nasir’s (2006) incorporation of a reflection of differential positionality in her model of active engaged learning is one of the most interesting aspects of her proposal (see figure 2).

Figure 2: Combined model (source: Nasir, 2006: 91)

Positionality here not only refers to the levels of self-identity or categorisation: ‘It is about relations of power as they are played out within the conditions of history’ (Arber, quoted in Nasir, 2006: 75). The perspective of positionality strives for an understanding of the manifold and varying impacts of the interconnected oppressive forces around ‘race’/ethnicity, class, gender, sexuality, age and dis/ability on the life experiences of individuals (Erel et al, 2008). Position is always relational. This means that the question of how a person is placed in relation to common racist practices and discourses is assumed to have an effect on his/her cognitive and emotional response to the issue of racism. At the same time, positionality perspectives refute generalisation and/or homogenisation. This is expressed, for example, in Avtar Brahs’ (1996) concept of ‘differential racialisation’, which acknowledges that racism constructs people in differing ways depending on their class position or gender and sexual identities, etc.   

What does this mean in practice? Active and engaged learning about ‘race’/ethnicity and racism depends on a situation in which it is possible for all participants to engage in a critical reflective discussion from their personal position. This means that it is necessary to create spaces for members in the group to talk about their experiences, thoughts and emotions about the topic. This is only possible if an ethos prevails, according to which differential positioning in the fields of power around racism is acknowledged. This includes an acknowledgement of the various degrees of (emotional) risk for participants in a teaching/learning situation to participate in such activities. It also includes the necessity to open up inquiries about oppression and privilege. For classes on ‘race’ and ethnicity taught in the UK, this means that questions around hegemonic forms of whiteness also need to be addressed (cf Housee, 2006b; Borum, 2006).

Teacher and student positionality and the construction of voice, authenticity and authority

Black and ethnic minority academic staff are under-represented in teaching positions in HE. This is particularly the case where senior positions are concerned. Research indicates that the experience of racism and direct or indirect forms of discrimination often reinforce a sense of isolation (Simmonds, 1997; Jacobs et al, 2006). ‘Race’ plays a role in the construction of academic expertise, too. Even if many Black and ethnic minority teachers have embarked on teaching ‘race’, ethnicity and racism due to their personal academic interests (or their political commitments to anti-racism), many report that they are quickly regarded as the ‘race person’ in the department. Although the situation has changed a little over recent years, in sociology, ‘race’ and racism are still confined to a limited number of sessions in core units or are entirely constricted to units with an elective status. There is a widely felt sense among teachers in this area that the core discipline still seals itself off and denies the significance of ‘race’ and racism within sociological theory (Banton, 2003; Law, 2003). Against this backdrop, a few proactive members of staff are all too easily assumed to ‘cover’ the topic – which means that nobody else feels the necessity to contribute to the teaching around these issues (Murji, 2003; Jacobs et al, 2006; Jacobs and Tate, 2006). Autobiographical reflections of Black and ethnic minority teachers provide evidence that students’ responses and reactions are influenced by the ethnicity of the teacher providing the education on ‘race’, ethnicity and racism (Jacobs et al, 2006; Jacobs, 2006b). This has profound implications for the construction of voice, authenticity and authority. In particular, white students are often irritated to realise that the unit they have enrolled on is provided by a teacher of colour. In particular, young women of colour (or women who appear to be young) report a frequent scepticism by students or staff that they are in fact the teacher when they take the position in the front of the class (Jacobs and Tate, 2006). This illustrates the interplay of gendered and racialised representations in the construction of ideal–typical knowledge-bearers. The occasional question, ‘Where is the lecturer?’ brings students’ irritation and confusion around their expectation of what ‘a proper lecturer’ may look like right to the fore.  

As a white teacher of male gender I do not usually have to establish my authority as a teacher and expert against the common impression that this is not what I am. On several occasions, students have read me as fellow student rather than lecturer when I have first entered the classroom, but this is a different kind of story. I assume that the misreading of my role has been primarily due to the fact that I tend to dress casually; this issue of style also has age connotations. Students’ misinterpretation of the situation does not call into question my competence to teach the unit by drawing stereotypical conclusions from central features of my embodied subjectivity or identity.

Yet teaching ‘race’/ethnicity and racism as a white teacher tends to bring with it a quite specific set of problems regarding positionality. Positionality is always relational, with relationality referring to both the intersubjective level and the wider field of power relations. As a white teacher, I usually find myself being much more preoccupied with the question of how my teaching role is perceived by Black and ethnic minority students than by white students. Writing indicates that I share this preoccupation with other ethnically privileged white teachers in the field (Körner and Garrad, 2006; cf Jacobs et al, 2006; Jacobs, 2006b). Questions about legitimation play an important role here. Although the situation may have changed over the last decade, identity politics has established an expectation among many Black students that units on ‘race’/ethnicity and racism should be taught by a person of colour. In particular, throughout the 1980s and 1990s, many politicised Black students had strong reservations about being confronted with white lecturers in units on racism (Housee, 2006b; Cumberbatch, 2006; Jacobs, 2006b). The assumption that only a person who has first-hand experience of racism has the skills to teach on racism forms an important part of this expectation. This reaction may partially be borne out of a lack of perception of certain racisms (for example, anti-Semitism). A further issue at stake in these conflicts about white people teaching ‘race’ and ethnicity is the question of authenticity (Housee, 2006b). Yet these arguments may not fully explain these tensions. I suppose that, in many cases, students’ dissatisfaction derives from a profound scepticism – if not actual disappointment – regarding white teachers’ willingness to position themselves clearly in conflicts about racism.

I have had a range of experiences that I have understood to be Black students questioning or testing my ability to teach on racism in a responsible manner. For example, in a classroom discussion on the relationship of British people with recent immigrants from Europe, a British African Caribbean student made the rather general statement that she did not want to discuss certain issues with people from other European countries. This was because she would not want to offend those people. In the list of examples she gave to explicate her point of view she included a reluctance to discuss racism with a person from Germany. Even if the student did not personally address me in her statement, I could not help but take it as a reference to my role as a person from Germany teaching about ‘race’/ethnicity and racism in Britain. Only a few minutes earlier, drawing on my experiences of having lived in Germany and in the UK, I had reflected on how I perceived racism to work differently at the institutional level and in the public debate in the two countries. The student’s response made me wonder whether she was reluctant to convey her unease about finding herself in a discussion about racism in the UK with a white German (teacher). The strong association of Germanness with Nazism (and thus ultra-racism) in British discourses on German nationality provides a backdrop to my emotional dealings with this interaction. 

Apart from a negotiation of (my) white teacher subjectivity, this example touches on a further layer of positionality, which I wish to explore further: the issue of nationality. I find it interesting that I have been asked several times to explicate my opinion on racism in Germany by (Black and ethnic minority) students in a unit which specifically addresses issues around race/ethnicity and racism in the UK. Since I communicate my anti-racist and anti-imperialist point of view quite clearly in my teaching, I do not think that these questions are aimed primarily at finding out about my ideas on racism. Rather, I am convinced that students are negotiating my peculiar position as a German teaching on British culture with an anti-racist perspective. In my understanding, students are testing whether I am prepared to scrutinise and criticise racism in ‘my own culture’ in a similar way. I understand these questions about my opinion on racism in Germany as inquiries into both the nature and extent of my commitment to anti-racism. Of course, it may also be a way to define (and limit) the discursive terrain they think it would be appropriate for me to cover. This interpretation brings to the fore the question of authenticity but this time at the level of nationality (rather than ‘race’). In both examples, Black students take a consideration of my position as a white German teacher as a starting point to scrutinise my understanding of and opinion on racism – starting from assumptions about both whiteness and nationality. As a white teacher in this subject area, I have at times had to counter certain mistrust by Black students; to put it differently, I have had to gain their trust through a sensitive and responsible approach to my teaching practice. The question of whether or not I demonstrate a nuanced (emotional and intellectual) understanding of the complexities of racism in classroom discussions is an important issue here. The ability to ‘see’ certain forms of racism is as important as readiness to take a principled anti-racist position. In my experience, a situation of trust is also much more likely to emerge if I relate to these issues from a personal point of view. My experience matters. Students appreciate teachers showing that they are touched by the subjects under discussion. Moreover, relating my own (particularistic) perspective may help create an intersubjective understanding which acknowledges the prevalence of differential positions. The proactive incorporation of experiences in classroom discussions only works in the face of an open and non-judgmental atmosphere. For this to be possible, students need to feel that their contributions are welcome and that there is space for contradictions. As a white teacher, I need to find ways of responding that highlight the injustices around race/ethnicity, take issues further on an analytical level and not close down discussion. I will comment in closer detail on the inherent difficulties of this task in the following section.

Students tend to read a teacher’s discourse on ‘race’ and racism through the lens of the teacher’s subjective positioning to the problem of racism. This kind of ‘framing’ has very different implications for Black and ethnic minority teachers. The literature suggests that the response of students to Black and ethnic minority staff as teachers on ‘race’ units is mediated by the self-identification of students. Black and ethnic minority students often appreciate working with teachers of colour since they assume an immediate understanding of their own experiences of racism (Housee, 2006b), making it easier for them to bond around this commonality. Moreover, seeing Black people in the respectable and authoritative role of teacher is experienced as empowerment by some students because it illustrates that it is possible for Black people to achieve and to have a career (Jacobs et al, 2006; Housee, 2006b). On the other hand, Black teachers’ critical discourse on racism is frequently dismissed by white students as a merely personal diatribe borne out of personal resentment (Nasir, 2006). There is a common perception among white students that Black and ethnic minority teachers (and students) speak on ‘race’ and racism primarily from their experience (Simmonds, 1997: 227). In an academic context that gives objectivity the status of disinterested and detached mastery of knowledge, this undermines academic credentials. The discourse of teachers who belong to groups that are confronted with racism is further disqualified as being distorted by resentment and emotionality. These teachers often feel a strong need to control their emotionality in the context of teaching on racism in order not to be cast as angry or resentful (Jacobs and Tate, 2006). Black students’ voices, too, are often dismissed if they speak out against racism.

The accusation of being biased, angry or irrational is often shored up by more general racist stereotypes about Black people as loud, aggressive or ‘difficult’. Strains of such thinking were clearly evidenced in the teaching material provided at a ‘Teaching sociological theory’ workshop session I attended a few years ago in London. Participants were asked to engage in a group discussion about how to deal with difficult attitudes among students, which may obstruct a fruitful discussion about theory to take place in a class context. The workshop organisers presented several clichéd profiles of students whose behaviour contributed to a dynamic that could stifle group work dynamics. One of these profiles presented a young, Black (African or African Caribbean) feminist whose (self-righteous) radical ideas and persistence, it was implied, presented a continuous challenge to the group dynamics. This representation merged the cliché of the loud, sassy young Black woman with a dismissive attitude towards Black feminism as a form of exaggerated political correctness. My discussion in this section has shown that both teachers’ and students’ positionalities matter a great deal in whether their voices are perceived to be authentic or whether they can assume authority in a class on ‘race’/ethnicity and racism. In the following section, I will focus on conflict in discussions about racism from a positionality perspective.
 
The discourse of ‘race’/racism – discomfort, denial and conflict

The question of ‘intervention’ is a salient topic in the literature on teaching ‘race’ and ethnicity (Farrar, 2006; Housee, 2006b; Jacobs 2006b). Research suggests that teachers from all kinds of ethnic backgrounds struggle with the dilemma of wanting to provide an open learning environment in which all students may freely express their thoughts, concerns and worries, while feeling the need to create a safe learning space in which Black and ethnic minority students are not exposed to racism (cf Nasir, 2006; Housee, 2006a; Jacobs, 2006b). Yet it is a striking feature in this literature that teachers from a white ethnic background seem to be much more preoccupied with worries, about whether they have ‘done the right thing’ in dealing with these conflicts (Körner and Garrad, 2006). A plea for the need for intervention is more likely to be found in texts authored by Black teachers (Cumberbatch 2006: 153/154, cf Housee, 2006b: 65).

Let me expand a little on the dilemma concerning attempts to organise a non-authoritarian, democratic classroom, in which all students have the ability to express their point of view, and the urge for intervention. There is a widely shared opinion in the literature that it is not helpful to suppress certain points of view from the start. ‘If the tutor crushes dissent and closes minds, then (whatever the political aims) education has stopped’ (Farrar, 2006: xvi). Yet, at the same time, there prevails an equally widely acknowledged insight that discussion about racism is fraught with potential outbursts of animosity and racism. Some tutors aim to safeguard a discussion based on mutual respect and sensitivity against the violent effects of racist language and practice by setting ground rules for classroom interaction (Jacobs et al, 2006; Jacobs, 2006b; Cumberbatch 2006b). Others are less optimistic that such ground rules have the potential to contain potential conflicts around racism (Jacobs and Tate, 2006). Still others suggest that the introduction of ground rules reinforces the particularity of the topic of ‘race’ and racism and has the ultimate effect of silencing some students (Jacobs, 2006b). In which way ever teachers decide to approach this issue, most would acknowledge that intervention is often a tricky and difficult enterprise. Often students within the group speak out and challenge problematic racist views. Some believe that this may have even more effect than a teacher’s intervention (cf Housee, 2006b: 65f.). Personally, I try to challenge racist terminology, racist claims and bigotry by explaining language, highlighting the significance of positionality in discussing racism, or by highlighting the role of problematic claims and narratives in their wider geopolitical and historical context. Yet, at times, I feel constrained by my wariness not to silence students. Outside the classroom, I would take on many of the opinions under question in a very different fashion. As a result, I sometimes find myself struggling with the question of whether or not my reaction may allow students to ‘get away’ with things or whether it might even contribute to silencing other students, that is, the ones who are positioned at the receiving end of racism in their everyday lives. The fact that some students may utter racist opinions is not the only source of conflict. Often tension is triggered by a deeply felt defensiveness among some of the white students. Many white students respond with discomfort and denial to a curriculum which foregrounds questions of racism (Körner and Garrard, 2006). There are manifold ways through which students can deny or belittle the dimension of racism in certain contexts and situations (cf Nasir, 2006: 87/88).

My awareness of the frequency of such reactions makes it sometimes difficult to prepare classes or to choose appropriate teaching material. For example, in order to illustrate the interconnection between discourses on ‘race’ and sexuality in the context of homophobia, I considered using an excerpt of Gail Mason’s (2002) book on hate crime for a close reading activity in a class on the body and sexuality. In this section, Mason tries to demonstrate the difficulty of discerning elements of racism and homophobia in two incidents in which two Asian–Australian women were subjected to verbal and physical abuse in urban public places. While I appreciate Mason’s nuanced analysis of the interview transcripts, I decided to withdraw from this activity briefly before the session because I worried that the discussion about this text could go wrong. Both seminar groups were predominantly white in composition, with only a small number of Black and ethnic minority students present. Although I did not know about the sexual identities of most of my students, I perceived the group to be predominantly straight. Only one student of east Asian background participated in one of the seminar groups. I became anxious that Black students – and in particular this student who may have experienced very similar forms of racism – might find themselves exposed to a situation in which a group of white people got into a debate about whether the described incidents were to be considered racism or not. Since the denial of racism can be very offensive and frustrating for people who are experiencing it, I opted for an alternative activity.

I have experienced many situations in which students belittled or called into question the seriousness of racist incidents discussed in teaching material. This was the case in a discussion about the poem, ‘So you think I’m a mule’, by Jackie Kay, in which the autobiographical narrator, a Black women of mixed (Nigerian and Scottish) heritage, challenges the racist and stereotyping assumptions of a white young woman (Woodward, 2004). While the poem was positively received as a powerful piece of self-affirmative, anti-racist writing in one of the seminar groups (which contained a large number of Black students of various ethnic backgrounds), it was dismissed as unfair, aggressive and an instantiation of reverse racism in another group (consisting almost exclusively of white students). I am retelling this example primarily to illustrate the prevalence of defensive reactions among white students if confronted with the topic of racism. Yet this may serve to demonstrate a further issue: the question of how discussions about ‘race’ and racism develop in the classroom is strongly dependent on its ethnic composition. According to my observation, it is much more likely that students will come up with racist remarks about particular ethnic or religious groups if no (or few) representatives of this group are present in the classroom. Racism (or the denial of racism) is more freely expressed if speakers do not fear being reprimanded or if they assume a common sense regarding their views in the group. I have made this observation particularly in relation to the articulation of cultural racism against south Asians and/or Muslims. Such expressions of cultural racism are not necessarily restricted to white majority ethnic students. Reflective writing by teachers of ‘race’/ethnicity and racism suggests that Black and ethnic minority students, too, may have a selective awareness of racism (cf Housee, 2006b; Cumberbatch, 2006). This makes it even more necessary to highlight in teaching the multiplicity of racisms and to reflect on the different experiences of different groups in a comparative perspective (Jacobs et al, 2006; Jacobs, 2006b). For example, while teaching on ‘race’ and ethnicity in the UK tends to strongly reflect racisms against south Asian and African Caribbean communities, other forms of racism, such as racism against east Asian people, anti-Irish racism and anti-Semitism, are not frequently covered (Murji, 2003).

