THE DEVELOPMENT OF POLITICAL CONSCIOUSNESS AND AGENCY: THE ROLE OF ACTIVISM AND RACE/ETHNICITY IN AN INTRODUCTORY WOMEN'S STUDIES COURSE

by Melissa R. Peet and Beth Glover Reed

In this essay, we explore how activism-related teaching strategies—a semester-long action project supplemented with a panel discussion among activists—an be used in conjunction with feminist knowledge about activism to link personal learning with political consciousness for social change in a women's studies course. We address the question, "What types of knowledge and classroom processes facilitate students' intellectual, emotional, social, and interpersonal development towards seeing themselves as political actors?" We use students' own words to describe how they perceive activism, the specific processes and elements in the course that empowered them to develop towards political action, and some of the barriers they experienced. Within this, we explore how students' racial identities play a role in their development and change towards activism, and argue that engaging in an action may be especially important for white women. In doing this, we compare the experiences of two groups of white women: those who did, and those who did not, do an action project. Finally, we contrast white women's experiences to the experiences of women of color.