{"id":149054,"date":"2022-10-06T17:40:30","date_gmt":"2022-10-06T21:40:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/?p=149054"},"modified":"2022-10-28T12:39:27","modified_gmt":"2022-10-28T16:39:27","slug":"faculty-talk-about-the-courage-to-transgress-to-squash-those-narratives-created-by-racism-and-white-supremacy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/2022\/10\/06\/faculty-talk-about-the-courage-to-transgress-to-squash-those-narratives-created-by-racism-and-white-supremacy\/","title":{"rendered":"Faculty talk about the courage to transgress, to ‘squash those narratives’ created by racism and white supremacy"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

In a wide-ranging discussion that felt like a salon, a group of Bates scholars gathered the other day to talk about the courage and energy it takes to transgress \u2014 to cross the assumed boundaries of their teaching and scholarship by engaging in topics of racism, white supremacy, and unequal structures of power.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

They were invited to the gathering by Associate Professor of Africana Sue Houchins, the recipient of this year\u2019s Kroepsch Award for Excellence in Teaching. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Charles Nero, the Benjamin E. Mays \u201920 Distinguished Professor of Rhetoric, Film, and Screen Studies, moderated the discussion, titled \u201cCourage to Transgress: Engaging Dangerous Ideas in the Classroom.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Join
Faculty, colleagues, and audience members applaud Associate Professor of Africana Sue Houchins (left), the recipient of this year\u2019s Kroepsch Award for Excellence in Teaching at Bates at the start of the discussion on Sept. 19, 2022, in Pettengill Hall. Behind the professors is a projected image of author, scholar, and activist bell hooks. (Phyllis Graber Jensen\/Bates College)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Houchins set the scene by referencing the book Teaching to Transgress<\/em> by the late bell hooks. \u201cThe title makes it clear,\u201d said Houchins, \u201cthat our vocation is to instruct students in the practice of pushing back against what is normative, what is safe.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Houchins explained how, in hooks\u2019 career as a scholar, teacher, and activist, she exposed the \u201cinterplay of race, capitalism, gender, and…their ability to produce and perpetuate systems of oppression and class domination.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Which is what\u2019s happening at Bates, said Houchins. Funding from a $1.2 million grant from Andrew W. Mellon Foundation<\/a> is helping the faculty \u201cto excavate in the archeologies of our various disciplines so that we can transform our curriculum and change our pedagogical approaches to better align them with our institutional values and goals around equity and inclusion.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cAt that moment, I realized that there was a price that I paid for my particular interest and desires.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

The best teachers, hooks wrote, \u201chad the courage to transgress those boundaries that would confine each student to an assembly line approach to learning.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Looking at the colleagues she had invited to be panelists \u2014 Assistant Professor of Biology Lori Banks, Associate Professor of Religious Studies Alison Melnick Dyer, Assistant Professor of Digital and Computational Studies Anelise Hanson Shrout, Assistant Professor of Classical and Medieval Studies Mark Tizzoni, and Nero \u2014 Houchins said that each have \u201creputations for just this kind of courage.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Nero, for example, recalled his first semester in his Ph.D. program at Indiana, when \u201cthree professors asked me a variation of the same question, \u2018Why are you interested in that Black stuff? Hasn’t everything been said and written about Black people?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cAt that moment, I realized that there was a price that I paid for my particular interest and desires.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A generation younger than Nero, Banks did her undergraduate studies at a historically Black university, Prairie View A&M. Unlike what generations of BIPOC students have experienced at predominantly white institutions, Banks and her peers were spared from being told, overtly or otherwise, that Black students lacked the \u201cintelligence or ability when it came to the practice of science or medicine.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But as she emerged into academe, Banks came to learn how \u201chistorical narratives within our scientific community have excluded the contributions of women, people of color, openly queer folks. Those narratives were not true \u2014 it was just that we were all being exploited and somebody else got the Nobel Prize.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Join
Assistant Professor of Biology Banks (center) was frank about one result of centuries of unequal power structures: It means that \u201cwe’ve been lying to our students about who does science,\u201d she says. At left is Assistant Professor of Digital and Computational Studies Anelise Hanson Shrout; at right is Charles Nero, Mays Professor of Rhetoric, Film, and Screen Studies. (Phyllis Graber Jensen\/Bates College)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

