Teaching Early Modern Race – A Conversation at the Folger Institute
Committed to embracing inclusive approaches and anti-racist pedagogy, the Society for Interdisciplinary French Seventeenth-Century Studies is currently supporting collective workshops on early modern race inaugurated in the 2020 SE17 Conference, as one of the many ongoing initiatives to confront these questions. For some of us who may be less familiar with the flourishing field of research on critical race theory, this ambition may have raised preliminary questions. Isn’t the concept of race anachronistic to the study of the French early modern period? How might we as literary scholars approach these issues in our classroom, given our own professional formation? How does "antiracist pedagogy" challenge us to rethink our assumptions about "who belongs” -- at the front of the class or on our syllabus? In an online conversation recorded in July 2020 and available on Folger’s YouTube channel, Ambereen Dadabhoy (Harvey Mudd College) and Nedda Mehdizadeh (UCLA) openly discussed these very same fears and doubts, and they provided clear and helpful answers based on their research and experiences as college instructors. Their conversation was the first session of a series which resumed on April 22 and will continue on a regular monthly basis.
Scholars Dadabhoy and Mehdizadeh invite us to integrate critical race studies among the conceptual tools and theoretical frameworks that we mobilize when studying our sources, and to pay attention to the issues the approach raises in close reading exercises, instead of maintaining avoidance strategies that only perpetuate racial prejudices. It appears therefore urgent that we consider dislodging and decentering the canon, both by integrating adaptations from different linguistic traditions or historical contexts, and occasionally, by teaching works “against the grain” to investigate the ways in which racist discourse is often intersectional with other hierarchizing ideas (such as class, gender, sexuality, etc.). Besides reinforcing racial awareness, the aim is to cultivate “racial literacy,” following the theoretical work led by France W. Twine. This means creating a space in our classrooms to identify racializing discourses and oppressive structures, and also developing students’ (and our own) aptitude to talk about race in various contexts, with a sensibility to structural, psychological, and interpersonal dimensions of the interaction. Racial literacy, as a set of analytical and discursive practices, helps to dismantle prejudices and also to receive and welcome feedback on our own racism.
Considering how to teach early modern race in particular allows us to interrogate foundational elements within the pedagogical relationship in general. Initiating a talk about race in the classroom may create discomfort. Students and instructors may fear making mistakes and to say “the wrong thing.” However, developing a more inclusive pedagogy requires that we question existing structures in the university, including racially-embedded hegemonies. It also means that we must revisit our role as teachers as part of this process. As bell hooks suggests, “engaged pedagogy does not seek simply to empower students,” but the teachers as well (1994, 21). Yet she continues by pointing out “that empowerment cannot happen if we refuse to be vulnerable while encouraging students to take risks.”
The Folger Institute's 2019-2020 Critical Race Conversations are available online. On April 22, 2021, Ian Smith (Lafayette College) and Michael Witmore (Folger Shakespeare Library) will offer a talk entitled "This is not who we are?”. On May 27, the guests are Lindsay Kaplan (Georgetown University), Mayte Green-Mercado (Rutgers University), and Rachel Schine (University of Colorado Boulder) and they will present a conversation focused on "Premodern Race and Religion”.
- JLF
See the full agenda for 2021 on Critical Race Conversations, Folger Institute, https://www.folger.edu/critical-race-conversations.
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Dadabhoy, Ambereen, and Nedda Mehdizadeh, “Cultivating an Ant-Racist Pedagogy”, Critical Race Conversations. Folger Institute, 9 July 2020, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_4oCWst1cPc.
Delgado, Richard, and al. Critical Race Theory: An Introduction. 1995. NYU Press, 2017.
Grayson, Mara. « Racial Literacy Is Literacy: Locating Racial Literacy in the College Composition Classroom ». The Journal of the Assembly for Expanded Perspectives on Learning, vol. 24, no 1, June 2019, https://trace.tennessee.edu/jaepl/vol24/iss1/4.
hooks, bell. Teaching to Transgress: Education as the Practice of Freedom. Routledge, 1994.
Twine, France Winddance. « A White Side of Black Britain: The Concept of Racial Literacy ». Ethnic and Racial Studies, vol. 27, 2004, p. 878-907. ResearchGate, doi:10.1080/0141987042000268512.
See also the list of resources on the S17 Anti-Racist Teaching and Scholarship page, co-edited by Katherine Dauge-Roth and Christophe Schuwey.