Outlook: towards an active and engaged learning and teaching practice on ‘race’/ethnicity and racism

Although conversations about racism in the classroom are fraught with problems, most writers in the field suggest that it is useful to encourage students to bring their personal experiences. Stressing the experiential dimension in learning and teaching about ‘race’ and ethnicity has several advantages. In the context of a multi-ethnic classroom, bringing together accounts of students’ experiences of racism may help to reflect the diversity and contextual nature of racist discourse and practice (Housee, 2006b). It recognises the expertise of many students on this issue, whether in terms of their experience or their knowledge of the literature (Cumberbatch, 2006). Moreover, it is through an engagement with different experiences that the significance of differential positionality in the context of racism can ultimately be uncovered (Nasir, 2006). Applying a reflective and experiential approach to teaching ‘race’ and racism also means encouraging white students and teachers to talk about their experiences. This may challenge an awkward twist in the dominant ways through which experience is linked into learning and teaching around ‘race’. ‘Black academics are expected to talk about the issue of ‘race’ as a personal experience. White academics, even when they are ‘race’ experts, are not expected to. It’s as if ‘race’, as an experience, is only of concern to those who are ‘racialised’ by social theory itself’ (Simmonds, 1997: 227). Simmonds suggests that the experience of whiteness (or the experience of white people) matters, too, in the larger enterprise of trying to understand ‘race’ and ethnicity. In a similar vein, Nayak (2005) has suggested that we should broaden the definition of ‘racialisation’ to include whiteness as a ‘racial’ subjectivity. An inclusion of perspectives derived from within critical whiteness studies in the curriculum is certainly one step in this direction. Yet I have argued throughout this article that the reliance on a comprehensive anti-racist curriculum is not sufficient to ground active and engaged learning and teaching practices. Simmonds’ (1997) point about the relevance of (white people’s) experience of whiteness for a critical theory of ‘race’ is meant quite literally. If white teachers position themselves against the regime of ignorance, exploitation and terror, maintained through the practice of racism, this may also encourage others (including students) to question the privilege and power tied to normative white identities. There is a common complaint in the literature that white students are silent in classes on ‘race’ and ethnicity. This silence often stems from their feeling that, as white people, they have nothing to say about ‘race’ (hooks, 1994). Encouraging white students to speak and partake in discussion may help in establishing a critical perspective on whiteness as a central term in the hierarchical discourse of ‘race’ and racism (cf Housee, 2006b; Dyer, 2006). I have argued throughout this article that this strategy also opens the floodgates for the articulation of opinions, sentiments and experiences that support the workings of racism. However difficult it may be for teachers to handle the conflicts that emerge from these dynamics, I think this risk must be taken. There is no way to avoid conflicts when teaching about ‘race’/ethnicity and racism.

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Dr Santokh Singh Gill
University of Huddersfield
Queensgate
Huddersfield
HD1 3DH

Tel 01484 472794
Email s.s.gill@hud.ac.uk 

Dr Claire Worley
Manchester Metropolitan University
799 Wilmslow Road,
Didsbury, Manchester
M20 2RR

Tel 0161 2472146
Email c.worley@mmu.ac.uk

Biographies

Dr Santokh Singh Gill is a senior lecturer in the Division of Criminology, Politics and Sociology at the University of Huddersfield. He has previously conducted research on political participation in black and minority ethnic communities, social capital and faith, British Muslim communities, masculinity in Sikh communities and refugee community groups. Santokh has a particular interest in British Asian communities, specifically Asian masculinities. Recent publications include Lessons from West Bowling Youth Initiative: then, now and the future, published by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation in 2008.

Dr Claire Worley is a senior lecturer in the Department of Social Work and Social Change at Manchester Metropolitan University. She has a particular interest in issues of race, ethnicity and gender and her current work relates to community cohesion policies in the UK. She has published work on community cohesion, urban regeneration, user involvement, housing, homelessness and substance misuse. Recent publications include the 2005 article, ‘“It’s not about race, it’s about the community”: New Labour and community cohesion’ in Critical Social Policy, vol 25 (4), pp 483–496.

Abstract

This paper reflects on our experiences of teaching various aspects of race and ethnicity within the higher education context over the past decade. We highlight various ways in which teaching race and ethnicity is ‘sensitive’, and reflect upon our teaching practice. We also highlight some of the approaches that we use in our teaching. In particular, we consider the value of a focus on ‘everyday’ spaces for teaching and learning about race and ethnicity.  We also explore issues relating to the positioning of ourselves, our ethnicities and social biographies, within the context of our teaching. In so doing, we engage with issues relating to authenticity, conflict, emotionality, racism and backlash narratives.

Key words: emotions, ethnicity, everyday, backlash

Introduction

Together, we have been active in teaching about issues of race and ethnicity for the past decade, in various academic contexts. Our students have included those on applied degree courses, such as those studying to be social workers, police officers and lawyers, as well as those specifically studying sociology or, more broadly, social studies. Our classes have included those that largely or exclusively comprised students from majority ethnic backgrounds (white British), and we have also taught on modules which comprised mainly students from black and minority ethnic backgrounds. These contexts are hugely significant given the nature of the subject. Jacobs notes:

Teaching ‘race’ and ethnicity is widely perceived by staff to be challenging as well as rewarding, but the types of challenge vary a good deal according to whether institutions are mainly ‘white’/ethnicity majority or whether a number of EM students are enrolled.
(Jacobs, 2006: 344)

We have taught at various HE institutions within the UK, in large metropolitan cities and in smaller towns, within both ‘new’ and established universities, and at different levels, including foundation year programmes and master’s. Our engagement and pedagogic practice has emerged and developed during this time, partly in response to our own shifting epistemological/theoretical frameworks, but also in response to who we are and the social changes taking place around us. Indeed, our own ethnicities, identities, our ‘personhoods’ to borrow from Stanley and Wise (1983: 162), are integral to this paper. In simplistic terms, we could identify ourselves as a white female and Asian male; yet, within these overarching racial categorisations, our biographies are shaped and disrupted through interrelated aspects such as our social class, gender, sexuality, family histories and social networks. These aspects of difference intersect and are played out, marked, recognised and made real within the ‘everyday’.

In the context of this paper, we want to draw particular attention to the complex ways in which teaching race relates to the notion of teaching ‘sensitive issues’, the theme of this special edition. Despite Skinner’s (2006: 13) argument that ‘we have done to death the topic of what a ‘difficult’ or sensitive subject race is’, we feel that there is more to be said here, particularly in the context of a rapidly changing social world and changing HE context.

Our discussion of teaching race as a sensitive subject is divided into three sections. First, we outline our theoretical location, which informs not only this paper but also our teaching practice. Second, we reflect on our teaching experience to consider the sensitivity in teaching around race and ethnicity in contemporary HE settings. Finally, we consider approaches that we use in our teaching practice in order to engage with the sensitivity inherent in teaching race and ethnicity.

There are several key elements that we seek to explore within these sections. The study or talk of race and race-related issues is seen by many – both within the academy, lecturers and students alike, and outside, within mainstream popular media and politics – as ‘sensitive’. Indeed, race-related issues continue to provoke what can be described as emotive responses and debates. We also want to suggest that teaching about race, racism and ethnicity differs from the majority of teaching found within wider social studies syllabuses because of the complex ways in which we engage with the subject in relation to our own identities and social biographies (see also Jacobs, 2006) (although, of course, there are similarities with teaching related to gender, sexuality and disability). Teaching about race in the British context, with its histories of colonialism, empire and immigration, can also evoke particular forms of classroom dynamics, which in some cases may result in conflict, anger and distress. Indeed, drawing on a research project on teaching race in HE, Jacobs (2006: 344) notes that such conflict can involve ‘heightened emotions and more explicit expression of beliefs, perceptions and (sometimes) stereotypes than is routine’. In discussing these emotive experiences, we also draw on our personal recollections of student narratives. It is necessary to note that these comments are based on our reinterpretation of the events and do not arise from a focused research project. They are therefore influenced by a range of factors that affect retrieval, such as our emotional state, the perceived severity of the comments to us, and the amount of time that has passed since their occurrence.  

Theoretical location

Our thinking (and teaching) about race and our pedagogies are informed by our own theoretical locations, which could loosely be described as ‘critical poststructuralist’ (see also Williams, 2003). We are inspired and informed by the work of contemporary theorists such as Caroline Knowles (2003; and with Claire Alexander, 2005), Gail Lewis (2004) and Suki Ali (2006), as well as having a longer history of engagement with the work of Stuart Hall (1992), Paul Gilroy (2004), Avtar Brah (1996) and Mac an Ghaill (1999) in particular. Given this, we view race as something which is socially constructed, yet something which continues to have meaning. As Alexander and Knowles (2005: 1) argue, ‘race still matters’ in contemporary times as it remains ‘a definitive marker of identity, difference, inequality and violence’.  Indeed it is also apparent that ‘race practices remain integral to social and political formations’ (Warmington, 2009: 283).

Race and the ‘everyday’

In particular, we are interested in how race and ‘race practices’ operate within the ‘everyday’, in the mundane and the ordinary settings of social interaction. Here we follow on from the work of Lewis (2004: 167), who talks of the ‘practices of the everyday’ as ‘a code for the taken for granted, ordinary ways of organizing living and relationships in networks of intimacy (families, lovers, friendships etc.) workplace relationships, schools, hospitals or other public institutions, communities or other networks’. Such a focus on ‘everyday’ settings and experiences can also be useful in shifting perceptions and for teaching and learning the ‘sensitive’ subject of race and ethnicity, as we explore in this paper. Furthermore, developing Giddens’ (1984) work on structuralisation, the ‘everyday’ can be viewed as a space within which the dialectic relationship between structure and agency is materialised.

Central to our understanding and pedagogic practice is an attempt to convey the ways in which processes of ethnicity and race within ‘everyday’ spaces affect both hegemonic majorities and subjugated minorities (though in different ways). A focus on the ‘everyday’ is particularly useful here. As Warmington (2009: 284) notes: ‘If ... the everyday is acknowledged as being sinewed by raced practices then it becomes less easy to take refuge in the position that race ‘happens elsewhere’, in exotic, marginal spaces, and that it couldn’t ‘happen here’, in the midst of our everyday experiences.’ 

Essed’s (1991) work is also relevant to this discussion, particularly the concept of ‘everyday racism’ as a means of understanding how structural racism is normalised within everyday practices and routines:

... everyday racism can be defined as a process in which (a) socialized racist notions are integrated into meanings that make practices immediately definable and manageable, (b) practices with racist implications become in themselves familiar and repetitive, and (c) underlying racial and ethnic relations are actualized and reinforced through these routine or familiar practices in everyday situations.�
(Essed, 1991: 52)

Our focus here is not on the existence of institutionalised racism within HE. Rather, we want to point out how race matters within practices and interactions of the ‘everyday’, which includes HE and the processes of reproducing and remaking race and racism (Essed, 1991). Moreover, this has particular currency in the context of the classroom when teaching and learning about race and ethnicity.

In understanding the relationship between structural processes and the ‘everyday’, as configured in this paper, it is important to recognise that race, class and gender are not separate entities. Rather, frames of difference are experienced in and through each other in complex ways (McClintock, 1995). Moreover, as Mac an Ghaill and Haywood (2007) point out, in terms of social relations, recognised aspects of difference such as ‘ethnicity’ are also understood through the frameworks of gender and sexuality:

We can say that power is shaped by relationality: one group is both powerful and powerless. For example, particular social relations of ethnicity simultaneously ‘speak’ gender and sexuality; to be a ‘Paki’ is also to be a ‘poof’, is to be a ‘non-proper’ boy.
(Mac an Ghaill and Haywood, 2007: 40)

Recognising the intersection of these (as well as other) aspects of difference has implications for teaching and learning about race and ethnicity, and again we would suggest that focusing on the racialisation of ‘everyday’ spaces is an important tool, as we will later explore.

The teaching experience

We now want to reflect upon and engage with aspects of our teaching practice, focusing in particular on the ways in which teaching race and ethnicity is a ‘sensitive’ subject. In particular, we explore the importance of our ethnicities and social biographies, and we address issues relating to white backlash narratives.

Negotiating our ethnicities

The teaching of ‘race’ and racism, and perhaps of other subjects, such as gender, cannot escape personal exposure and experience.
(Housee, 2008: 418)

Housee (2008) talks in some detail about the effect that ‘black’ lecturers can have on students when teaching race, as their racial categorisation can be seen to provide some sense of validity to the experiences of being a racialised minority. For example, in such situations, lecturers can draw on their own personal experiences to illustrate the lived realties of theory and policy relating to racialisation within schools (Housee, 2008). This is a practice which we have both employed, not just in relation to race, but also in other aspects of our teaching, such as gender. Using personal experiences can help provide a rich and engaging space for understanding race, ethnicity, racialisation and racism. For example, as an Asian, Sikh male, you can utilise your experiences or family experiences as located within the south Asian diasporic experience. Issues of direct and blatant racism within the workplace, which may for some be hard to comprehend in contemporary social contexts, can then be explored through documenting the stories with which we are familiar and are connected to our social biographies. This places the lecturer overtly within the context of the subject being studied. Consequently, the subjective position of being an ‘Asian man’ when teaching students about histories of south Asian migration, south Asian communities or south Asian masculinities could be seen to provide a valuable position for teaching and learning. Yet, similarly, the position of being a ‘white woman’ could be exploited when exploring issues of whiteness, white ethnicities, racism, and the intersectionality of race with other aspects of identity.

In utilising ourselves and our social biographies, we do not want to suggest any simplistic notion of authenticity. However, at the same time, it is apparent that this can help to provide some grounding in subject matter which can, at times, appear far removed from the ‘everyday’ contexts of our students’ lives. In this process, we certainly draw on what Housee (2006: 38) has described and advocates as a form of  ‘engaged pedagogy’, underpinned by ‘collaborative learning’ which, ‘through the generation and use of biographic stories, connects and challenges the academic material with everyday experiences and stories’. Again, the concept of the ‘everyday’ is apparent here, and this further supports our argument relating to the importance of the ‘everyday’ as a conceptual tool for teaching and learning about race and ethnicity. Housee (2006) draws on bell hooks’ (1994) argument that critical pedagogy is rooted in engagement and inclusion: ‘[My] pedagogical strategy is rooted in the assumption that we all bring to the classroom experiential knowledge that can indeed enhance our learning experience’ (hooks, 1994: 84–85, cited in Housee, 2006: 38). As Housee rightly notes: ‘[I]f we want to encourage students to speak on sensitive issues, such as 7/7, then we take the challenge to vulnerability ourselves and share our thinking, our views, to initiate the dialogue’ (Housee, 2006: 38). As previously argued, this is not necessarily an ‘easy’ or painless experience, but is often an emotional encounter.

However, it is also evident that the presentation of self within the teaching and learning setting is one that is performed. It is therefore a process whereby we may choose which personal examples are selected to convey racial ‘experience’, while other aspects of identity such as class or gender maybe underplayed. As Knowles (2003, cited in Alexander and Knowles, 2005: 13) points out, ‘recognition of the role of individual subjectivity is crucial to an understanding of the ways in which race is ‘made’, resisted and performed in the ‘rituals of everyday existence’’. At the same time, it is also apparent to us, having engaged with teaching around this subject area, that students may react negatively, at least initially, to being taught about race/ethnicity by someone who they feel does not have the ‘authenticity’ to speak/teach this subject. In this context, being white and teaching a subject which students may perceive as being specifically and only about black and minority ethnic communities/histories/experiences can create tensions. For example, one of our students asserted: ‘White people can’t teach us about race.’ Housee (2008: 417) also notes that, in such situations, students ’drew on essentialist discourses to argue that only blacks can teach race and racism and that white folks cannot sincerely teach race/ethnicity/racism issues because they do not understand and ‘feel’ the issues in the same way’. However, again, we would suggest that focusing on race and ethnicity in ‘everyday’ spaces, and particularly on ways in which race and race practices affect both majority and minority groups, is useful here.

There is a further aspect to this however, which warrants some discussion. Being positioned as a white lecturer, combined with being a woman from a working-class, rural background, may create intrigue among students as to why one might be interested in and committed to teaching about race, racialisation and inequality. Such questions are unlikely to be directed towards lecturers from black and minority ethnic backgrounds. This clearly relates to our racialised identities, but also highlights the ways in which race is made and constructed within spaces of social interaction, in the everyday, including within the classroom. In our experience, students have probed: ‘Are you of mixed background then?’, ‘Are you Asian?’ The implication is, you could not possibly be white English. In these instances, if one was to reveal some aspect of being a racialised minority, it would enable the students to fall back on simple and essentialised understandings of race which often surface in seminar discussions. This process of racialisation, which shifts from being identified as ‘white’ to ‘something else’, shows how racial difference is not simply mediated by skin colour. Indeed, writers such as McClintock (1995) and Roediger (1994) have documented the processes by which various groups become white. Similarly, within the context of the everyday, we are actively engaged in the process of constructing racial categories, and various cues serve to mark and define boundaries of otherness.

In such processes, a whole range of intersecting markers of difference is at play. There are particular discursive processes that allow us to ‘accept’ who is authentic for the role of lecturer and who can legitimately teach. Difference and the process of othering complicates who should hold authority (Subedi, 2008). Indeed, individual biographies differ. As Subedi (2008: 61) points out, ‘on the limits of the biological conception of race, one may be ‘skinfolk’ but not necessarily a ‘kinfolk’’.
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In an effort to disrupt and challenge the assumptions within some students’ perceptions, and those of some of our colleagues within HE past and present who assume(d) that race/ethnicity should be taught by lecturers from racialised minority groups, we have made a determined effort to engage with the notion of racialisation within our teaching and to explore and deconstruct whiteness in everyday settings as well as exploring blackness or Asian-ness. This is one way to destabilise processes of race-making that essentialise, legitimate and reinforce race as mattering only to racialised minorities. Therefore, within our teaching practice, particularly on modules that focus on the study of race and ethnicity, we also encourage students to engage with the study of whiteness and Englishness.

