Abstract
This chapter critically explores my experiences as a teacher of sexuality and gender, in the context of modern Britain (both in subject matter and academic location), and the opportunities and challenges of teaching gender history amidst global feminist movements and LGBTQIA + activism. How do we reflect critically on previous feminist waves when many of our students are the centre of feminisms’ fourth-wave and other activism? What does a commitment to intersectional feminism look like in a teaching environment? Starting from my own positionality, as a young, white, cisgender, precariously employed woman, this chapter considers the teaching (and researching) of histories of feminisms, gender and sexuality in classrooms predominantly made up of explicitly feminist students. The chapter moves through considerations alongside practical examples of negotiating silences in classroom and archives; dynamics of authority, privilege, inequality and performativity in the classroom; learning the process of creating historical arguments and applying broad frameworks of structural analysis to micro-histories and case studies; and the project of diversifying and anti-racism in the curriculum and classroom, within and beyond a gender history framework. The chapter concludes with a reflection upon the lived experiences of students, which are navigated within this teaching and the contribution of these to pastoral support and emotional labour.
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Acknowledgements
I thank the colleagues whose conversations and practice have informed, inspired and challenged my own pedagogy: Priya Atwal, Agnes Arnold-Forster, Clara Bradbury-Rance, Diya Gupta, Alana Harris, Ross MacFarlane at Wellcome, Katharina Oke and members of the KCL Arts and Humanities Feminist Research Network Reading Group. This article was written in 2019; re-engaging with it in 2020 during Black Lives Matter, continued threats to trans lives and amidst a global pandemic, there is much more I could say.
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Maguire, A. (2021). Gender and Intersectionality. In: Nye, A., Clark, J. (eds) Teaching History for the Contemporary World. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-16-0247-4_10
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