“To become a feminist is to stay a student,” writes Sara Ahmed in Living a Feminist Life. Her choice of verbs is worth commenting on: it suggests that one is constantly “becoming” a feminist while nevertheless always “staying” a student. While seemingly a contradiction in temporal terms—to be changing while remaining the same—the phrasing actually makes sense. We need to be constantly open to changing our feminist practices given situations that arise, and this requires us to always remain students. Thus, while we have an integral set of principles and ethics that define us as feminists, one of those principles is the recognition that we must be open to change—in response to shortcomings, changing situations, and new insights.
It is from my FGSS students (current and former!) that I constantly re-learn the importance of “becoming,” of being open to changing course, even in the middle of a semester, or in the middle of a lecture. This collaboration is the kind of feminist pedagogy we practice in FGSS, and I believe it sets us apart from many disciplines and courses in which students mainly sit and listen.
We must keep challenging ourselves, reflecting on our pedagogy. This past semester, for example, Professor Lucinda Ramberg and graduate assistant Caitlin Kane organized a series of three pedagogy workshops focused on anti-racist methodologies. These virtual events featured lively discussion generated by speakers from amongst our faculty—Professors Durba Ghosh, Juno Parreñas, Kate McCullough, and Noliwe Rooks--and were attended by more than 60 people.
The process of “becoming” intensifies when we make connections outside the classroom, linking theory to practice, which is one reason we applied for and received an Engaged Cornell grant last year to integrate more community projects into our courses. I used part of that grant to develop my FGSS 3400 class on immigration detention; I started taking small groups of students to visit people held at the Buffalo Federal Detention Center in Batavia, NY in the fall of 2019. The covid pandemic halted in-person visitations, however, so it looked like the class would not be able to connect with people inside. I realized, however, half-way through this past semester that the video call option I used to keep in touch with one Salvadoran woman, Ingrid, who has been detained for more than two years, could also be used to connect her to the class.
From the moment of the first conversation with Ingrid, students took initiative: they started planning an activist campaign for her release from detention (see below). They used their social media expertise (far exceeding mine!) to secure more than 1,000 signatures on a petition for her release, and created a website about the injustices of detention (elisabethletters.com.). The energy generated, as one student told me, was “transformative.”
I wish the same kind of transformative energy for all of us, all of you, in this New Year, and I am grateful for everything you all do to make this world a more just place. In solidarity!