Challenges to our ‘personhoods’

The pedagogy of race remains extremely emotive and ‘sensitive’. Indeed, as Housee (2008) skilfully and succinctly outlines:

Learning about racism often pulls on our emotional strings: black students sometimes express their hurt and anger, while white students sometimes remain silent or express their hurt, shame and discomfort. The lecturer’s racialised identity is an important factor in these emotional exchanges. Black lecturers are sometimes judged for their ‘loyalties and sensibilities’ with the black community, while white lecturers are questioned for their understanding and sympathies with ‘race’/racism issues.
(Housee, 2008: 415)

While as academics we may be given the position of ‘knower’, the power dynamics within the classroom are, of course, complex, in part reflecting the intersection of race, class, gender and other aspects of social differentiation within ‘everyday’ spaces. Our social biographies and identifications are infused with our practice here, and this can place us in a vulnerable and open position. For example, identifying oneself as an Asian man can enable students to make easy associations between what is being taught and the Asian male doing the teaching. When teaching about statistical evidence of continuing disadvantage within employment for different minority groups, students have openly asked about earnings, educational achievements and social class. There is a lot to make sense of here, and we can only explore some of it in this paper. However, one reading may be that this has taken place when students have wished to challenge the validity of the academic material being presented, partly to deny the persistence of racial disadvantage reflected in the question, ‘You’re doing alright though, aren’t you?’ This reflects the contradiction, as mentioned previously, that, on the one hand, there is a problematic assumption that black or Asian lecturers may be best suited to teach about race, yet there is also evidence of an underlying narrative at work which suggests that they are not the most capable (Subedi, 2008).

From our experiences of teaching race and ethnicity over the past decade, we could interpret and reflect on the reactions of some students within the framework of subtle racism or even ‘aversive racism’ (Mistry and Latoo, 2009: 20), which has become more prominent as blatant forms are legislated against.  Such subtle forms of racism are played out in everyday cognitive processes. Mistry and Latoo (2009: 20) point out that ‘these feelings and beliefs are rooted in the normal psychological processes of social categorisation, satisfaction of basic needs for power and control, and socio-cultural influence’. There is also evidence to suggest that some students’ engagement with the subject matter corresponds with what Gilroy (1992) has described as ‘new racism’ and is tied up with terms such as ‘culture’ and ‘identity’. This discourse has found a new home within contemporary community cohesion policy discourses, which are now seen as a legitimate and acceptable way to discuss issues of race and ethnicity (Worley, 2006). Such diverse forms of racism are maintained and reproduced through processes and rituals that legitimate certain common sense and stereotypical assumptions about racial types along with a continued belief that racism is dead. For Essed (1991), such forms of everyday racism also problematise a distinction between institutional and individual racism, as acceptable institutional practices legitimate individual action.

Research evidence suggests that being questioned on expertise and knowledge appears to be a common reaction by students in these contexts, further reflecting the sensitive nature of the subject. While focusing on the North American context (which of course has different histories to the British context), Alexander-Floyd (2008) describes a ‘cognitive dissonance’ students have to black academics:
 �
Cognitive dissonance can be defined as a profound disorientation that occurs when our foundational modes of thinking are directly challenged ... or our lived experience fails to conform to deeply ingrained beliefs and assumptions. Blacks and other racial minorities in the U.S. occupy a lower social and political status than Whites and are not typically seen as authority figures, especially in the lives of most Whites. Given this fact, most White students, and even students of color, experience cognitive dissonance when they have people of color as professors.
(Alexander-Floyd 2008: 184)

Another aspect of what we might refer to as the ‘emotionality’ inherent in this is that our social biographies are tied to what we teach and we have a personal investment in facilitating students to engage and make sense of the subject. When we are teaching about south Asian immigration, for example, we may therefore utilise case studies such as that of Anwar Ditta, a Rochdale-born Asian woman who campaigned against the Home Office for six years in the 1970s and 1980s in an effort to be reunited with her three children in Pakistan. She was eventually reunited with them after being made to undergo various tests and an internal examination. When faced with students defiantly asserting that ‘she should have told the truth’ or making statements like ‘all Asian women should learn to speak English’, this has an emotional impact on us as lecturers and can be extremely difficult to engage with. This again partly relates to our personal social biographies, as discussed earlier, and the investment we have with the area that we teach. Moreover, it can lead to conflict within the classroom, something which we discuss in more detail later in the paper.

As an ‘Asian’, ‘black’ or ‘white’ lecturer, you can also be seen to embody and indeed represent a particular discursive racial category. Embodying and being seen in this position also lends itself to particular forms of representations that can bring with them their own dangers. You are thus placed in a vulnerable position whereby not only can your knowledge be contested, but also your experiences that link you to particular religious, cultural and ethnic communities. It can get personal. And it is overtly ‘sensitive’, whether the discussions are based on simple misunderstandings or a clear intention to provoke, which is often resolved by days of reflecting on ‘how did it go?’ It is in such situations that students may ridicule, justify or support ideas that we feel are misinformed or even blatantly racist. These have included discussions on the subject of arranged marriages and or contemporary immigration for example. These issues are not only linked to our own experiences, but are connected to our families, friends and communities. We are not suggesting that students should remain ‘silent’ in this context. But this further highlights some of the factors which relate to race being a ‘sensitive’ subject to teach, and we would argue that this is especially the case when it is relegated to a singular module or, even more challenging, a single lesson. Moreover, these issues emphasise the place of emotions and feelings inherent in our approach.

Engaging with the white backlash

The specificities of the student cohort have also shaped our experiences of teaching race over the past decade and our reflections/pedagogic developments. As well as the obvious factors of race and ethnicity, geographic location, the student’s place of birth, social class and the nature of the degree (and specifically whether it relates to a professional qualification with a practice-based aspect) are also significant in shaping the ways in which teaching race becomes a sensitive subject. Clearly these aspects of difference intersect (for example, with race and gender) and could for some students provide a legitimate ‘counter-narrative’ about the realities of race, as reflected in the following student comments:

When do we forget history and can stop feeling guilty for being white?

Why don’t we get taught about all the racism that other groups have? Asians don’t like other Asians … I asked (an Asian student) … if he was a Muslim and he said ‘Don’t call me a paki, I hate Muslims’.

Haven’t we got enough to think about as it is? Than thinking about taking our shoes off or whether we will offend somebody if we shook their hand? We’ve got a job to do.

Reflecting on literature about multicultural education in the USA, Spring (2006) highlights the sense of guilt white students feel when exploring the realities of racism. This can result in a display of resentment and anger towards black and minority ethnic groups. Such narratives also reflect a wider backlash towards multiculturalism and race equality measures. These are informed by a number of discourses that Hewitt (2005) documents in his ethnography of a white working-class community in Greenwich, London. Hewitt (2005) explores the growing resentment towards black and minority ethnic communities and the perceived positive discrimination and preferential treatment they are seen to receive. In recent years, this sense of resentment has also led to increasing support for the British National Party, particularly among 35- to 54-year-olds in skilled/unskilled working-class occupations (Ford and Goodwin, 2010):

[This ‘white backlash’] may more accurately be described as part of a socially disparate set of responses to equalities discourse as they unfold from the 1960s to the present. The so-called ‘white backlash’ has not been unitary, nor has it had the finality which its name seems to suggest ... It is an international phenomenon whose history, despite often deep national variation, continues to influence contemporary struggles over race and justice, migration and settlement and national policies designed to address them.
(Hewitt, 2005: 5).

From this perspective, the dynamics of race, class and geography play a role in shaping experiences of race. Hewitt’s (2005) study conveyed a range of anxieties, such as a fear of being seen as racist, an over-resentment of cultures of ‘political correction’, a sense that Britishness/Englishness is a minority identity, and a real sense of disempowerment and alienation. Such discourses have been a key feature of extreme right political narratives, but have also more recently been echoed in mainstream political parties. The communities secretary John Denham has called for an increased focus on tackling disadvantage for white working-class boys (Denham, 2009) alongside the need to develop ‘a better understanding of the way in which race interacts with class and other factors’ (Denham, 2010). In terms of our practice, a similar sense of injustice and resentment has also been reflected at times in our students’ narratives, which, drawing on the work of Hewitt (2005: 75), could be seen as conveying an alternative ‘community-approved’ narrative. We would argue that these narratives certainly shape our experiences of teaching race and further emphasise the ways in which race is a sensitive subject within the context of teaching in HE. The community-approved version of truth being constructed by our students in the classroom can be difficult to disentangle or challenge. Just as teaching race for us relates to our social biographies and identifications, so it does for our students, who often recite highly emotional racialised encounters, experiences and stories. These may not always be the stories that we want to ‘hear’: for example, stories that highlight even more ‘sensitive’ aspects of the subject, such as sexual violence and masculinity or victimisation. While some may vocalise their views, others may remain silent and disengaged. This also has a particular impact in terms of group work within mixed ethnicity and diverse HE settings. In such contexts, particularly when more vocal and assertive students try to dominate discussions, we have noticed ourselves becoming more aware of the potential for enhanced vulnerability and increased visibility of black and minority ethnic students within the classroom. Such examples include comments being made about the perceived ‘problems’ of wearing the hijab or perceptions of gender inequality within Muslim communities and so on. This becomes highly ‘sensitive’ when there are students in that setting who clearly can be identified with the community or issue being discussed. Clearly, this highlights the ways in which teaching race is a ‘sensitive’ subject, but it also indicates the ways in which the study of race can lead to conflicts within the classroom.

Jacobs (2006) explores the issue of conflict in detail and, drawing on a classification used in earlier work around this topic (Jacobs and Hai, 2002), argues that such conflicts can be either ‘overt/intentional expressions of racism by an individual … indirect expressions of racism or of unconsciously held stereotypes; and … overt group conflicts, whether involving direct or indirect racism’ (Jacobs, 2006: 346). As previously indicated, within the contemporary context of community cohesion discourses, the so-called ‘white backlash’ and the rising popularity of the British National Party, this has particular implications for teaching race and ethnicity within HE contexts.

Approaches for teaching and learning

In response to the issues that we have discussed so far, we have sought to develop strategies and practices which can enable the effective teaching of ‘sensitive’ issues such as race and racialisation to diverse student cohorts and in diverse HE settings. However, even now, we sometimes feel uneasy and bewildered by the situations we encounter. We would now like to consider in more detail some of the approaches that we have found to be useful.

Utilising the ‘everyday’

As outlined throughout this paper, we have found a focus on the ‘everyday’ to be useful because it enables students to explore race as a lived reality and as something with meaning (Alexander and Knowles, 2005) for both racialised majority and minority groups. As a teaching tool, the concept of the ‘everyday’ can be used to illustrate the realities of ‘everyday’ racism, and how these are experienced, alongside enabling a exploration of processes of racialisation and race-making. This also enables an analysis of the interrelationship between race, class, gender and other aspects of difference that are at play within ‘everyday’ settings. Following from Lewis (2004), we understand the site of the ‘everyday’ as primarily being about the ordinary ways of living in contemporary society. Our focus in our teaching is to encourage students to recognise how these are racialised and to explore how race operates in specific contexts. This might entail an analysis of local communities and community relations or an exploration of individual identities. One particular example we use focuses on a photography project in Manchester which aimed to capture the diversity within the category ‘mixed race’ by focusing on individuals’ own descriptions of themselves and their ‘mixedness’ (Lincoln, 2008). This enabled students to consider how processes of racialisation continue to frame ordinary experiences and everyday lives and to engage with the changing landscape of race and ethnicity in contemporary Britain.

We also make use of visual and textual materials about ‘everyday’ and mundane interactions that help to disrupt stereotypical ideas of the other and to enable students to engage with the complex theories around race and ethnicity. For example, we have developed discussions and practical analyses around the gendered, racialised and classed construction of ‘chavs’, a contemporary social grouping, drawing on the work of writers such as Nayak (2006) and Tyler (2008). We have also examined the historical racialisation of white working-class women and Irish communities (‘white negroes’), drawing specifically upon visual imagery and the work of McClintock (1995). This is important in an effort to shift what are still commonly held perceptions that the study of race and ethnicity means the study of minority ethnic groups. This is in itself a ‘sensitive’ task, as the gendered and racialised constructions of ‘chavs’ within popular discourses are highly stigmatising and emotionally charged (Tyler, 2008).      

Responding to the ‘white backlash’

We have come to anticipate a level of resentment and anger by some students when engaging with issues of race. As previously mentioned, this anger and guilt may be reflected in students feeling that they are being blamed for contemporary racism or histories of slavery and colonialism. Therefore, in such instances, we utilise approaches that include the analysis of case studies which provide alternative perspectives and counter-narratives (see also Spring, 2006). For instance, we may discuss examples whereby white police officers have successfully engaged with black and minority ethnic groups. This helps to counter the position that all white people are inherently racist. Recent research on representations and public opinions on poverty has highlighted the advantages of using real-life case studies and personal experiences to shift public opinions around the persistence of poverty (Hanley, 2009). Within this, it is argued that the media and new technologies play an important role (McKendrick et al, 2008; Seymour, 2009).

We also encourage a reflection on the ‘everyday’ nature of race, racialisation and racism by utilising ourselves and our social biographies, real-life narratives and case studies drawn from texts. For example, we have incorporated fiction such as Andrea Levy’s (2004) Small Island to explore post-war migration, and poetry such as Jackie Kay’s (1991) ‘So you think I'm a mule?’ to explore issues of racialisation and identity. We also utilise film and musical forms which are rooted in the ‘everyday’: for example, Shane Meadows’ (2006) film This is England to consider racism and social change, and musical artists such as Punjabi MC and Hard Kaur to explore issues of cultural hybridity, gender and Britishness. At times, we also incorporate an analysis of popular television shows into our teaching practice. For example, we have used the example of Saira Khan, a former contestant on The Apprentice, to facilitate a deconstruction of stereotypical constructions of Muslim/Asian femininities. Alongside this, we have used case studies based on academic research, such as the Joseph Rowntree Foundation’s Living in Bradford documentaries (2008), which help to deconstruct and situate contemporary Muslim male and female identities. This rather eclectic approach to teaching can help to diffuse the sensitivities inherent within our subject matter, while the focus on race and race-making in ‘everyday’ spaces helps to facilitate a deeper understanding of and engagement with the theories and concepts of race and ethnicity.

Conclusion

This paper has been a reflection on some of our experiences around teaching race and ethnicity. Over the past decade, as lecturers in various HE settings, we have become increasingly conscious of the ‘sensitive’ nature of the subject we teach. We are aware of the existing literature on this subject, and we used aspects of this literature in developing this paper. However, unlike Skinner (2006), who asserts that this area has been ‘done to death’, we feel the continually changing social world, HE context and, in particular, the development of ideas around emotion and emotionality can be further explored. We have only just begun this exploration in what we present here.

We have outlined our theoretical location, as this informs not only this paper but also our teaching practice. We view race as social constructed, yet with continued significance and meaning. As such, race is a key marker of stratification and identity, and race practices (ways of making race and racial difference) operate in complex ways within ordinary and ‘everyday’ spaces. A focus on such ‘everyday’ sites of interaction is useful in helping to challenge notions of race as being about the study of ‘others’, but also enables engagement and a productive space for teaching and learning.

We have also sought to reflect on our teaching experience over the past decade, particularly in relation to the positioning of race and ethnicity as a ‘sensitive’ subject. We have considered some of the ways in which teaching race and ethnicity is ‘sensitive’ and emotive, and we have highlighted the complex ways in which our racial and ethnic positionings and our social biographies are important here. While we would challenge any simplistic notion of authenticity, we point to the value of utilising ourselves as a teaching tool, whether we are part of a minority or majority ethnic grouping. The concept of ‘engaged pedagogy’ (Housee, 2006: 38) informs our practice here, and while this is enriching and productive, it is often emotional and sometimes painful, particularly in contexts where our identifications and social biographies are challenged or devalued. At times, this has reflected a revival of racist discourses alongside white backlash narratives (Hewitt, 2005). Yet, by placing ourselves at the centre of what we teach, we too become the target of such responses. Such encounters can be conflictual as well as emotional.

Given the ‘sensitive’ nature of the subject we teach, we have therefore sought to develop particular approaches to enable effective teaching and learning. We have found that a focus on ‘everyday’ and ordinary spaces of race-making is useful and we take an eclectic approach to our teaching. In doing so, we utilise not only ourselves but also examples of ‘everyday’ racialised practices drawn from diverse sources including film, music, photography and literature. This has helped us to move forward with teaching the ‘sensitive’ subject of race, while facilitating a more dynamic space for teaching and learning.

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Shirin Housee
University of Wolverhampton, School of Law,Social Sciences and Communications Millennium City Building, Wulfruna Street
Wolverhampton WV1 1LY

Tel 01902 323453
Email s.housee@wlv.ac.uk

Biography

Shirin Housee is a senior lecturer in sociology and has been teaching sociology at the University of Wolverhampton for over 20 years. Her primary research and teaching specialism is in race and gender, with a specific research interest in critical race and feminist theory and anti-racist teaching strategies.

Acknowledgment: I would like to thank Joyce Canaan and Penny Welch for their tireless reading and rereading of the draft versions of this article. Although the final arguments here are mine, their advice has greatly clarified my arguments. I would also like to thank C-SAP Birmingham office staff, particularly Helen Howard, Darren Marsh, Francis Worrall and Anna for providing intellectual space and support away from home.

