Abstract
This chapter explores the emotional life of the classroom when teaching gender. Drawing on classroom examples and excerpts from students’ formal and informal writings, the author seeks to unpack and grapple with the intense emotion of rage. Particular attention here is paid to classrooms that focus on issues of violence, trauma, and dis/embodiment. Rage is understood as a legitimate response to structural inequalities and it is seen as emotion that can inspire personal growth and propel social change. The author offers a new term, pedagogical rage, in an effort to conceptualize an innovative mapping of difficult emotion and to uncover the possible positive functions of rage in the classroom and beyond.
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Notes
- 1.
The idea for a symposium is one I borrow from Kersti Yllö who is a longtime scholar/teacher/activist in the field of violence against women.
- 2.
In class, I explore with students the various ways in which women’s bodies become an arena of public space, public property, and as a result, contested terrain. Examples include: pregnant women who experience unsolicited touching as well as unsolicited advice about self-care, nutrition, labor, and delivery; cultural discourse surrounding PMS, menstruation, and infertility debates; battles over reproductive rights; pornography; prostitution; and, coercive beauty mandates such as cosmetic surgery, the cosmetic industry, liposuction, etc.
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Cohan, D.J. (2016). Learning for a Change: Rage and the Promise of the Feminist Classroom. In: Haltinner, K., Pilgeram, R. (eds) Teaching Gender and Sex in Contemporary America. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-30364-2_19
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-30364-2_19
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