Teaching What You're Not : : Identity Politics in Higher Education / / Katherine Mayberry.

• HerausgeberIn: Mayberry, Katherine,
• Place / Publishing House: New York, NY : : New York University Press, , [1996]; ©1996
• Year of Publication: 1996
• Language: English
• Physical Description: 1 online resource (384 p.)
• Notes: Description based upon print version of record.

Examines the roles of historical, cultural, and personal identities in the classroomCan whites teach African-American literature effectively and legitimately? What is at issue when a man teaches a women's studies course? How effectively can a straight woman educate students about gay and lesbian history? What are the political implications of the study of the colonizers by the colonized? More generally, how does the identity of an educator affect his or her credibility with students and with other educators? In incident after well-publicized incident, these abstract questions have turned up in America's classrooms and in national media, often trivialized as the latest example of PC excess. Going beyond simplistic headlines, Teaching What You're Not broaches these and many other difficult questions. With contributions from scholars in a variety of disciplines, the book examines the ways in which historical, cultural, and personal identities impact pedagogy and scholarship. Essays cover such topics as the outsider's gaze as it applies to the study of non-white literature; an able-bodied woman's reflections on teaching literature by disabled women; and the challenges of teaching the Western canon at an African American college.

Table of Contents

Frontmatter -- Contents -- Acknowledgments -- 1. Introduction: Identity Politics in the College Classroom, or Whose Issue Is This, Anyway? -- 2. Redefining America: Literature, Multiculturalism, Pedagogy -- 3. Straight Teacher/Queer Classroom: Teaching as an Ally -- 4. The Outsider's Gaze -- 5. No Middle Ground? Men Teaching Feminism -- 6. The Discipline of History and the Demands of Identity Politics -- 7. Teaching What I'm Not: An Able-Bodied Woman Teaches Literature by Women with Disabilities -- 8. Theory, Practice, and the Battered (Woman) Teacher -- 9. Teaching What the Truth Compels You to Teach: A Historian's View -- 10. Pro/(Con)fessing Otherness: Trans(cending)national Identities in the English Classroom -- 11. Caliban in the Classroom -- 12. A Paradox of Silence: Reflections of a Man Who Teaches Women's Studies -- 13. Teaching in the Multiracial Classroom: Reconsidering "Benito Cerenon -- 14. "Young Man, Tell Our Stories of How We Made It Over": Beyond the Politics of Identity -- 15. Disciplines and Their Discomforts: The Challenges of Study and Service Abroad -- 16. Scratching Heads: The Importance of Sensitivity in an Analysis of "Others" -- 17. Who Holds the Mirror? Creating "the Consciousness of the Others" -- 18. Daughters of the Dust, the White Woman Viewer, and the Unborn Child -- Contributors -- Index