Abstract

This article reflects on a seminar discussion I had with students, where the exchanges that took place highlighted the anti-Muslim racism that permeated attitudes within the class. Muslim students drew on their lived experiences as they challenged the anti-Muslim racism that emerged from the class session. The underlying aim here is to examine ways in which classroom interactions, dialogues and exchanges can inform anti-racist thinking. Anti-racist education, I argue, must seek to critique the structures, policies and curriculum that reinforce racial inequalities, but it must also make use of social experiences that can inform this critique. This article argues that, despite the difficulty in teaching sensitive issues such as anti-Muslim racism/discrimination, students’ comments can become the material for anti-racism insights. The significance of ethnicity and identity in education is crucial to this endeavour. Student voice, counter-narratives and perspectives should be encouraged in this challenge against racism. I conclude that such interjections can become the critique that corrects the often unconscious racism seen in class discussions. The discussion explores the connections between student experiences and the wider social and political issues and ideologies that create and reinforce racism.

Key words: anti-racist education, critical pedagogy, student dialogue, student-centred teaching

Introduction

This article critically explores student dialogues and counter-dialogues that emerge from class discussions. Student engagement in class is crucial to teaching of sensitive issues of racism. I suggest here that classroom exchanges between students and between students and lecturers can help provoke students’ critical thought and self-reflection. This paper argues that students’ contributions in class should be encouraged and used as anti-racist insights. Student experiences should be seen as one of the tools with which to explore the race debate as it arises in our classes. To use the student voice as material for anti-racism, however, involves more than simply recording and recounting stories and counter-stories in the classroom. It is about redirecting those counter-narratives so that wider political messages can be learnt.

This paper has three sections. In the first I explore interactive and student-centred learning methods. I argue that the classroom should be seen as a place where learning is active, where students and teachers learn through collaborative teaching and learning and where the student voice is as important as the official knowledge of textbooks. In the second section, I discuss the role of anti-racist education and the importance of critical race pedagogy to teaching and learning methods. Here the relevance of student experiences and identities articulated in the university context are explored. In the third section I discuss the critical incident, a classroom seminar on Muslim education issues, drawing on Figueroa’s ‘situational and educational matrix’. I conclude by bringing anti-racist educational theory and practice together in the student experience.

As a teacher, I try to facilitate a reflective, critical and evaluative method of teaching and learning through student seminars and group work. I believe that teaching and learning should observe engaged pedagogy – that is, collaborative and interactive teaching and learning that draws on student and staff experiences and invites worldviews that go beyond the textbooks. I would argue that the understanding that comes from lived experience is equal to textual knowledge. It is through cross-fertilisation between the two that the sociological imagination is developed:

The sociological imagination enables us to grasp history and biography and the relations between the two within society. That is its promise. (C Wright Mills, 1959: 6)

As Wright Mills argued, the critical nature of thinking sociologically has the ability to connect ‘the personal trouble of milieu’ to the historical forces and social processes of the societies and people that produced this milieu. This sociological imagination is presented as the fruit of years of rigorous nurturing and disciplined pruning by academics. I argue here that if we accept this pruning the classroom becomes a ‘field where we all labor’ (hooks, 1994).

A classroom where we all labour

My efforts at engaged pedagogy, where communication flows around the group through the teacher acting as facilitator, aim to create a collaborative and interactive teaching and learning space. This method can do two important things. It can encourage more wide-ranging sociological imaginations and can validate critical elements in ‘common sense’ thinking (Bauman, 1992). This is because student-centred teaching methods have the potential to reshuffle the power between and within student groupings and lecturers/teachers. This approach also opens up the room to comments, stories and worldviews that can develop analysis in ways that go beyond textbooks. Engaged dialogue, albeit from common sense ‘knowing’, can be used to inform the formal teaching and learning exchanges in class and allow for a reflective and critical stance on broader social realities.

Teaching and learning are never neutral or unbiased (hooks, 1994; Friere, 1972); as teachers and students we bring to the class our lived experiences that reflect on the politics of our time. However, awareness of so many different views of the world sometimes compounds students’ inability to get to grips beyond the emotional level. This paper argues that teaching moments, where students and lecturers engage in critical exchanges on social and political realities, can help to clarify and unpack the racism that emerges from class debates.

My aim as a ‘teacher/facilitator’ (Friere, 1972) is to make my classroom reflect the world in which my students and I live. They should be interactive and collaborative arenas where teaching and learning methods are interchangeable places in which we all create knowledge. As social scientists, we need to hear the stories of the people we teach, study and theorise, so that we can all learn from this shared knowledge. Issues around race and racism are one area where everyday, non-academic narratives may run counter to our academically correct ‘knowledge’.

Minority ethnic students (sometimes) speak with authority and confidence on sensitive race issues. These students assertively suggest that ‘they who feel it know it’. White students may respond to such comments with their own counter-narratives drawn from their life experiences that may need de-constructing. I have developed a method (see final section of this paper) that allows people to be heard and to be critical of such ‘commonsensical’ contributions in class. It draws on my own experiences and insights, gathered from critical race pedagogy and anti-racist perspectives, which demand that all knowledge, not only ‘official knowledge’ but common sense knowledge, be taught critically (Amsler and Canaan, 2008).

Methodological issues …This is how I do it

My work uses a critical approach that embraces student’s own experience. This critical approach to teaching, says Burawoy:

assumes that students do come armed with their own experience, which critical teaching acknowledges through a dialogue with students. Here the educator is also educated, and the student also becomes the teacher (2008: 9).

My teaching methods try to create this practice by encouraging student-led seminars and group work. I make space for more reflective and evaluative teaching and learning experiences by having students work with each other in small groups prior to sharing their ideas with the whole class. The aim is to construct the classroom as a space of knowledge exchange and creation.

To share this method with readers, I focus on a critical classroom moment (see below). The following comments are drawn from my field/diary notes of a specific moment in a class dialogue in which classroom exchanges provoked critical thought and self-reflection in a group. Part of this teaching method is to provoke syntheses between students’ personal experiences of racism and wider sociopolitical frameworks (Figueroa, 1999). This critical uncovering of the policies, ideologies and processes that underpin and maintain ‘common sense’ is a key part of the sociological imagination. The first task during class discussions on sensitive issues such as racism is to open out the debate to students. However, my experience is that many students remain silent on sensitive issues. Some, both minority ethnic and majority white, avoid speaking about racism at all or do so very uneasily. Some are too angry, some too scared and others simply anxious (Housee, 2006). Others will say their piece via emotional outbursts; although these can be legitimate, they require sensitive navigation in an educational direction.

Cultivating a learning environment using small group workshops and discussion groups, I try to create spaces within the class where all students feel comfortable discussing these potentially explosive issues. Student-centred teaching methodology is vital to this critical thinking because it offers spaces where students are invited to make connections between their experiential thinking and the bigger picture of societal racism, sexism and discrimination. One way to use the experiences of students in class teaching is to focus on the kinds of issues that they live with every day. In the case of minority ethnic students, this means bringing the sensitive discussions of race, racism and discrimination, usually left unspoken in the classroom, to the class. Active engagement can allow voices not often heard. With particular reference to this paper, in the current climate of Islamaphobic racism, Asian women generally and Muslim women (in particular) have been theorised as oppressed and victimised. It is therefore important that these female Muslim voices are heard and empowered (Zine, 2006; Haw, 2009).

Maintaining safe spaces and nurturing voices and stories in the classroom is the responsibility of everyone, but most especially the teacher. In the first instance, safety and nurturing reside in the ability of the teacher to provide structure for the debate and to facilitate non-judgmental storytelling in the classroom. Such engaged dialogue can offer powerful tools for bringing out the ‘racisms’, and thereby connecting the stories of the participants with those of commentators, academics, communities and social movements. It is by engaging in this dual process of ‘talking race’ and critiquing this talk with students that anti-racism can be accomplished. Figueroa’s (1999) concepts of ‘situational’ and ‘educational’ tasks are useful here. For Figueroa, a situational task is when teachers respond to the free flow of comments and discussions as they arise in class. A situationaltask requires the teacher to sensitively negotiate and redirect the discussion to produce an educational task. The role of the teacher/facilitator is to connect the classroom discussions with the wider sociopolitical issues relevant to academic debates. For Figueroa:

… ‘situational’ and ‘educational’ tasks [together lead to] correcting faults, making good deficiencies, combating errors … or it may be one of promoting positive interaction. (Figueroa, 1999: 287)

Figueroa’s argument, framed within an anti-racist critique of education, suggests that there are three major features of society that are central to the anti-racist education debate: diversity, inequality and racism. The work of a progressive educationalist, he suggests, is to challenge these concerns through three relevant sets of fundamental social and educational values: pluralism, which is about acceptance and valuing of difference; diversity, so that equity, justice and human rights can be achieved for all; and anti-racism, which invites open-mindedness, inclusiveness and critical thinking. Education, he suggests, must address all of these aspects by:

deconstructing and reconstructing of racist and ethnicist frames of reference, perceptions, stereotypes, prejudice, and patterns of relations and actions … It must likewise focus on institutional and structural racism and the conditions that support as well as those that might help to overcome such racism (Figueroa, 1999: 286).

This paper utilises these values of pluralism, diversity and anti-racism as a way of promoting anti-racist teaching strategies. I have also found critical race pedagogy and theory, which centres on black and minority ethnic cultural identities in the analysis of such issues, useful in analysing continued discrimination in education. Anti-racist education must examine the macro-level policies, strategies, programmes and related practice across the entire educational endeavour. But it must also focus on the micro-experiences and views of interpersonal behaviour, classroom interaction and participation.

As a teacher committed to critical race pedagogy and theory (Lynn, 2004) and informed by critical race and feminist theories (Ladson-Billings and Tate, 1995; Dixson and Rousseau, 2006; Wing, 2003), I strive to create learning strategies that offer students a safe space to voice their views and share their experiences. This is particularly important because I teach sociology classes on gender and race issues. In these classes students will often draw on their own experiences of racism, sexism and other discriminations.

A critical race theory and pedagogy (Dixson and Rousseau, 2006, Lynn, 2004; Gillborn, 2006) that welcomes the experiences of racialised minorities is paramount here. Lynn, for example, argues that critical race pedagogy gives a clearer picture of black educational issues because it provides ‘an analysis of racial, ethnic and gender subordination in education that relies mostly upon the perceptions, experiences and counter-hegemonic practices of educators of color’ (Lynn, 2004: 154). This is where the student voice and the use of black and minority ethnic experience become imperative. Interactive participation and the use of marginal voices, argue critical race theorists, are necessary if we want to encourage democratic teaching spaces where black experience is welcomed. And, as Delgado suggests, the presence of marginal voices serves the purpose of interrogating and disrupting the dominant voice: ‘the exchange of stories from the teller to listener can help overcome ethnocentrism and the dysconscious conviction of viewing the world in one way’ (Delgado, 1995: 57). Black and minority ethnic experience in the class talk, then, can offer the critical counter-narratives that develop other ways of knowing.

In the final section, I explore students’ comments and dialogue during a seminar session on schooling issues and Islam. The point here is that such exchanges have the potential to disrupt and deconstruct dominant voices and views and also to draw connections with wider sociopolitical issues of racism. My aim is to make use of the student voice as a vehicle to unpack racism in society. With reference to the topic of this paper, I suggest that the role of the teacher/facilitator is to widen the discussion and to redirect the debates so they go beyond personal experience to make wider sociopolitical connections.

To be or not to be: bringing experience to the class discussion

Before I turn to the critical moment of the seminar exchange, I want to discuss some of the pertinent issues surrounding the dynamics of staff and student identities in the classroom and explore the relevance of identities to teaching and learning. Research for decades has shown, across the social sciences, that students and teachers alike bring their identities and experiences with them into the class (Anderson and Williams, 2001; Law et al, 2004; Neito, 1999). A classroom that is made up of students from diverse cultural, religious and racialised backgrounds will throw up interesting identity issues regarding lecturer to student and student to student exchanges. Cultural, religious and gendered identities are significant in the learning experience and are important in the university context. As Ropers-Huilman says:

Students and teachers construct classrooms in which they work, learn and teach with and for each other … identity constructions can both foster and stifle educational efforts (1997: 342).

These multiple identities ‘are not left at the door when lectures define and take on professional roles in classroom’ (Ropers-Huilman, 1997: 327). Rather, they inform teaching and learning discourse and practice in multiple and intricate ways. Our identities are constructed not only by ourselves, but by others who bring to the classroom socially constructed expectations and assumptions. It is here that my identity as a British Muslim woman is relevant to the teaching context. Having been socialised and educated in a multicultural British school, I have experiences that I can access and draw upon. Shared gendered, cultural, racialised and indeed religious identities between tutor and student are significant to the race talk in class (Housee, 2001). Expectations and assumptions in relation to identities have an impact on the way we teach and the issues raised in the classroom. Black and minority ethnic students, and in particular Asian female students, are comfortable with me because of my background. They assume I have cultural and religious affinity with them. These students have often shared their personal experiences on, say, hijaab wearing and have spoken of their unease and indeed, alienation in certain teaching spaces and during certain discussions.

I am mindful that Asian women have been portrayed as passive, timid and vulnerable, as the victims of cultural and religious practices that oppress them. The assumption is that they are constrained by cultural requirements – be it forced hijaab wearing or forced arranged marriages. In recent times, Muslim identities have been racialised through ‘war on terror’(ists) and the 9/11 and 7/7 terror attack discourses. The media images and connected stories contribute to contradictory images of Muslim peoples. On the one hand, Asians are seen as traditionally religious (hijaab wearing), passive citizens; on the other, they are seen to pose a (terrorist) threat on civil society. An analysis of student identities in the university context has to consider the wider social and global context that impacts on black and minority ethnic students, and specifically on Muslim students’ responses in class discussion. The following section of the paper explores one such moment when Asian female students’ counter-narratives questioned the anti-Muslim representations from class.Students speak out: counter-narratives against Islamophobia

In this part of the paper, I refer to a discussion about faith schooling during my ‘Global education issues’ module. This third-level undergraduate module explores gendered and racialised inequalities in education, with a particular focus on the demand for separate gendered and faith schools (Tinker, 2009). In the class of 2007, there were nine students (out of 48) of Muslim background. Islamophobia – anti-Muslim racism – was real for many of these students. In speaking about the veil, which covers the entire head, face and body, one had to be sensitive to racism within society and to the current debate surrounding issues such as the veil and Muslim faith schooling. In a climate of Islamophobia, this can be very tricky. I did not want to feed the Islamophobia that may have been in some of our students’ minds and I certainly did not want to alienate the Muslim students who needed to be reassured that it was safe (in class at least) to be Muslim.

Religious dress has been the subject of great controversy in the west. France and several towns in Italy have opted to ban the hijaab (headscarf) in schools, while Holland and Belgium are considering banning the veil/burkha, which covers the entire head, face and body (Raissiguier, 2008). The wearing or indeed non-wearing of the veil has much political currency. My ‘Global education issues’ module raises issues surrounding identity, multiculturalism and separate education.
The class had spent two weeks in lectures and seminars on multicultural and anti-racist education and had explored debates raised in an article by Parker-Jenkins (2002) about separate faith schools and Muslim rights. While the debate about the veil and the racism surrounding it has been with us since 9/11, it was particularly relevant to my module. Students had raised ‘race’-specific comments about their schooling experience. Some of the Muslim students had argued for the need for racially separate schools because of the endemic racism in mainstream schools, commenting on the proven underachievement of minority children and the lack of respect for difference. Others (Muslim and non-Muslim students) argued for the importance of integration. Schools, they argued, should be part of the project of multicultural education, and suggested that children should be schooled together in preparation for the diversity they would face in wider society. These various voices and issues formed the background to the seminar discussion which followed on Muslim rights, identity and education.
The student narratives below are drawn from my reflective classroom diary notes on the seminar discussion on separate schooling for Muslim children. Using the article below, I invited students to consider whether religious dress such as the headscarf (hijaab) or the full veil impedes the student/pupil learning experience.

The article from The Sun (3 March 2007: 20) was taken to the class and students were asked to think about the issues raised.

The headline refers to a High Court ruling giving schools the right to ban Muslim girls from wearing the full-face veil in lessons. The article speaks of the two main issues raised by the then (2007) education secretary Alan Johnson:
It’s [the veil] a problem for security and it’s also a problem for learning because the teacher can’t see whether or not a child is understanding what’s being taught.
The article continued by making its own comments:

• The veil was a security risk, as teachers could not instantly recognise visitors.
• It could lead to peer pressure on other Muslim girls to wear the veil.
• It made learning difficult by hiding the pupil’s expression from teachers.
• It was at odds with the school’s ethos of equality.

Critical incident – classroom session

The article was handed out to students and used to kick-start the discussion. I purposely used provocative material to stimulate debate. Like many teachers, I shifted between thinking about the issue of hijaab wearing and freedom of dress and fearing the consequences that such debates could raise – such as Islamaphobic, anti-Muslim racism from the class. My interest was to explore the many voices that emerged. I wanted to use the moment to explore and critically challenge any racism that might emerge from the classroom debate. My argument is that if we want to encourage students to speak about sensitive issues (like veiling in a multiracial classroom such as in this class, where there was a full veil-wearing student and eight other Muslim students in the class, some wearing the hijaab), we take the challenge and speak openly about these issues.

