FEMINIST THEORY/PRACTICE PEDAGOGIES IN A SHIFTING POLITICAL CLIMATE

by Karen W. Tice

In this essay, I discuss some of the possibilities and dilemmas that I have encountered while developing and teaching an undergraduate women's studies internship course in activism. I explore, in particular, the difficulties involved in setting up sites for student placements and projects in a Border South community that does not offer an extensive range of women's social change and movement organizations. In addition, I examine how the current national political climate has reshaped the activist landscape within which students must work. Although some of them have participated in social change efforts like anti-sweatshop organizing and civil rights for gays and lesbians, most of my students work within highly professionalized and traditionally organized social service agencies. I suggest a variety of concrete ideas for structuring seminar discussions, choosing readings, encouraging special action projects, and making writing assignments that encourage students to interrogate feminist theorizing on professionalization, privilege, expert knowledge, difference, power, and regional dynamics. These activities spark critical and active student explorations of internship sites and experiences. I also focus on the concurrent challenges of encouraging students to see themselves as legitimate critics of the work done by their groups or agencies while at the same time responding to their potential disillusionment over the possibility and pace of making social change