Abstract
This article explores the possibilities and limitations of online teaching, based on our experience transforming a study abroad program to Argentina into an online class, amidst the COVID-19 pandemic and uprisings for racial justice. In a moment when radical educators and activists are moving online, the article considers the spatial politics involved in teaching about protest and resistance online, and in establishing transnational solidarities between U.S. and Latin American scholars, artists, activists, and students. We introduce the theory and practice of a trasnational feminist pedagogy that incorporates embodied knowledge, fosters transnational collaborations, and promotes liberatory learning practices. Drawing on autoethnography, participant observation, visual and media analysis, student interaction with course materials, and interviews with transnational feminist scholars, we investigate how educators and students adapt their teaching and learning practices to an online environment. Transnational feminist pedagogy is a flexible method that allows for transformative teaching, is attentive to power dynamics in and out of the classroom, and maintains commitments to antiracist, feminist and socialist pedagogy.
Highlights
We found ourselves teaching activism online at a time when change-makers throughout the world were fighting for justice in both physical and digital spaces
With a project that aimed to build connections between the U.S and Latin America, the limits that we found in the transition online is constitutive of the shifts happening in transnational feminist activism, writ large
We suggest that spectral forms of transnational feminism are present in pedagogy, as evidenced in our experiences with Online and In the Streets
Summary
As co-teachers, the content and method of our class was informed by our experiences and identities. Sabrina González (she/ella) is a feminist historian from Buenos Aires, a non-native English speaker, and a first-generation student from a working-class family Her experience as an activist in community centers, student and teachers unions, alternative media, and non-traditional schools for adults shaped her research on the history of education and her approaches to popular and feminist pedagogies. Students completed daily discussion posts and quizzes to ensure their comprehension materials. Week 1 equipped students with “Feminist Foundations.” In this interdisciplinary course, cross-listed in three units (Women’s Studies, Latin American Studies, and History), the material for this week -- which included readings, films, artworks, interviews, and digital explorations -- established a shared language for students from different majors to discuss gender, sexuality, social movements, and racial formations in a Latin American context. We focused on #NiUnaMenos and #AbortoLegalYa, the campaign for the legalization of the abortion in Argentina
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