The class was given ten minutes to read the handout from The Sun and then broke up into groups of four or five for small group discussions. I circulated and spoke to the groups. Discussion continued for about 20 minutes. The class was then asked to resume to a plenary for a full discussion.

Before I invited student contributions, I commented on the varied positions on veil wearing. I referred to countries in Europe where veil and hijaab wearing in schools were forbidden, and explained that, in Britain, the wearing of headdress and trousers (for girls) as part of school uniform was permitted. I then moved on to the more specific issue of wearing the veil and asked them to consider the statement from The Sun that the full headdress ‘impedes one’s educational experience’.
The discussion began with an invitation to the whole class to speak. The first student to speak was a white student, who said: ‘I don’t mind what people wear, it’s their business, but …’There was a silence. Then, seconds after the silence, she made the following comment with reference to the school teaching assistant Aisha Azmi (appendix)
I don’t see why, in a primary school where children need to see their teacher’s face, she had to wear the veil.

A Muslim student stepped in, saying:

Well, she does not. She would lift the veil. At primary age, Muslim women are allowed to show their face to young (male) children. She would only wear the veil outside the class and on journeys from home to school.

The white student responded:

Don’t know about that, but didn’t she go for her interview without wearing the veil?

There was embarrassed muttering by some students, who said they were not sure that Azmi did go for her interview without the veil. One student said that Muslims interpret Islam differently, and that Azmi may have become a practising Muslim after she had started her job. Her arguments were that Islam was not homogeneous and people lived Islam differently:

Hey look, there’s us here (referring to a group of Muslim women) right. Some of us do not cover our heads at all, some wear a hijaab, (head scarf) and she (referring to the full veil-wearing student), due to her own interpretation of Islam, has chosen to wear the full veil. I don’t see what business it is to any one how we dress.

This was an important learning moment for this class, obvious as it may have sounded. The majority white and non-Muslim students were exposed to the different Muslim dress codes. Unlike the homogenous view so often found in the popular texts and newspapers, the class was now told by this Muslim student that Islam, as with many religions, was interpreted and practised in many ways.

The second student to speak was a mixed heritage, non-Muslim student who said:

Yeah, but why? I‘m Catholic and the only time I have worn a scarf is when I visited a Catholic church in Europe out of respect; anyway we had to. You’re not in a religious place now, so why do you wear one? (sniggering)

This comment was met with a long drawn-out silence. The majority white students looked uncomfortable, while the minority Muslim students looked incensed. It was not so much what was said, but the dismissal and mockery in her voice that seemed to silence the room.

This was an uncomfortable moment for me. I remember thinking that I must wait for a challenge from the class. But there were no comments from students, so I made the comment below. Generally, I try to avoid having a view at the beginning of a dialogue. I believe that disagreements are best voiced by students. This is not to say we should remain completely silent, or indeed tolerate rudeness and disrespect, but that we should first wait for student interjection. However, if there are none forthcoming, I argue, we step in. Teachers/lecturers, I believe, should encourage an atmosphere of intellectual cooperation and respect, while also enabling an exploration of disagreement and conflict. I said:

Surely this is their freedom of choice. Why should it matter to others if they wear the veil? Freedom of dress, whether wearing a mini-skirt or a hijaab, should be a universal freedom. One should be free to dress as one pleases, so long as we are all free to do so.

This comment seemed to be met with head nods and looks of approval. On reflection, however, I am not sure whether the tutor interjection was premature or indeed welcomed by all. What I do know is that it was a difficult moment; a moment that I felt needed intervention. The aim of my intervention was to make connections between the student contributions and the wider social political issues concerning the hijaab/veil. At that time, it seemed right to intervene. As critical pedagogy would argue, I, as the teacher of the student (Friere, 1972), am also the person with the primary responsibility for the classroom, and I am aware that there are times when an intervention is essential. I like to think that our exchanges with students are on an equal basis, but I also recognise that, ultimately, we are the ones who are expected to ‘hold’ things together.

I interjected when needed. My intention was first to allow students’ counter-narratives to challenge the discussions. Student counter-voices are important in challenging ‘common sense’ views. Students need to be empowered by using their own experiences as valued knowledge to the debate. Common sense racism requires a common sense reaction, and it allows the not so well-formulated ideas to surface. In this case, it was a white and mixed heritage student who spoke; and it was important for the counter-voice from the Muslim women to interrupt these stereotypical views and help deconstruct the racism that emerged. As Moya (2006) argues, ‘mobilising identities involves mining our students’ to see what insights into an issue they might have to offer. I would add here that it is also about what we as teachers can do with that insight and how we can connect their experiences with wider sociopolitical issues.

Student engagement in sensitive issues can be difficult, but I think is necessary if we are to encourage critical student contributions. This can be seen in the following comment from a female Muslim student:

I don’t understand what the fuss is about; the media just hypes it up. [Wearing the veil] is a human right, and as for the health and safety argument, isn’t a tie just as dangerous in class? Pupils have been known to strangle each other with it and they could dangle [the tie] over the fire burner in the science labs.

This class ended with a mixture of approval and discomfort at the above comment. This exchange offered other ways of knowing, and non-Muslim and white students were able to question, clarify and indeed challenge some of the ideas on the veil/hijaab. For the Muslim students, these were important, empowering moments as they offered an opportunity to correct some of the stereotypical views. These were emotionally difficult moments for the students, but, I argue, important in the work of anti-racist education.

Reflecting on this critical moment, I am now able to piece together the learning outcomes of this class exchange. I argue here that the teacher/facilitator should open the class to discussions on sensitive issues and that students should be invited to raise ‘race’/minority religious issues in a respectful manner. Such discussions will be met with controversial input and debate. This should be welcomed if we wish to explore alternative perspectives. I argue therefore that the first step to changed thinking is this process of deconstruction. Once we begin this deconstruction, we begin to build the blocks of alternative ideas. As Moya says, this is the time for growth:

As educators, we want to attend to the various perspectives our students bring into the classroom … we give them an opportunity to change and grow. After all, if we wanted our students, upon leaving the classrooms, to be the same people as they were when they entered it, we would not have accomplished much (Moya, 2006:108).

The challenge for me is to reroute student dialogues so they become critical anti-racist learning moments. In the following, I attempt to retrieve the critical incident and turn it into an anti-racist teaching and learning moment. Here I return to Figueroa’s (1999) concepts of situational and educational tasks to show how this can be done. He suggests that we open up spaces in the class for students to challenge the common sense views as they arise. A situationaltask,argues Figueroa, can be corrected and directed to form a positive experience, which becomes an educational task.

Here I develop Figueroa’s matrix to make sense of some of the above comments from the student narratives.

The matrix above is a useful method for directing student (situational) dialogue from class discussion towards broader societal anti-racist (educational) thinking. The aim here is to elevate the discussions, so that wider sociopolitical connections are made with the situational contributions that emerge from class. In this corrective method of pulling out the personal experience and making connections with the wider sociopolitical issues, my aim is to promote positive growth by use of personal experience and student empathies.

Making use of situational/educational and corrective/positive dimensions, as shown above, has enabled me to turn the situational dialogue moment into one that offers a positive educational critique. Such a teaching strategy, which is inclusive and rests on the student voice, can, I argue here, be the vehicle that promotes a multicultural and anti-racist teaching and learning experience. The matrix above was constructed recently and reflectively as I began writing this paper. Figueroa’s (1999) matrix has helped me to make sense of the class dialogue in a more educational way.

Concluding thoughts

This paper has argued that making use of individual students’ views and experiences from classroom dialogue and exchanges is important in an attempt to create other ways of knowing (knowledge), especially when this use allows marginal voices to be heard. Such discussions, I argue, need to be taken further if they are to have an impact on educational experiences. These voices/stories need to be given importance by pointing to their relevance to anti-racist education. It is not just a matter of exchanging discourse and experiences, although this may be illuminating and interesting, it is about giving value to these exchanges, using the stories to further clarify and critique the social reality that is discussed. Thus, listening to what minority students have to say about their experiences can result in a more critical awareness of anti-racist education. This is not to suggest those students’ views should be adopted uncritically, but to suggest that if students’ views are sought through critical and problem-posing approaches (as shown by Figeuroa’s 1999 matrix), their insights can be crucial to developing meaningful and engaging educational experiences for them and for all other students.

The above discussion of the veil is evident of such discussion. In itself, it is no surprise that I have had exchanges with hijaab-wearing students and non-Muslim students who have brought to class critiques that have interrogated and deconstructed common sense racism in ways that mainstream media have not attempted. However, the depth and breadth of the sociological analyses developed from critical discussions that drew on a range of personal experiences and cultural/religious positions will only make anti-racist educational sense when the connections are drawn out.

This article has argued that students have the capacity to challenge ‘master narratives’, whether they are government-inspired furores or the often ‘disengaged’ curricula of higher education institutions. This, of course, opens out debates to varied views. My job at this juncture was to play the role of referee. But a referee with an anti-racist hat is not neutral; my role was to steer the debate so that anti-racist lessons could be learnt. My aim is to welcome student experiences that challenge racism. Of course, this involves an element of risk. The risk is to allow students to become confident in thinking aloud. This means being aware of views that can disrupt the discussion and being ready to redirect the views that can be offensive to student experiences. This requires very careful navigation where the teacher has to negotiate what is acceptable and unacceptable dialogue. Some views should be discouraged and challenged and others encouraged as they form the counter-narratives to racism. This refereeing is never an easy role, particularly when teaching emotionally sensitive views on race and racism.

This article argues that, despite the difficulty in teaching sensitive issues such as anti-Muslim racism/discrimination, students’ comments can become the material for anti-racism insights. I conclude that anti-racism that draws on student dialogue involves more than simply recording and recounting stories and counter-stories in the classroom; it is about connecting these stories to the wider sociopolitical and cultural systems. Welcoming counter-narratives into the classroom opens the class to other ways of knowing and living racism: through such student interrogation, class discussions can become the challenge to racism that may arise from the classroom dialogue. Such interruptions,I conclude, can lead to critical thinking about sensitive issues of race and racism.

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Appendix

A Muslim classroom assistant suspended by a school for wearing a veil in lessons has lost her claim of religious discrimination at a tribunal. Aishah Azmi, 23, was asked to remove the veil after the Church of England school in Dewsbury said pupils found it hard to understand her. The tribunal dismissed her claims of religious discrimination and harassment on religious grounds. Kirklees Council said the decision was taken after a monitoring period in which the impact of wearing the veil on teaching and learning was studied. It said: ‘In this case the school and local authority had to balance the rights of the children to receive the best quality education possible and Mrs Azmi's desire to express her cultural beliefs by wearing a veil in class.’
Kirkless Council was ordered to pay her £1,100 for victimising her.
Story from BBC News: http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/1/hi/england/bradford/6066726.stm

Notes

1. Throughout this article, the term ‘Asian’ is employed to refer to people who have, or whose parents or grandparents have, migrated from the Indian subcontinent to Britain.

Rebecca Hayes-Smith PhD
Central Michigan University
131 Anspach Hall
Mt Pleasant, MI 48859

Tel (989) 774-7174
Email hayesr2@cmich.edu

Tara N Richards MS
University of South Florida

Email tricha11@gmail.com

Kathryn A Branch PhD
University of Tampa

Email kbranch@ut.edu

Biographies

Rebecca Hayes-Smith is an assistant professor in the Department of Sociology, Anthropology and Social Work at Central Michigan University. Her research interests include violence against women, race, gender and class issues in the criminal justice system, and the media’s influence on society. Her work is featured in the journals, Critical Criminology and Contemporary Justice Review. 

Tara Richards is a doctoral student in the Department of Criminology at the University of South Florida. Her research interests include violence against women, at-risk girls and the intersection of gender, class, race and crime. Currently, Tara is a research assistant in the Department of Mental Health Law and Policy at the Louis de la Parte Florida Mental Health Institute. Her teaching experience is in criminological theory and gender and crime. 

Kathryn A Branch is an assistant professor in the Department of Criminology and Criminal Justice at the University of Tampa. Her current research focuses on the secondary impact of sexual assault on secondary victims such as faculty and friends of survivors. Previous research has focused on the role of social support in women's use of aggression against an intimate partner.  

Acknowledgements: Portions of this research were presented at the 2010 meetings of the Academy of Criminal Justice Sciences in San Diego, CA. The authors would like to thank Erin Thomsen for her invaluable assistance on this project.

Abstract

Sexual assault and intimate partner violence victimisations are a major concern for the college community. College students who experience victimisation at times turn to their female professors as a listening ear. Due to conflicting role expectations, these professors may experience role strain when responding to student disclosures. This paper presents research in which professors were interviewed regarding student disclosures of sexual assault and intimate partner violence and asked about resulting strain. Findings indicate that professors are at times confused as to their exact role in assisting their students and are personally affected by the disclosures. 

Key words: sexual assault, intimate partner violence, victimology, role strain, student disclosures

Introduction

An extensive literature has established that college-aged women are at an increased risk of sexual assault and intimate partner violence (IPV). This literature has focused on identifying the extent of the problem, the consequences, reporting (or non-reporting) of victimisation incidents, strategies for preventing and reducing risk and for effectively responding to victims (see Fisher, Cullen and Turner, 2000; DeKeseredy and Kelly, 1993; Koss, Gidycz and Wisniewski, 1987). As a result, on college campuses throughout the USA there have been significant efforts to educate students about various types of sexual assault and IPV, how they can maximise their safety, and what campus and community resources are available if they, or someone they know, have been victimised.

While the impact on student survivors is of the utmost importance, other individuals that make up the college community may also be affected by students’ victimisation. One sub-population that may also be impacted is professors. Recent research suggests that students are disclosing their victimisation experiences to their professors and that these disclosures are negatively affecting them (Branch, Hayes-Smith and Richards, 2009). They found that professors who had formal training and/or who had received multiple student disclosures reported feeling prepared to respond to a student’s victimisation experience as well as wanting to feel helpful to the student survivor. Conversely, professors who lacked formal training or had little experience with student disclosures reported feeling ill-prepared and also left the disclosure feeling that they might not have handled the situation as well they could have had they been forewarned that these types of disclosures would happen. All professors reported experiencing some negative consequence, whether guilt, sadness or anger, as a result of hearing about the student’s victimisation (Branch, Hayes-Smith and Richards, 2009).

Research suggests that professors teaching courses on sensitive issues like sexual assault and IPV may find that the teaching materials and course content result in emotional responses from students (Durfee and Rosenberg, 2009). Students taking these courses may have a personal connection to the course material and may be more likely to approach their professor about their own victimisation experience.

Students may reach out because they believe their instructor to be an ‘expert’ on the topic, because the issue is no longer taboo (since it was discussed in class), and/or because they perceive that the instructor will not be judgmental.

(Durfee and Rosenberg, 2009: 104)

The above study also found that the majority of professors in their sample who reported a student disclosure of sexual assault and/or IPV were teaching a course that discussed sensitive issues such as family violence, victimology or gender and crime (Branch, Hayes-Smith and Richards, 2009).

The current research aims to fill a perceived gap in the literature by identifying the extent to which student disclosures of sexual assault and intimate partner violence are a source of work-related strain for faculty, specifically female faculty. We focused on females for two principal reasons. First, female professors may be more likely to be primarily teaching courses that discuss sexual assault/intimate partner violence and research suggests that professors on these courses may experience disclosures. Second, female professors may experience a higher level of disclosure given gendered expectations of providing social support.

Role strain and gender role expectations

The term ‘role strain’ is described in academic literature as a dissention in an individual’s social roles. Social structures are made up of various social roles, and each person generally has numerous roles to fill. Role strain occurs when individuals attempt to fulfil multiple, conflicting social roles (Marks, 1977; Goode, 1960; Merton, 1951). Role strain can occur across social roles or within one social role. Role strain across social roles would be strain between two different social roles such as work/family strain. However in this study, we examine how role strain occurs within one prescribed social role, that ofprofessor.

As a part of traditional job expectations, faculty at college level are expected to perform multiple roles within their title of ‘professor’, such as research supervisor, academic adviser, teacher and/or mentor. However, in the interest of students’ wellbeing, professors may be called on by their students to perform duties outside their prescribed professional roles. This may result in role strain. For example, when a student discloses a sexual assault, a faculty member may experience role strainbecauseresponding to a student’s disclosure may be beyond what he or she has envisioned as part of the role of professor. As a further complication, the university may also produce role strain by expecting faculty to handle all situations presented to them regarding students without providing guidance on how to adequately and appropriately respond.

In addition, it is possible that receiving disclosures of sexual assault and intimate partner violence is a unique experience for female faculty members versus male faculty members. Role strain due to student disclosure could be a gendered problem as societal specified gender roles are likely to influence individuals’ expectations of how women versus men should perform in their respective occupations (Bem, 1983; West and Zimmerman, 1987). Every day during interactions we recreate gender role stereotypes by ‘doing gender’ (West and Zimmerman, 1987). In relation to this study, it is reasonable to posit that female professors in general are viewed by students as more open to disclosure because of perceptions of women as support providers. The traditional feminine gender role prescribes that women are responsible for providing support (Bem, 1983). Research has documented that, across the lifespan, women are more likely than men to be both support givers and support receivers. In addition, women are more likely than men to be both informal supports and formal supports (for example, teachers, nurses, social workers) (Shumaker and Hill, 1991).