For example, Angelina Fanny Hesse, wife and sometimes-lab assistant of microbiologist Walther Hesse, never got credit for her contributions that led to Robert Koch\u2019s Nobel Prize in 1905.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Such lack of recognition isn’t limited to the upper echelons of science. Jack Daniel\u2019s is a household name in whiskey, but it was Nathan \u201cNearest\u201d Green, an enslaved person, who taught a man named Daniels how to make whiskey. The whiskey company describes Green as a “friend” or “mentor.” \u201cBut neither of those terms really applies given the power differential associated with human ownership,\u201d said Banks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Banks was frank about the net effect of centuries of unequal power structures: It means that \u201cwe’ve been lying to our students about who does science,\u201d she says. \u201cI want to fix that and I want to squash those narratives. That’s how I approach my pedagogy.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Historic
This image shows George Green (folded arms, center), who was the son of Nathan “Nearest” Green, the man who taught Jack Daniel (white hat, right) how to make whiskey. In recent years, the whiskey company has said Green was a “friend” or “mentor.” \u201cBut neither of those terms really applies given the power differential associated with human ownership,\u201d said Banks.(Wikipedia Commons)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Students come to college with a preconceived idea of who is a successful scientist. It\u2019s a kind of \u201cidol worship\u201d of a stereotypical idea \u2014 think Neils Bohr, Albert Einstein, and Watson and Crick \u2014 of \u201cwho you’re supposed<\/em> to be, what kind of music you’re supposed <\/em>to listen to, and how you dress, and who you love.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But in real life, Banks says, \u201call of these things are not the same for everybody who practices science and medicine.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Dismantling preconceived notions takes courage, which Banks was feeling that day, having just watched The Woman King<\/em><\/a>. (The movie reference got a round of applause. \u201cGo see it,\u201d said Nero.) \u201cI acknowledged a long time ago that these were going to be difficult conversations,\u201d she said. \u201cI kind of just take a deep breath and go for it.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There is, of course, immutable scientific knowledge. As a colleague of Banks’ noted, “the Krebs Cycle doesn’t change because you went to a different institution.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Melnick Dyer, whose teaching includes Buddhism and other Asian religious traditions, said, with a laugh, \u201cIt turns out that how people think and talk about Buddhism absolutely changes depending on what institution you’re in.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Which means that students arrive with all kinds of \u201cmisunderstandings about religious traditions that are perpetuated through histories of cultural appropriation and adoption and adaptation.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If so, asked Nero, how does a professor, especially one who does not have tenure, navigate these waters with students who might be uncertain about hearing something new?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Join
In guiding a student out of their intellectual comfort zone, said Associate Professor of Religious Studies Alison Melnick Dyer, it’s important not to ambush them with difficult new ideas. \u201cInvite<\/em> them into the conversation,” she said. (Phyllis Graber Jensen\/Bates College)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI’ve been thinking about this a lot,\u201d Melnick Dyer said. Confronting a student\u2019s misunderstandings can help them \u201cconfront their own privilege and perhaps other things they might find very uncomfortable.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

