For her final project as part of the Doyle
Undergraduate Program, Emily Coccia conducted interviews with Georgetown
faculty members to explore new paradigms for how to
teach diversity.
Background: On April 22, 2015, Emily Coccia, an undergraduate fellow in the Doyle Engaging Difference Program and member of the Georgetown
College class of 2015, interviewed Michelle Ohnona, who joined the Georgetown
faculty in 2013 as a professor in the Women’s and Gender Studies Program. Her research begins at the intersection of feminist,
postcolonial, critical race and queer theory, and investigates sites of
national commemoration as mediators of narratives about national identity,
belonging, difference, and collective history. In
addition to her research and teaching, Professor Ohnona has worked in the
non-profit sector on support and advocacy initiatives for queer youth. In
this interview, she discusses her experiences teaching, reflecting on the
challenges and joys of working to create a deliberately inclusive classroom
atmosphere.
Working in the Women’s
and Gender Studies Program, your classes obviously all touch in diversity in at
least one way, but in “Introduction to Sexuality Studies,” you integrated other
intersectional identities as well. I found that the readings and lessons
dealing with issues like race and class in conjunction with sexuality and
gender worked well and enhanced our discussion. What steps do you take toward
building a course like that?
First, I’m lucky enough to work in an environment where
academic freedom feels alive and well. When I came to Georgetown, I got the
sense that I could build this sort of class—a class with readings that are
conducive to a comprehensive study of an issue. Having the freedom to include
those sorts of essays on the syllabus has been key to my work. While I enjoy
being able to design my class without receiving a pre-sculpted reading list
from the school, I do think the faculty would be well-served by discussing our
syllabi more often.
A few of the
professors I’ve interviewed have also discussed how as the faculty has grown in
size over the years, the amount of discussion and communication among
professors has decreased. Do you see any places where those conversations could
begin?
We tend to over-rely on course titles to provide an adequate
description of the material that might be included, but I think actually
discussing what’s on a syllabus would provide greater insight into how
comprehensive or interdisciplinary a course is, as well as offering a space for
feedback and recommendations. I think we should have more dialogue between
departments. Interdisciplinary conversations have been at the core of my
perspective as a scholar. I teach in the Women’s and Gender Studies Program,
but gender is just one point of departure in my work. Similarly, I think
opening up conversations among the faculty would also allow us to recognize and
think critically about diversity among our faculty.
In making your
classroom a space for these sorts of conversations and assigning readings that
deal with intersectional identities, what sorts of difficulties, if any, have
you encountered?
In searching for readings and confronting popular
conceptions for my course, “Sexual Politics in the Arab World,” I have had to
grapple with geographic challenges. In reality, the region is both religiously
and ethnically diverse, but in popular culture, this conversation tends to be
muted in favor of a monolithic image. Luckily, there is a lot of great feminist
scholarship. I try to use a dialectic approach for scholars with divergent
points of view and encourage the students to put these readings in conversation
with each other. This method not only pushes students to question the
assumptions being made in all of the readings, including those with which they
tend to agree, but also to consider seriously and engage intellectually with
the course material.
You’ve started to
touch on it already, but how has diversity among students affected class
discussions?
Each class is always a new and very different experience
based on who is in a given class and how they interact with each other. It’s
definitely been a learning process and a group effort as I work with my
students. One approach that I always take is to go over the syllabus on the
first day of classes to make clear my expectations on how conversations should
proceed, underscoring that I won’t accept discrimination, and review what
material we will engage with in the course.
Are there any other
tactics you use to make clear from the start what the course will be about?
I’m very intentional with naming the course, though there
are some restrictions in place. For instance, I hope that the title,
“Introduction to Sexuality Studies” helps open the door to a conversation on
how human sexuality is constructed in the broadest sense. I argue in favor of a
universalizing perspective; we look at identities that are characterized as
minorities, but work through how that applies to all of us. My hope is that the
course title and guided walk-through of the syllabus constitute an initial
buy-in on the part of the students. I set high expectations and always hope
that students will open themselves up to what the course has to offer.
To avoid focusing only
on the challenges, I always like to ask: what have you found to be most
rewarding about creating an inclusive classroom space?
I am always touched by receiving meaningful feedback from my
students—notes that thank me for creating a safe, or safer, space on campus to
engage with this sort of material and think critically about their own
identities. I truly believe that theory saves lives and makes them worth
living. I am conscious of the fact that for many students, the material and
readings presented in a course like “Introduction to Sexuality Studies”
represents a lifeline. It matters that students see people in authority
speaking to them about sexuality with respect and kindness. My role in the
classroom provides me with an opportunity to model empathy. While I certainly
can’t compel someone to have an emotion, we can do so much in terms of
thoughtfully considering the texts together and cultivating critical curiosity,
which I see as such a valuable characteristic. I’m not necessarily teaching it,
but rather, modeling it for my students.
Finally, what advice
might you give to someone new to education?
I would underscore the value of interdisciplinary
conversations on pedagogy. I was a faculty Doyle Fellow last year and found the
discussion among professors from different subject areas to be beneficial. These
programs that focus on pedagogy, as opposed to emphasizing research, are so
important to have. For me, teaching informs my research and energizes me, and I
would love to see more spaces that facilitate these conversations.