Research also suggests that women receive and desire more social support than men and are more likely to acknowledge the need for help or assistance, thereby explicitly fostering socially supportive relationships (Gilligan, 1982; Markward, McMillan and Markward, 2003; Ptacek, Smith and Dodge, 1994). This contention has potential effects for both female students and female faculty. First, research suggests that female students are more likely than males to want to reach out for social support and assistance from a support provider (see Day and Livingstone, 2003; Ptacek, Smith and Dodge, 1994). For example, Day and Livingstone (2003) found that when presented with stressful scenarios female students not only perceived scenarios as more stressful than male students, but also indicated they would be more likely to turn to a support provider. Second, female faculty members may differ from male faculty members in their reactions to disclosure (for example, by expressing more concern for students) and in their personal struggle to maintain objectivity. Women are socialised to cope with stress by seeking out social support more than men (Ptacek Smith and Dodge, 1994). It may therefore be possible that, when compared to male faculty, more female faculty foster an open door policy that encourages students to seek them out as support providers. Thus, female faculty may be experiencing more ‘within role strain’ than their male counterparts.The subject of gendered role strain (or role overload) among professional women has been an ongoing concern in the academic literature (see Anderson and Miezitis, 1999; Lease, 1999; Pearson, 2008). Research has demonstrated that individuals experience differences in role expectations based on gender and subsequent role strain across roles between work and home (Hochschild, 1989; Wentling, 1998). For example, in The Second Shift, Hochschild (1989) describes how in dual career families it was the women, not the men, who were still expected to maintain the house and be the primary caretaker. Women, in turn, felt strained as their ‘second shift’ would begin upon arriving home from a full day of work. A recent qualitative study examining the complex nature of role strain among female faculty demonstrated that family and work roles often conflict and that female faculty must constantly negotiate the delicate balance between work and family (Damiano-Texeira, 2006). Indeed, research demonstrates how role strain or role overload for professional women is the strongest correlate of negative psychological wellbeing (Pearson, 2008).Research has also found some gender differences in work and family role strain among academic faculty. Specifically, male faculty cited more career-oriented strain and female faculty referenced higher levels of family-related strain (Elliott, 2008). Elliott (2008) also found that female faculty and staff reported more role strain than male faculty and that spousal support was more effective in reducing role strain for women than men. However, other research findings indicated that newer or female faculty did not report more job-induced strain or stressors than their male counterparts (Lease, 1999). Overall, the focus has been on role strain experienced across social roles not on strain within a single role. Further exploration of the gender dynamic of role strain is necessary because existing research yields mixed and often complicated results.As Wentling (1998) has suggested, companies need to take the needs of both male and female employees seriously in order to maintain competitiveness. Higher education institutions (HEIs) in particular are in an advantageous position to manage role strain because they have the ‘intellectual capital’ necessary to be at the cutting-edge of policies and procedures surrounding the reduction of work strain (Elliott, 2003). That is, university administrations have access to empirical research and can stay abreast of current issues. Arguably, university administrations should serve as examples in attempting to assist professors to establish guidelines for reducing strain in their complex roles as faculty members. A reduction in role strain may also reduce unsatisfactory job performance by faculty, including reduced productivity, increased rates of turnover or even non-attendance (Karasek and Theorell, 1990).

The present study

The purpose of the present study is to fill the perceived gap in the literature by focusing on the strain experienced by female faculty within their single role as a professor. The study used qualitative interviews to open the dialogue about the extent to which female faculty report experiencing strain (without actually asking about strain) in their role as professor when responding to student disclosures of sexual assault and intimate partner violence.Our research is guided by several questions. First, what kind of mental and emotional taxation do female professors and lecturers report experiencing when students disclose sexual assault and intimate partner violence? Second, do female professors and instructors report feeling clear in their role to respond to the student disclosures? Third, what sources of strain do female professors and lecturers report experiencing after a student discloses sexual assault or intimate partner violence?

Methods

Participants
The participants in this study consisted of 26 female professors and lecturers who had received a student disclosure of sexual assault or intimate partner violence. Agreement to participate was obtained during the summer of 2009 in the USA. Most of the participants were from the USA, a few were international. Each participant responded to a solicitation email posted on two professional criminology listservs. Professors and lecturers taught in a variety of departments (for example, Sociology, Women Studies, Criminology and Criminal Justice, Psychology, English) and all identified themselves as Caucasian. The participants ranged from 27 years to 68 years, with a mean age of 44.04 years (SD=12.85). Participants reported teaching for an average of 11.02 years (SD=9.81), with the range from 1 to 37.5 years. Half of the participants (n=13) reported having tenure. In addition, 31 per cent (8) of the participants felt that the last student who had disclosed to them was in crisis.

Procedure justifications
Qualitative content analysis was used in order to gain insight into the unique experiences of female professors and lecturers who had received a disclosure of sexual assault or intimate partner violence from a student. Content analysis requires careful consideration of data to link codes with words or passages within the text in order to explore overarching themes and/or patterns. According to Berg (2004: 228), content analysis can be a useful method for ‘identifying, organising, indexing, and retrieving data’.

Content analysis may encompass the investigation of either manifest content or latent content, or it may examine both. ‘Manifest content refers to those elements that are physically present and countable while latent content refers to an interpretive reading of the symbolism underlying the physically presented data’ (Berg, 2004: 229). As suggested by Berg (2004), a combined analysis of both manifest and latent content of each interview was performed.

Qualitative data were obtained from semi-structured, open-ended telephone interviews. The average interview was 30.3 minutes (SD=13.6) and ranged from 17 to 74 minutes. The interview consisted of 39 questions that sought information about the disclosure and about how the disclosure unfolded, feelings and reactions to the assault disclosure, the experience of assisting the survivor and the impact the disclosure had on the participants. Oral consent was obtained from each interviewee to participate in the study and to have the conversation tape-recorded. The recorder with the audio files was kept in a locked file cabinet and was transcribed within 48 hours, after which the audio files were erased. Transcribed interviews did not contain any identifying information.

Analysis procedures
Content analysis was conducted utilising Atlas.ti V5.0 (Muhr, 2004), a qualitative data-management package. Each transcript was uploaded to an Altas.ti database and then electronically coded by two researchers.

Analysis unfolded over several phases. First, the coders independently read each transcript to explore the latent content and overall tone of the interview. Using Atlas.ti, coders wrote electronic memos for each transcript concerning their first impression of the professors’ responses. Coders established the overall theme(s) of the interview pertaining to sources of role strain. These concepts became a set of key constructs or ‘codes’. After this initial step, both researchers discussed their individual coding in order to determine a unified coding schema that could be followed, resulting in complete inter-rater reliability.

Next, each transcript was reread according to the coding sheet and manifest content (words or phrases in the text) was attached to the correct codes. Frequencies for each code were continuously calculated by Atlas.ti’s coding tool, which keeps a running count of codes. In addition, passages of the interview containing constructs of interest were identified and highlighted within the text using the ‘quotations’ tool. Atlas.ti copies quotations into a separate quotations window so that each passage can be assessed individually as well as simultaneously within the context of other quotations.

Results
Participants described a variety of sources of strain when receiving student disclosures of sexual assault and intimate partner violence. We will focus on the themes that were most pervasive in the participants’ responses because each interview included elements of strain. The two major sources of strain included: 1) the professor’s degree of training and 2) feelings of isolation from being the sole receiver of disclosures in a department. There were three major effects of strain on the professor: 1) feeling emotionally burdened by the student’s story, 2) negotiating one’s role as a professor, and 3) effects on teaching and grading.

Sources of strain
A significant source of strain for professors who received student disclosures was their lack of formal training and/or experience as a counsellor or advocate. Respondents (42%) reported that they lacked a clear definition of student’s expectations during the disclosure or did not feel qualified or comfortable negotiating a student disclosure. One professor said:

I’m not trained. I can talk to a student but I’m not a psychiatrist or a psychologist and I’m not trained in that and I don’t feel comfortable … I mean other students who have been in difficult situations where they needed legal help there I can refer them much more easily but here … But hey listen. Here she needed to have a psychiatrist or psychologist to sit down and walk it through with her.Another revealed:

I really worried about that [harming the student] during the situation because it was like I’m not a trained psychologist. I’m not a crisis intervention person. I’ve had a couple of classes where we’ve talked about you know violence against women … okay so I know the academic side of things.However, those professors who had training as an advocate or clinician also reported feeling strain because they had to initiate boundaries as a professor that they did not as a counsellor or advocate. Professors (23%) reported that their clinical or advocate role was clearly laid out and defined through formal training but that they did not know what their role was as a professor. One professor explained:

I’m also a trained clinician and, you know, I guess, I kind of went into that mode, um, you do what you can to get the person back on track for a normative life and so that’s … I guess I felt like I had … I was glad that I was there, that she felt like she could come to me but, um, I also wanted to make sure that she didn’t think that I could solve her problems and that I was very focused on helping her find, you know, her voice and resources and sort this out.

Another professor described the challenge: ‘Since I’m a therapist now in addition to a professor you know trying to keep those two positions separate.’

In addition, 42 per cent of participants reported a lack of training from the department or administration associated with their strain when dealing with student disclosures. One participant described the need for ‘training, training, training. I wish my department had better prepared me to take over the victimology course. It sounds naïve but no one told me that students would be coming to me for advice or as an expert.’ Another explained:

Yeah, actually I’ve often felt that I need some training, uh, that this has become such a regular part of my job and, you know, I talk to my colleagues about it … I really know what how to do and I kind of feel like, you know, there should be training for professors and I should probably have a better sense going into this about what I should be doing for these students.

Due to the lack of departmental training and discussion regarding student disclosures, 23 per cent of the participants reported that they felt isolated and like the token person in their department who dealt with these issues. One participant explained: ‘I wish that I had spoken with someone but to be honest I didn’t know who to talk to about it. My department does not have many people on it that would sympathise with students.’ The current theme directly impacts how strain has influenced professors by affecting how they feel and how they act as a teacher after receiving a student disclosure.

Effects on professors
Many participants (38%) reported feeling strain because of being emotionally burdened by student’s disclosures. One explained:

You just say I hope everything’s okay and you get the help you need and let me know but it’s just not anything like standing face to face with a kid or you know … like I’ll never forget the moment I offered her a hug before I went back to my class and she just sobbed and like you know that … that’s kind of permanently in the brain now.

Another reported:

I mean there was a period … there was a semester when I was having nightmares because you know I was carrying their stories home with me. It was this real emotional burden for me at times.

Another revealed:

After she left I felt really angry … angry that this keeps happening to college women. I found myself walking around campus and being angry and wondering if one of the young men that I taught had committed this assault … it is hard for me to not think about their stories when I go home at night.

Another theme was that professors (19%) reported feeling strain negotiating their role as professor after a student disclosure. Professors still have to see students after they disclose victimisation and sometimes may even have to interact with the perpetrator. One professor said:

It was … no one told me that my role was different but it needed to be different because I need … it’s hard. I haven’t explicated this before, um … the students are coming to you for help and I connect them with resources, but in a way I need to have more distance I feel like then when I’m a domestic violence advocate because I have to have a continuing relationship with them in the classroom.

Professors also reported feeling concerned about the general classroom environment being safe and hospitable for both survivors and other students. Respondents (31%) reported feeling strain about how to teach sensitive topics after receiving a disclosure. Professors reported that, although they approached sensitive topics carefully, it was difficult to retain an open classroom environment without fearing for survivors’ wellbeing. One professor revealed this about teaching sensitive topics after receiving a disclosure:

And since then, I mean, I’ve thought about her, um, pretty regularly so I think that … um … that this is something that … teaching victimology is … it’s so complex because it brings up a lot of these issues for students that I talk about it in terms of the textbook but … but these students … you know, it really does affect a lot of people’s lives …

Facilitating insensitive students in classes was also a significant source of stress for participants. Professors (15%) reported worrying about how to handle students who made insensitive or hostile comments in class over the course of a semester. One stated:

I often wonder about … in teaching the class. The class on domestic violence, I worry about students that have survivor experience as being stressed or traumatised or whatever by class because you always have a number of insensitive students in the class and there was one particular one last term that was very vocal.

Another 15 per cent of participants reported feeling strain as a result of students disclosing during a class lecture or class discussion. In situations where a student disclosed in class, professors felt strain in simultaneously facilitating the student survivor as well as the rest of the class. One professor revealed:

Sometimes they just raise their hand and they say things that they shouldn’t say in class … You know, you don’t want to cut them off and make them feel, you know, diminished by their disclosure, especially if you think … You don’t immediately want to make them feel like an idiot for saying it but, boy, you have to protect the other students in the class from hearing some of these things and feeling like they have to respond.

Professors (19%) also described feeling strain in negotiating the difficult position of grading assignments from students who had disclosed. Often, students used writing assignments as a vehicle to disclose or continue to work through a victimisation experience. Professors reported feeling strain because, while they were responsible for grading the academic quality of assignments, they did not want to shut a survivor down. One participant reflected:

Here I’m grading her on her … on her lack of documentation and MLA form when here’s someone who’s in pain and needs help and … of course she was saying what had happened to her and what she did and so her source was herself.

Another professor questioned: ‘You know, can you imagine being a rape victim and then being graded … and get an F or a D …?’ Another revealed: ‘It was kind of difficult marking her down, um, given that I knew, kind of, what it had kind of took to write the assignment, yeah … um … so yeah, it was a little bit difficult to negotiate.’

Discussion

It is clear from this research that even though faculty are experiencing complex and different forms of strain the issue of strain is ever-present among all who receive disclosures of sexual assault and intimate partner violence. Some may question whether it is even appropriate for a professor to engage with a student in the disclosure process. Many faculty members may say it is not part of their job. However, Campbell (2002) emphasises in her book, Emotionally Involved, the importance of balancing both thinking and feeling in one’s research and the potential symbiosis that can develop between the emotional and cognitive. While Campbell (2002) suggests that researching rape affects how researchers view the world and their worldview impacts participants, we posit that teaching and researching sensitive topics shapes professors’ views and in turn influences how their students frame sensitive issues.

Research on sexual assault and intimate partner violence shows the importance of family/friend support systems for survivors of sexual violence (Ahrens, 2006). Whether it is a professors’ job to assist students is not the question because disclosures are happening. Students are approaching their female professors for support after a sexual assault or intimate partner victimisation. How a professor reacts could be imperative to the survivor’s recovery, especially if the professor is the first person the student has told about their experience (Durfee and Rosenberg, 2009). For example, if the professor appears to disbelieve the student, she may blame herself for the assault.

The policy implications here are clear: first, openly discuss the possibility of student disclosures of sensitive topics within the university community (faculty, administration, etc). Simply opening dialogue between faculty, staff and administration could serve to reduce some of the role strain experienced by faculty. Some participants reported feeling isolated from the rest of their department because they believed they were the only faculty member dealing with disclosures. As HEIs are primarily run by males, female faculty members may try to avoid all emotional responses because they could be viewed as too feminine. Without a support system, many professors could be internalising the emotions and strain they experience from hearing disclosures from their students. Research has documented that professors experience strain between work and family roles and that this stress can cause psychological distress and impaired job performance (Elliott, 2003; Pearson, 2008). Research has suggested that institutional norms and rules have a great influence on how faculty and students behave (Goodyear, Crego and Johnston, 1992). Such discussions would not only serve the purpose of sharing experiences of seasoned faculty but also indicate to faculty at large that this is a community-wide problem and they are not alone.

Second, faculty might benefit from training and practice in addressing ethical issues concerning student disclosures. Due to the prevalence of sexual assault/intimate partner violence on college campuses, and the implementation of both reactive and preventative programmes, programmes that assist faculty are a logical next step (see Fisher, Cullen and Turner, 2000; DeKeseredy and Kelly, 1993; Koss, Gidycz and Wisniewski, 1987). HEIs should be taking the lead in proper programming as they are usually more privy to the proper information than the rest of the business world (Elliott, 2003). Indeed, Rupert and Holmes (1997) recommended that greater efforts should be taken to educate and sensitise faculty to ethical issues associated with faculty–student relationships. One such example is the Safe Zone program(http://safezonefoundation.tripod.com/id27.html), designed to teach faculty and staff how to handle LGBT issues. Something similar could be created to train professors how to effectively deal with disclosures of sexual violence. The intent would be to increase faculty awareness, understanding of and sensitivity to this issue, to establish expectations for ethical behaviour, and to increase the likelihood that problematic responses and relationships will be more readily identified and addressed.The effects of disclosures on teaching were partly highlighted in this study, but we did not specifically address how these have changed/influenced professors’ teaching practices or pedagogy. A few lecturers noted that it was difficult to grade papers where a student disclosed. In addition, many professors stated how having students disclose made them change their teaching or their syllabuses in order to be sensitive to potential victims in the class. Future research could address how students disclosing specifically affects (if it does) professors’ teaching.The topic of faculty role strain should be further explored as our findings suggest that it may be more complicated than existing research has revealed. For example, participants consistently indicated that a significant source of strain was the perception that students expected them to be a counsellor; however, students’ actual needs have yet to be disentangled from professors’ perceptions. Future research should examine students’ expectations when disclosing to a professor.

As in all research, this study is not without limitations. One important caveat to our findings is our use of a convenience sample and resulting inclusion of only female faculty. Future research should gather a generalisable sample to investigate how prevalent student disclosures are and if they are indeed gender- and topic-specific: that is, are only female faculty members who teach sensitive topics receiving disclosures or is it a larger, university-wide phenomenon due to the prevalence of violence against women? The greatest strength of the current study is its creation of dialogue about the strain faculty experience as a result of student disclosures of sexual assault and intimate partner violence. This increased awareness can provide a foundation for additional research and the development of programmes and policies that address this population’s specific needs.