But that carries risk. A student unhappy about being pushed toward a new way to understand Asian religions can vent about the professor on a course evaluation, and that \u201cdirectly relates to how we perceive our own precarity or our own safety as educators.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But \u201cwe can get around this,\u201d she said. When introducing difficult topics in the classroom, it’s key not to ambush a student. \u201cInvite<\/em> them into the conversation,” by clearly introducing upcoming topics, like privilege, cultural appropriation, and even the students\u2019 relationships to the cultures and traditions they\u2019re learning about. Placing them in context can help encourage interest and engagement, rather than leaving students feeling alienated.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In Shrout\u2019s courses in digital and computational studies, often the most uncomfortable discussion is the one about the highly problematic historical relationship between statistics and eugenics, as many early statisticians were eugenicists.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI don’t mean that in a hyperbolic sense,\u201d said Shrout. \u201cThese were men that actually believed that they should develop statistical models to study humans so that they could figure out who should die. That’s really uncomfortable.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But as long as a student feels safe in the discussion, creating discomfort is important. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Students who understand the history of statistics and eugenics are going to be better prepared to \u201cengage with their field and a career than if they could just pretend that these dudes \u2014 who Hitler loved, by the way \u2014 were just distant figures on a pedestal devoid of social context.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Shrout has noticed a shift in the conversations and questions about how \u201cthe ways in which white supremacy and settler colonialism and these other structures of powers have shaped the disciplines that we’re in.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

First was resistance: \u201cIt doesn\u2019t belong in our curriculum.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Second, ambivalence: \u201cHow do we shoehorn it in?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Third acceptance: \u201cThis is the thing we should be thinking about.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Finally, transgression and action: \u201cWhat have I been missing by not thinking about this? How do I rectify that?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Nero who asked the scholars how they engage in transgression in their fields, \u201cwith our peers who are immediate, as well as our peers who are beyond this institution.\u201d The question\u2019s answer, he said, does require a certain amount of handling, “gingerly,” since a scholar\u2019s reputation is at stake.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In response, Tizzoni spoke about his forthcoming book, which takes a new view of the history of Roman and post-Roman North Africa, a region known after antiquity as the Maghreb. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Scholars of the ancient Maghreb often viewed it through a Eurocentric lens, divorced from its African contexts. Tizzoni will embrace an African and Indiginous orientation, raising questions of colonization, resistance, and racialization. He expects the text to generate some controversy becaus “the people who trained me would expect me to think about ethnicity instead of race,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And though his field of premodern studies is beginning to consider its \u201ccomplicity with white supremacy and the construction of modern systems of white supremacy, it is hotly contested right now.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Join
Assistant Professor of Classical and Medieval Studies MarkTizzoni says that though his field of premodern studies is beginning to consider its \u201ccomplicity with white supremacy and the construction of modern systems of white supremacy, it is hotly contested right now.\u201d (Phyllis Graber Jensen\/Bates College)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Because he and his students study history from 1,000 or 2,000 years ago, there\u2019s a lot of prior scholarship that can\u2019t be accepted at face value. The author of a well-known book on Latin language, Gildersleeve’s Latin Grammar<\/em>, Basil Lanneau Gildersleeve, was a Confederate soldier who remained \u201cunrepentant and pro-slavery for the rest of his life,\u201d said Tizzoni. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cStudents need to know the ways in which foundational figures within the discipline were problematic,\u201d he said. “We need to read these texts knowing that that has happened. The danger really is in continuing to pretend that it didn’t because it did, and it’s all there.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Bates professors gather to talk about transgression for a purpose: to achieve a better understanding of how the creation of knowledge that we accept as true can be rooted in can be rooted in racism, white supremacy, and ruthlessly unequal structures of power.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":148,"featured_media":149083,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_hide_ai_chatbot":false,"_ai_chatbot_style":"","associated_faculty":[],"_Page_Specific_Css":"","_bates_restrict_mod":false,"_table_of_contents_display":false,"_table_of_contents_location":"","_table_of_contents_disableSticky":false,"_is_featured":false,"footnotes":"","_bates_seo_meta_description":"","_bates_seo_block_robots":false,"_bates_seo_sharing_image_id":149057,"_bates_seo_sharing_image_twitter_id":0,"_bates_seo_share_title":"","_bates_seo_canonical_overwrite":"","_bates_seo_twitter_template":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-149054","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-academic-life"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/149054","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/148"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=149054"}],"version-history":[{"count":20,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/149054\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":149364,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/149054\/revisions\/149364"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/149083"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=149054"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=149054"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=149054"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}