We begin the course with a discussion of the context and purpose of higher education, examining teaching and learning as socially-embedded and politically non-neutral practices. Assigned readings introduce core aspects of critical university studies and critical pedagogical approaches. Throughout the rest of the course, this framework can help us reflect on our multiple roles in educational institutions and consider the broader implications of concrete pedagogical decisions related to syllabus design, lesson planning, and teaching techniques.
Required readings:
- Gusterson, Hugh. 2017. “Homework: Toward a Critical Ethnography of the University.” American Ethnologist 44 (3): 435-450.
- Boggs, Abigail, Eli Meyerhoff, Nick Mitchell, and Zach Schwartz-Weinstein. 2019. “Abolitionist University Studies: An Invitation.” Abolitionjournal.
- hooks, bell. 1994. Teaching to Transgress: Education as the Practice of Freedom. Selections. (Annotate in Perusall)
Assignments:
Additional Resources:
- Critical, Feminist, and Progressive Pedagogies
- Freire, Paulo. 1970. Pedagogy of the Oppressed.
- Giroux, Henry A. 2011. On Critical Pedagogy.
- Grande, Sandy. 2004. Red Pedagogy: Native American Social and Political Thought.
- Illich, Ivan. 1971. Deschooling Society.
- Omolade, Barbara. 1987. “A Black Feminist Pedagogy.” Women’s Studies Quarterly 15: 32-39.
- Ellsworth, Elizabeth. 1989. “Why Doesn’t this Feel Empowering? Working through the Repressive Myths of Critical Pedagogy.” Harvard Educational Review 59 (3): 297-325.
- Fisher, Berenice Malka. 2000. No Angel in the Classroom: Teaching through Feminist Discourse.
- Journals: Feminist Teacher; Radical Teacher
- History of Higher Education in the United States
- Geiger, Roger L. 2014. The History of American Higher Education: Learning and Culture from the Founding to World War II.
- Thelin, John R. 2004. A History of American Higher Education.
- Wilder, Craig Steven. 2014. Ebony and Ivy: Race, Slavery, and the Troubled History of America’s Universities.
- Harris, Adam. 2021. The State Must Provide: Why America’s College Have Always Been Unequal–and How to Set Them Right.
- Patel, Leigh. 2021. No Study Without Struggle: Confronting Settler Colonialism in Higher Education.
- Critical University Studies
- Boggs, Abigail and Nick Mitchell. 2018. “Critical University Studies and the Crisis Consensus.” Feminist Studies 44 (2): 432-463.
- Harney, Stefano and Fred Moten. 2013. The Undercommons: Fugitive Planning and Black Study.
- William, Jeffrey J. 2012. “Deconstructing Academe: The Birth of Critical University Studies.” Chronicle Review.
- Berghahn Books series on Higher Education in Critical Perspective: Practices and Policies
- Johns Hopkins University Press series on Critical University Studies
- Palgrave series on Critical University Studies
- Recent Selections from the Anthropology & Sociology of Higher Education
- Goldrick-Rab, Sarah. 2017. Paying the Price: College Costs, Financial Aid, and the Betrayal of the American Dream.
- Hyatt, Susan Brin, Boone W. Shear, and Susan Wright, eds. 2015. Learning Under Neoliberalism: Ethnographies of Governance in Higher Education.
- McMillan Cottom, Tressie. 2017. LowerEd: The Troubling Rise of For-Profit Colleges in the New Economy.
- Mullen, Anne L. 2013. Degrees of Inequality: Culture, Class, and Gender in American Higher Education.
- Posecznick, Alex. 2017. Selling Hope and College: Merit, Markets, and Recruitment in an Unranked School.
- Williams, Bianca C., Dian D. Squire, and Frank A. Tuitt, eds. 2021. Plantation Politics and Campus Rebellions: Power, Diversity, and the Emancipatory Struggle in Higher Education.
- Zaloom, Caitlin. 2019. Indebted: How Families Make College Work at Any Cost.
- See also, Inside Higher Ed: New Books about Higher Education