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Jane Nolan
Division of Criminology
Department of Social Sciences
Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences
University of Glamorgan
Pontypridd
RCT CF37 1DL

Tel 01443 482750
email jnolan@glam.ac.uk

Sarah Oerton
Division of Social Policy
Department of Social Sciences
Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences
University of Glamorgan
Pontypridd
RCT CF37 1DL

Tel: 01443 482852
email: soerton@glam.ac.uk

Biographies

Jane Nolan is a senior lecturer in criminology and criminal justice, and director of studies (criminology) at the University of Glamorgan. Her areas of teaching expertise and her research interests focus on the intersection(s) between gender, sex, sexualities and social control. 

Sarah Oerton is a reader in sociology and head of division (social policy) at the University of Glamorgan. Her areas of teaching expertise are the sociology of sex and sexuality and the sociology of the body. She consistently attempts to bring the body, sex and sexuality to life in her taught modules.

Abstract

In this paper we examine key issues arising from the inclusion of sexually explicit materials on two final-year undergraduate modules in criminology and sociology. Contextualised through critical self-reflection, we outline and interrogate the strategies employed for sensitively handling the dissemination and discussion of sexually explicit materials. In so doing, we discuss the ethical and legal implications of employing such materials, and highlight some of the problems and paradoxes students face in opening up for critical scrutiny their own opinions, beliefs and embodied experiences of erotic and/or pornographic materials. Finally, we reflect on the extent to which strategic exposure to such materials allows students to develop political and academic critiques that sharpen their understanding of the contested terrain upon which erotica and/or pornography is situated.

Key words: erotica and/or pornography, sex and sexuality, bodies, ethics

Introduction

This paper offers insights into key issues relating to the delivery of two final-year undergraduate modules: ‘Bodies in Context’ and ‘Gender, Sex and Social Control’. Both modules have been devised, taught and assessed by the authors over a number of years. The paper addresses the use of specific source materials, including those that are self-evidently erotic and/or pornographic, to explore and analyse the intersection of textual or graphic depictions of sexualised bodies with academic theories and concepts. It would be naïve to assume that there are no issues arising from the employment of sexually explicit materials on modules dealing specifically with sex, sexuality and the body, and the delivery of such modules is not without problems and paradoxes. That said, the use of sexually explicit material also provides key, and somewhat unique, opportunities to explore and bring to life the contextual reality of theoretical and empirical academic arguments. In drawing upon our experience in situ, this paper identifies some of the opportunities and constraints regarding the handling of sexually explicit material on these modules. It addresses the particular issues that inhere in the strategies we have devised for both the teaching and learning objectives, as well as the assessment elements, on these modules, and subjects these strategies to dialogic, critical self-reflection.

Both final-year modules discussed are year-long, 20-credit modules embedded in different undergraduate awards programmes taught in the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences at the University of Glamorgan, South Wales. ‘Bodies in Context’ is located in the sociology award scheme and regularly attracts between 30 to 50 students per year. Student cohorts tend to be typically young and white, although each year a small number of mature, international, Black and Asian students enroll. The ratio of women to men has remained fairly consistent over the shelf-life of this module at about 10:1. ‘Gender, Sex and Social Control’ is located in the criminology award scheme and usually attracts between 60 to 80 students per year. Again, student cohorts tend to be typically young and white, with small numbers of mature, international, Black and Asian students. However, the ratio of women to men for this module has tended to be about 7:1. Although the modules are located within their own respective fields of sociology and criminology, students from a range of disciplinary backgrounds within the humanities and social sciences are permitted to enroll once they have achieved the necessary pre-requisite(s) at the previous level of the scheme. The modules therefore not only attract students across sociology and criminology, but also from politics and public policy, psychology, education, history, and so on. It should also be noted that the typical intake on humanities and social sciences degree schemes at the University of Glamorgan consists of students who are not high achievers at A level. Indeed, many are Access students and/or are the first in their families to enter higher education.

This paper is not theory-driven, but the discussion that follows is contextualised by means of critical reflection, drawing in particular on one of the author’s (SO) published works in this field, and those of others. These critical reflections will be outlined and returned to at appropriate junctures in the sections that follow, offering wider discussion of the particular issues identified. It is over 12 years since SO co-authored (with her colleague Jane Gardner, formerly lecturer in women’s studies, University of Glamorgan) a chapter entitled ‘Coming in the classroom: explicitly sexualized lesbian and gay representations in the academy’ (Gardner and Oerton, 1997). The chapter explored the ways in which secure as well as dangerous and/or forbidden spaces for the interactive viewing of sexually charged lesbian and gay representations operated in classroom settings with diverse student bodies. It discussed the authors’ selection, handling of and responses to homoerotic and/or pornographic materials, concentrating particularly on those taught sessions in which explicitly sexualised photographs were used to generate discussion of the sociopolitical and discursive constituting of same-sex desires. It was argued that the exploration and analysis of such materials in the social sciences curriculum was designed to be vital and imaginative, stimulating and subversive. The central aim, however, was to interrogate the ‘stiff silences’ that surrounded the use of sexually explicit materials in the classroom. That said, it is clear that much has changed in the decade or so since that chapter was published, not least the knowledge and understanding of sex, sexuality and bodies that students now bring to bear on their degree studies. This is highly likely a consequence of broader changes in the last decade or so, not only with regard to the increased availability of erotic and/or pornographic material (in terms of both the amount and the different forms and types it takes) and the increased accessibility of such material, but also the way in which sexually explicit material has seeped into and permeated mainstream culture. Indeed, much has been written about the increased sexualisation of society, the increasing commodification of sex and sexual desire, and what could amount to a cultural shift labelled variously ‘pornification’, ‘pornographication’, ‘pornication’, ‘porno-chic’, and so on (see, for example, Attwood, 2006, 2009; Levy, 2005; McNair, 2002; Paasonen, Nikunen and Saarenmaa, 2006). Clearly, changes in attitudes (and exposure) to sex, sexualities and material of a sexual nature within the wider social world will transpose into classroom settings insofar as they will be reflected in students’ responses to those issues and relevant to the discussions that ensue.

Outline of teaching and learning strategies employed

This section of the paper outlines the teaching and learning objectives in relation to the use of sexually explicit source materials (whether in the medium of photography, film or literature, or in the form of illustrations, drawings, animation and so forth) in the modules in question, before turning to a discussion of some of the opportunities and constraints that have arisen in the strategies employed for teaching and learning on these modules. One of the teaching and learning objectives for ‘Bodies in Context’ is that students engage in a critical analysis of contemporary debates around art, erotica and pornography, applying a range of theories to explicitly sexual texts or items, selected by SO as module leader. Insofar as there is scope to focus on the application of theory to the specific ‘realities’ of sexually explicit material, the teaching and learning strategies employed on this module render the task of content delivery much less abstract and disembodied than is usually the case. More crucially, the intention is for particular texts or items to act as an anchor or hook to illustrate or counter the various theories, including moral conservatism, liberalism, liberal feminism and radical feminism, which students meet on the module.

Some examples of how sexually explicit materials are chosen for their efficacy in allowing students to interrogate these various theories will suffice here. In terms of exploring ‘other’ pornographies, including those for self-styled ‘sexual outlaws’, teaching delivery makes use of some of Robert Mapplethorpe’s (1992) work, including some of his sadomasochistic, homoerotic photographs, a number of which have been subject to (unsuccessful) attempts at censorship in both the USA and the UK. A number of Mapplethorpe’s photographic plates, including the infamous Jessie McBride (Estate of Robert Mapplethorpe, 1976), are shown to students in both lectures and seminars in order to act as a starting point for discussions of legal and judicial distinctions between ‘aesthetic’ and ‘obscene’ bodies. Consideration is also given to what the implications might be for feminist theories, particularly more radical feminist perspectives, in the case of sexual genres such as that represented by Mapplethorpe’s work. Other examples of homoerotic pornography, such as the lesbian erotic fiction of Pat Califia (1988) and lesbian photography edited by Bright and Posener (1996), are also drawn upon to contextualise other theoretical arguments such as the liberal feminist contention that certain forms of pornography play a distinct role which is not against the interests of all women. In addition, the use of such sexually explicit materials in classroom settings helps point students to what is required for the assessment element of this module, as will become more apparent later in this paper.

While the teaching and learning objectives for ‘Bodies in Context’ clearly necessitate the use of ‘real’ art, pornography and other sexually explicit material, the need to include and use such material within the module ‘Gender, Sex and Social Control’, taught by JN, is less obviously linked to the elements of assessment for this module. However, the module’s wider objectives are to provide students with a historical, sociopolitical and critical understanding of the gendered and sexualised nature of social control. It aims to illustrate the way in which concepts of gender, sex and sexuality have been socially constructed and represented over time, evidenced by forms of media such as literature, film, art and photography. Essentially, the module attempts to untangle the way in which representations of men and women, masculinities and femininities, and sex and sexualities have mediated our understandings of crime, criminality and victimisation in contemporary society. In doing so, the content covers various themes, aside from pornography, which could be construed as being of a sexually sensitive and/or controversial nature, including rape, paedophilia, genital mutilation, human trafficking, sex work, and so on. As such, although there is only one lecture and two seminar sessions (one which specifically employs the use of ‘real’ art, erotica and pornography) devoted to pornography per se, links to sexually explicit material are raised in many other lectures: for example, in lectures discussing the use of sexualised bodies in advertising; sexual and/or sexually violent themes raised in musical lyrics/videos; sexual abuse and child pornography; rape; even depictions of men, women, masculinities and femininities as found in religion and philosophy. The use of ‘real’ sexually explicit material, and the contextual relevance of this material for the module as a whole, is therefore crucial.

In both modules, the inclusion of sexually explicit material is designed to be thought-provoking, challenging and interesting for students. Students on both modules are also encouraged to deal with issues that may be stimulating, provocative, transgressive and/or shocking for them. The personal–political involvement of students is seen as crucial, and it is felt that this is better achieved when students actively engage with the actual subject matter at the heart of the academic discourses and debates they encounter on these modules. One underlying aim is that students make concrete, empirical ‘realities’ come to life by means of systematic engagement with and theoretical analysis of both contemporary and retrospective sexually explicit material. By drawing upon ‘real’ art, erotica and pornography, academic debates, arguments and concepts are grasped and grappled with in a way not possible when relying simply on theoretical discourse. As an index of this, it is clear that concepts such as ‘objectification’ and ‘dehumanisation’ can be somewhat abstract terms until students are presented with specific examples of ‘real’ art, erotica and pornography, which they can then attempt to deconstruct and pick apart their possible subtext(s).

This can be illustrated by how, in ‘Gender, Sex and Social Control’, students are presented with a black and white image of a female model. She wears a stringed crop top and knickers, her hands on her hips, with trickles of sweat running down her body. In discussing the image, students raise issues such as representations of the body in terms of body image and ideals, body posture and pose, techniques of photography, the use of colour versus black and white photography, and the impact that these issues have upon whether an image is art, erotica or porn. In student discussions, it is argued that black and white images invariably make the image more ‘artistic’, and this image is definitely felt to be ‘just’ erotica – something students would have found on their/their brother’s wall as a young teenager. Indeed, students tend to point out the model’s unusually large hands and her impeccable manicure, long before they notice that she has no head. That her face is not depicted, and that the shot is taken from her shoulders to her thighs, is not the immediate reference point for students. In short, the image is of breasts, crotch, hands: parts of a woman, but not a woman. This clearly provides an excellent opportunity to illustrate and discuss the concept of objectification, and, from there, the concept of dehumanisation. Such vivid examples of the meaning of such concepts are perhaps simply not so forthcoming when reliance is placed on theoretical discourse alone.

Similarly, the use of ‘real’ art, erotica and pornography can elucidate much wider arguments and debates, which otherwise might remain intangible. For example, ‘Bodies in Context’ addresses the complex interrelationship between gender, sexuality and race/ethnicity by focusing on the dehumanisation and enslavement of the Hottentot Venus in the early nineteenth century. Such a focus upon early ‘pornographic’ representations of Black African (and Oriental) women acts to illustrate wider critiques of bourgeois and colonial imaginings and perverse longings for the exotic ‘other’ (Alloula, 2000), thereby permitting students to engage in a ‘real’ way with complex theoretical positions around these racialised and sexualised bodies. A further example relates to the ‘porn causes rape’ debate. It may be difficult to grasp the heated arguments in this debate, particularly for students who have not been exposed to certain forms of erotica and/or pornography. On the one hand, students may not be aware of the graphically explicit material available which depicts sexual and physical abuse, torture, rape and so on, and the levels of violence that are present in such material. There may therefore be a tendency to dismiss claims that ‘porn causes rape’ as extreme, unrealistic and/or the rantings of overly zealous radical feminists. On the other hand, students may perceive the majority or all of erotica and/or pornography to be of a sexually violent, degrading and/or misogynistic nature. In this instance, they could take a position in the ‘porn causes rape’ debate based on such an assumption without considering that a great deal of such material might be considered to depict non-violent, non-degrading, consensual and mutually pleasurable sexual behaviour. Thus, by viewing the actual material under discussion and the different range of sexual behaviours and power structures it can depict, the intention is to encourage students to think more critically and in a more informed manner.

In addition, it is important to recognise that using ‘real’ art, erotica and pornography in the classroom is likely to give rise to strong views and emotionally charged reactions, whether these are arousal, stimulation, amusement, discomfort, anger, offence, disgust and/or distress. However, student reactions can often be pivotal in classroom discussions, providing useful opportunities to explore and unravel their emotional responses and how these link to different theoretical positions and perspectives. Sexually explicit material can thus stimulate a reaction that can be channelled, allowing students to identify their own position within a particular argument or debate. Having said this, student reactions to sexually explicit materials can also give rise to difficult issues that require much sensitivity, as discussed in greater detail later. Thus, one must gauge student responses very carefully and decide whether it is appropriate and/or ethical to delve deeper into student’s reactions or whether the direction of the discussion should be gently changed at any given time.

Legal and ethical issues

Clearly, exposing students to ‘real’ representations of sexualised bodies and sexual behaviour involves dealing with legal and ethical issues that must be negotiated and managed. Perhaps of greatest concern when engaging students with sexually explicit material is that students do not break the law when, for example, they access and view ‘live’ pornography in the context of their studies. Blurred boundaries and definitional problems abound when dealing with material of a sexually explicit nature, and distinguishing between that which may be transgressive, deviant and illicit and that which is illegal is not so clear-cut. The precarious legal situation surrounding pornography has been compounded by recent legislation regarding possession of what is termed ‘extreme pornography’. While various Obscene Publications Acts (1857, 1959, 1967) criminalised the publication and distribution of certain material, possession of pornography (other than that involving a child) was not an offence. However, the Criminal Justice and Immigration Act (2008) (part 5, section 63) created a new offence which criminalised possession of ‘an extreme pornographic’ image. An image is deemed to be extreme if it ‘is grossly offensive, disgusting or otherwise of an obscene character’ and:

It portrays, in an explicit and realistic way, any of the following:
(a) an act which threatens a person’s life
(b) an act which results, or is likely to result, in serious injury to a person’s anus, breasts or genitals
(c) an act which involves sexual interference with a human corpse, or
(d) a person performing an act of intercourse or oral sex with an animal (whether dead or alive) and a reasonable person looking at the image would think that any such person or animal was real.

On the surface, it may appear that such legislation is relatively straightforward. However, there are a number of problems that affect the clarity of such legislation. Clearly, terms used in the Act, such as ‘grossly offensive’, ‘disgusting’ and ‘obscene’, are open to subjective interpretation. Furthermore, what is deemed to be ‘life-threatening’ and what constitutes ‘serious injury’ are not defined and are left to the discretion of the magistrate or jury to decide. Nor is it clear who or what constitutes a ‘reasonable person’ (Ministry of Justice, 2008, 2009). Perhaps more important for our purposes is the ambiguity surrounding what actually constitutes ‘possession’ of such material, and whether simply viewing such material and imagery online, without necessarily downloading and/or saving it to an electronic device such as a PC, amounts to ‘possession’ of that material. Essentially the issue here is that, when viewing websites online, the data from those websites, including images and so forth, are automatically copied and stored in the form of ‘temporary internet files’ and ‘cache directories’. Suffice it to say that there has been a great deal of debate, both in the UK and overseas, over whether images stored in the cache constitute ‘possession’ (see, for example, Clough, 2008; Marin, 2008).

This is not just an issue that faces students, but also those delivering modules that employ the use of ‘real’ art, erotica and pornography. In ‘Gender, Sex and Social Control’, one of the issues raised is the relationship between sex, aggression and death, and how these themes are present in sexually explicit material. To illustrate this, a number of websites are referred to, including necrobabes.com, torture.net and breast-torture.net. While it was not felt necessary to actually show any of the films and footage, the sites themselves were accessed. The immediate images and imagery they contained, the titles of the items available and the sheer amount of material available adequately conveyed to students the nature of such material. However, since the introduction of the Criminal Justice and Immigration Act (2008), the legality of even accessing such sites, particularly for student consumption, is now highly questionable and could leave lecturers (and their academic institutions) open to possible prosecution for the possession of ‘extreme pornography’. This is further complicated in terms of the risks and responsibilities of such ‘offending’ by the regulations governing computer use to which all users (staff and students) give their compliance when they log on to the University of Glamorgan’s computing facilities.

