The Feminist Classroom: Dynamics of Gender, Race, and Privilege

This text discusses the position of women in American Education. The authors offer classroom examples of how assumptions of privilege, specifically the workings of unacknowledged whiteness, shape classroom discourse. It also goes beyond the classroom to look at the context of American higher education. The authors visited six classrooms at six different colleges and universities: Lewis and Clark College, Wheaton College, The university of Arizona; Towson State University, Spelman College, and San Francisco State University. There they interviewed students and teachers, and their words are used in this book. The result provides a view of the pedagogical approaches of 17 feminist college professors. The book also uncovers the voices, concerns and experiences of groups hitherto marginalized in higher education: women, people of colour and working class students. This edition has been expanded and updated and now includes a chapter on the role of race.