Aside from legal and regulatory issues, there are also ethical issues that need to be addressed both at an institutional level and in terms of the ethical responsibilities we have for our students. Any taught module that is provided by an academic institution must identify content that could be construed as being of a sensitive and/or controversial nature and thus ethically problematic. In order to gain ethical approval, taught modules must be mindful of university ethics guidelines. Ethics committees must be satisfied that inclusion of such content is academically justified. As has been argued, the inclusion and employment of sexually explicit material in the classroom can be justified by the fact that it provides a unique opportunity to explore and understand abstract theories and academic arguments ‘in the flesh’. However, the extent to which inclusion of any given individual item of art, erotica or pornography can be justified as being necessary, as opposed to gratuitous (for example, in terms of sexually violent content), is far more difficult. This is a subjective rather than an objective exercise; in other words, it is always a matter of debate and is likely to be contested. As lecturers, however, we have a duty of care to students, which could be considered in many ways as being similar to the ethical principles involved in conducting research, in terms of ‘informed consent’ and ‘avoidance of harm’.

In an attempt to gain ‘informed consent’, and thereby avoiding ‘harming’ them, students are made aware of the nature of the material that they will be exposed to and/or expected to engage with throughout the course of both modules. For example, in ‘Gender, Sex and Social Control’, the module proforma, which provides a synopsis of the module’s content, aims, learning objectives and assessment elements and is available to students to consult prior to making their module choices, contains a cautionary warning to students (see item 1 below). This warning is reiterated to students at the beginning of the module and prior to any specific lectures and seminars which relate to particularly controversial and/or sensitive topics. Similarly, in ‘Bodies in Context’, students are advised before teaching commences that the module might contain material which they may find offensive and they are told that they are under no direct obligation to view or read it. However, in the case of their avoiding some texts, particularly the essential reading by Cornell (2000), Spector (2006) and Williams (2003), choosing not to engage with module materials is undoubtedly problematic. In addition, straddling the borders between the criminal and illicit clearly raises definitional wrangles and debates over what constitutes pornography, erotica and/or art. The paradox here is that issuing cautionary warnings, such as those exampled above, suggests that it is possible to have a clear notion of what constitutes ‘adult pornography’, ‘child pornography’ and ‘abusive’, ‘exploitative’ and/or ‘extreme’ images. But, at the same time, an argument addressed by both modules is that distinguishing between these supposedly distinct ‘categories’ of sexually illegal and illicit material is extremely problematic and subject in part to individual interpretation.

Item 1:�Cautionary note included on module proforma

Please note: it should be clear that some of the issues discussed in this module are of a sensitive and controversial nature. These will be recurrent – in lecture presentations and seminar discussions. Students should consider whether they might find such material offensive and whether they would be comfortable discussing these themes when making module choices.

If you are affected by any of the issues covered by the module then please be aware of the various support systems that the university has that might be of benefit including the Counselling and Advice Service (http://counselling.glam.ac.uk). These are fully outlined in the BSc Criminology Award Handbook, which is available on our Criminology Community Blackboard site.

The final focus in this section is on some of the further ethical issues that arise in relation to student handling of and reactions to sexually explicit materials and the duty of care that we as lecturers have for our students. As Harrison and Miller (2001) have noted, self-revelation can be personally challenging and emotionally fraught for students. They argue that for academic staff to have access to intimate aspects of students’ lives is problematic, and that this can create difficulties for staff who may feel ill-qualified to deal with or offer individual support in the face of what are often emotionally painful reactions to, for example, explicit scenes of sexual violence. HE classroom settings are generally promoted as ‘safe’ spaces rather than dangerous or threatening ones. Sexual pleasures, appetites and tastes, not least those associated with voyeurism and consumption of sexually explicit materials, are not easily negotiated by students and staff in the classroom, since such phenomena, although clearly social, are often embedded in our private fantasy lives rather than our shared public personas. In short, it is risky for students and staff to get visibly distressed and/or ‘turned on’ in the HE classroom. In terms of self-protection then, there is a need for both students and staff to employ some means of emotional distancing in these modules, particularly from what might be deemed very sexually stimulating and/or violent and abusive items(s).

Not surprisingly, it has proved necessary over the years to suggest to students that they emotionally ‘pad up’ before they expose themselves to some of the more violent and abusive sexually explicit material they may come across in their own research and reading around the area, particularly their search for appropriate items upon which to base their written coursework assessments. There are only so many images of young looking women/girls with semen splattered over their faces and so forth that we as staff and students might ordinarily chose to expose ourselves to. Indeed, some students clearly have been angered, sickened and/or disturbed by the easy availability of widespread sexual violence, albeit representational. It is also the case that even some of the recommended module readings elicit strong negative reactions from students in terms of their sexually graphic content. For example, an extract in which Dworkin (1981: 167–174) rescripts Georges Bataille’s erotic-pornographic novel, ‘Story of the Eye’, is required reading for discussion of her radical feminist position on porn masquerading under the guise of the high art aesthetic. Some students have found even this ‘academic’ writing highly unpalatable. Furthermore, some lesbian s/m depictions such as those found in Bright and Posener (1996) and Della Grace (1991) have been greeted with distaste by some students, even those sympathetic to liberal and libertarian theories (see Dunn, 1990). Cautionary warnings and attempts to ensure that students are made aware of the possible offensive and/or upsetting nature of some material may be employed. However, students may not react to this material in the way that they expect to nor, therefore, be prepared for their emotional responses when they do.

This is a particularly acute concern when considering those students who may have had direct personal experience with and be survivors of sexual violence themselves. As indicated in item 1, if students are distressed by any of the issues raised on these modules, the cautionary warnings included in module handbooks provide advice and guidance on various support systems that are in place, including the University’s Counselling and Advice Service (http://couselling.glam.ac.uk). They are also directed to further information on these services in our award handbooks and on Blackboard sites. Indeed, both authors have had experience of students making personal disclosures in classroom settings, written assessments or through personal exchanges during staff–student meetings of particular aspects of their own life experiences that have hitherto remained buried or unaddressed. This is considered, for the most part, to be a very positive reflection of the opportunities afforded by these modules, which have allowed students to ‘speak out’ and open up in very personal ways. As an index, many students speak on module evaluation feedback forms of finding their experience of these modules insightful and even cathartic, but some clearly wrestle with issues of trust and safety, including, for example, occasionally requesting that their (albeit anonymous) written assessments are not read by anyone else, including external examiners. As such, personal disclosures can give rise to difficult and fraught issues of power and control, including how far and in what ways staff and students are responsible for addressing sexual guilt, regret and/or remorse, or for apportioning blame for sexual violence and abuse. Without doubt, we have a duty of care to students, to support those who may have felt that they could cope with whatever reactions these particular modules elicited in them only to discover that they are struggling with uncomfortable, painful and distressing revelations. In all this, the ethics and politics of ‘troubling’ emotions are deeply embedded in these modules.

Outline of assessment elements

The challenges and opportunities discussed thus far are no less implicated in the assessment elements for these modules. As explained earlier, the assessment requirement for ‘Bodies in Context’ involves students selecting one or more items of sexually explicit material and critically applying theories met on the module to those item(s). The pornography project that students submit as an assessed element (50 per cent of total) as part of this module demands, in addition to their academic engagement, a personal–political involvement on students’ part, particularly in terms of their ‘owning’ the source material used. All source material must be clearly appendicised so that it can be drawn upon as a supporting resource for the critical analysis that carries the weight of the assessment. The instructions given to students for this element of assessment are reproduced as item 2 below.

Item 2: ‘Pornography project’ guidelines

This assessment consists of a 3,000 word ‘Pornography project’. The requirement is that you take one or more items of art, erotica or pornography and critically assess the various theoretical perspectives that can be used to throw light upon that particular item(s). By ‘item(s)’ is meant one or more pieces of sexually explicit, embodied representation(s). You may select sexually explicit representations of women’s bodies OR men’s bodies OR lesbian/gay men’s bodies OR children’s bodies* OR virtual-cartoon bodies. As such, you must focus your discussion around a single form of textual representation (for example, either literature, film/video, magazines, CDs, paintings, photography, advertisements, the internet) but in so doing you must critically engage with the wider theoretical and political issues that are raised.  This means that in the case of whatever item(s) you have selected, you will have to frame your ‘Pornography project’ in terms of comparing and contrasting the different theoretical perspectives that have informed the debates surrounding particular item(s). Depending upon the item(s) you have selected, you will be expected to discuss issues of censorship and control, power and violence, the commercialisation, fragmentation and objectification of sexualised bodies and other themes met on the module. You might also need to consider what the differences are between art, erotica and pornography. It may also be necessary to pay some attention to historical changes over the last two centuries. We will discuss the ‘Pornography project’ in seminars and you will be given guidance on how to organise your work in a systematic way.

* In the case of selecting item(s) depicting sexually explicit images of children, please come and discuss this with me first.

With regard to ‘Gender, Sex and Social Control’, the assessment requirements do not revolve solely around the issue of pornography, erotica and other sexually explicit material. As part of the coursework assessment (50 per cent of total), students must choose one of five possible questions to attempt. Only two of the questions specifically relate to ‘pornography’, and even if students answer these two questions, it could be argued that they need not necessarily engage with ‘real’ art, erotica and/or pornography to produce work of an academically excellent nature. However, students will often integrate the debates and issues that surround sexually explicit material into their responses across the full range of questions. The assessment criteria and set questions are outlined in item 3 below.

Item 3:  Coursework Assessment for ‘Gender, Sex and Social Control’

One 3,000 word essay (50%) demonstrating a sound understanding of one of the key themes raised in the module, and a critical awareness of the structural and sociopolitical context within which it is set.�

Please answer one of the following questions:

1. Critically discuss the ways in which women’s sexuality has been socially controlled and the relevance this has for traditional theories of female criminality.

2. Critically evaluate the ways in which representations of men and/or women have affected the way in which we view them as offenders and/or victims.

3.  Pornography causes rape. Discuss.

4. Feminist advocacy of the censorship of porn is: ‘another attempt at controlling women’s sexuality, only worse because this time it comes under the name of so-called female liberation’ (Scally, 1996:74). Discuss.

5.  Drawing upon the example of either a) male rape, or b) rape in the context of war, critically discuss the extent to which the concept of masculinity/masculinities can contribute to explanations of rape.

In meeting the requirements of the assessments for both modules, students draw upon a variety of items. These include ‘high culture’ artistic and literary source materials with sexually explicit themes and sometimes involving homoerotic, adolescent and/or pre-pubescent depictions of naked or semi-clad bodies, contemporary art house/coffee table items, top-shelf, heterosexual ‘soft core’ magazines, sexually explicit advertising, mail order catalogues for sex toys, documentaries on sex, niche-market items and specialist websites. Students select ‘adult content’ items to refer to, including mainstream and/or art house films and DVDs. Some of the more ‘adult content’ items can depict young looking models or scenes from ‘hard core’ pornographic films and DVDs depicting forced and coercive sex, rape, sexual murder and so on. The vast majority of the items sourced by students are easily and freely available, some of them housed in the university library and many of them obtainable via high street shops and, unsurprisingly, the internet. The use of these items is largely judged by the extent to which they enable students to undertake sophisticated theoretical analyses, although we do not underestimate the extent to which such personal–political exposure to these varied and ‘real’ representations of sexual pleasure and sexual violence impact on students. But it is important to be clear that marking criteria for elements of assessment on these modules do not differ greatly from those for other forms of coursework assessment, so that knowledge and understanding, construction of lines of argument, evidence of wider research and the level of critical analysis all determine the eventual mark and feedback given to students. Adopting this relatively standard academic approach to delivery and assessment on these modules is not to downplay some of the problems and paradoxes that are inevitably encountered.Problems and paradoxes

Although students voice varied responses to their employment and enjoyment (or absence of enjoyment) of sexually explicit materials on the two modules, their evaluations of both ‘Bodies in Context’ and ‘Gender, Sex and Social Control’ as a whole are generally enthusiastic and positive. Module evaluation forms and informal verbal feedback highlight their lack of familiarity with teaching, learning and assessment strategies of this kind. Students have also indicated that they welcome the academic, political and personal challenges that confronting sexually explicit material ‘in the flesh’ brings. With regard to the pornography project assessment in ‘Bodies in Context’, the wide choice offered within the assessment instructions and guidelines allows students to select (within limits) whatever items of art, erotica and/or pornography they choose. This means that they can not only explore particular interests but can also demonstrate their ability to delve into, and subject to critical interrogation, their taken-for-granted assumptions about sex, sexuality and the sexualised body and, in terms of ‘Gender, Sex and Social Control’, the links these have to social control, criminal justice, criminality and victimisation. Indeed, the best pieces of work produced for assessments dealing with sexually explicit material have been empirically dense and theoretically rich, with the strongest students engaging in academically-informed analyses of the issues raised and the source materials collected and discussed.

That said, there are difficulties here. Weaker students tend to fall into descriptive and anecdotal modes of enquiry, rather than contextualising and analysing their source materials in a theoretically sophisticated manner. There is also a tendency for some students to take up somewhat unproblematic positions in relation to, for example, choice, consent and coercion. This means that they are unable to undertake nuanced interrogations of the extent to which and ways in which producers and consumers of erotica and/or pornography are implicated in gendered and sexualised power relations that perpetuate abuse. For example, some students seem unable to grasp that those featured in many erotic and/or pornographic representations may be non-consenting and/or vulnerable adults; instead, students tend to fall back on simple readings which rest on liberal notions of freedom, liberty and individual choice. This is despite having been introduced to accounts such as those of Linda Lovelace and other porn models who have repudiated any notion of acting from positions of freedom and choice and before any consideration is given to those who are powerless to control the dissemination of sexually explicit material which was non-consensual at the point it was made. For some students, then, if sexually explicit materials depict sexual pleasure and enjoyment, they are automatically assumed to be consensual. Hence, the opportunities offered by these teaching, learning and assessment strategies for students to connect their own responses to sexually explicit material and locate them within the various theoretical perspectives were lost on some of the weaker students.

A further paradox when utilising ‘real’ art, erotica and pornography in the HE classroom is handling students’ reactions to sexually explicit material, particularly when they find it emotionally charged. Initially, it can often be difficult to engage students in a meaningful and productive manner. Students may feel uneasy and nervous discussing sexually explicit material, and it may be necessary to overcome the ‘stiff silences’ identified and remarked upon by Gardner and Oerton (1997) over 12 years ago. This raises issues of how we might try to best engage with student wariness and unease, and enable them to go beyond the material itself and look at its possible subtext. This can be achieved by a ‘gentle’ introduction. For example, in ‘Bodies in Context’, the first sexual materials that students encounter are taken from the paintings and sketches of Edgar Degas, which, on the surface, appear to be ‘non-threatening’ items that do not contain any obvious violence or degradation (see Adhemar and Cachin, 1974). However, it should be noted that students tend not to publicly admit having any difficulties with ‘aesthetic’ sexual art for fear of looking prudish, conservative and ‘uncool’. This may be even more the case today, given the ‘porn culture’ we are said to be living in highlighted at the outset of the paper.

Indeed, student reactions can often be masked by humour, and there can be benefits and drawbacks to this. A humorous response can elicit a more relaxed atmosphere in the classroom, enabling students to feel more comfortable – both with the material they are viewing and their confidence and ability to discuss this material openly with those present. However, it is important that such a response is quickly channelled back into an academic discussion; otherwise, there is a significant risk of minimising what can be very serious issues surrounding sexually explicit material and sexual exploitation and/or violence. Indeed, the humorous response can be turned in on itself and used to underline disturbing aspects that are initially found funny. For example, pornographic illustrations and anime porn which depict well-known cartoon characters such as Ariel the Mermaid, Sponge-Bob Square Pants, The Fantastic Four, Scooby Doo and Mystery Inc engaging in sexual activity are mostly met with laughter. However, when students are reminded of arguments that pornography can be used to pressurise adult sexual partners to engage in sexual behaviours they are uncomfortable with, the more disturbing elements of pornography involving characters from children’s cartoons, and the way this could be used with children, become quite clear: Snow White does this; Snow White is having fun; Snow White likes this. Interestingly, the recent legislation regarding ‘extreme’ pornography does not cover textual material or animated depictions, only photography/images. Yet such depictions can be far more graphic and much more violent than ‘real’ images, in that, for example, acts can be depicted which are physically impossible. In short, the type of pornographic material that can be produced in textual and particularly in animated form is limited only by the imagination.

Concluding remarks

It is over ten years since ‘Coming in the classroom’ was published (Gardner and Oerton, 1997). In that time, there have been considerable changes in relation to the difficulties identified of teaching students on modules dealing with gendered and sexualised bodies. Perhaps because of the huge growth of readily available, sexually explicit materials and the much greater openness and widespread acknowledgement that ‘sex is everywhere’, students in the first decade of the twenty-first century appear to be much more familiar with and relaxed about expressing both their delight and their difficulties in studying these topics. However, this paper has demonstrated that there are still a number of problems and paradoxes to be taken into account when providing students with the type of teaching, learning and assessment opportunities outlined here. Notwithstanding this, neither staff not students should be deterred from engaging with the challenges afforded by exploration of these issues. For those dealing in the academic field of bodies, sex and sexuality, it is clear that there are no hard and fast rules about how to proceed and, to an extent, it is always a matter of sailing into unchartered waters. Mistakes, omissions and shortcomings will inevitably get made. But, with each passing year, students may become, if not altogether more confident and assured, a little less confused and more enlightened and comfortable with subjecting themselves and their taken-for-granted ideas about sexually explicit materials to academic scrutiny. As such, there cannot be, nor should there be, any avoidance of erotica and/or pornography in HE classroom settings.

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