Whose voice counts? Gender, power, and epistemologies in the seminary classroom

Abstract

This article wrestles with the question "whose voice counts?" as an entrée into a discussion of the challenges students encounter in learning to value different epistemologies and that professors encounter in attempting to teach for inclusion of voices. The essay reflects on an experience teaching a graduate seminar on gender and epistemology in which students encounter challenges reflecting on readings that present theology in the form of personal narratives, rather than in a more abstract or theoretical form. Course content and genres of writing are both gendered and subject to power dynamics associated with the uneven treatment of different types of knowledge. The paper focuses primarily on the lens of gender but notes as well the intersectional nature of genderand the ways in which the course dynamics are complicated by the race, sexuality, and even the class of the authors, students, and teacher. The paper makes two substantial arguments. First, it names a pedagogical meta-question at the intersection of gender and pedagogy: Even when women are on the syllabus, how are educators ensuring that the epistemologies at work in their classrooms allow for equal authorial authority in the classroom? Second, the paper challenges educators to make changes in their classrooms to allow students time to engage and employ epistemologies they discuss and to see the importance of these practices for wider systemic change in institutions and society.

Positionality and Disclosure in the Religious Studies Classroom

“…Nor, moreover, does such an understanding preclude denaturalizing claims to authority, legitimacy, or authenticity, particularly insofar as such claims are made in relation to others and bear implications or assertions about what can and cannot be done to them. See also Wright (2019) and Fernandez (2015).…”

The Past, Present, and Religious Studies Future of Civic Engagement in American Higher Education

“…On these issues, see especially Byron (2012) and Scheid and Vasko (2014). For an example of interrogating the inclusion of particular "voices" in graduate-level classrooms, see Wright (2019).…”

Politics and the Pedagogue of Late Antiquity

“…See, for example, "New Orleans and Hurricanes: Past, Present, and Future"(Nelson 2015); "Disaster Politics: New Orleans in the Wake of Hurricane Katrina"(Heldman 2007); "The Katrina Practicum"(McDowell, Thompson, and Carmin 2006); "Hurricane Katrina and its Aftermath"(Johnson, Caron, Rodrigue, and O'Connor 2006); and "The Katrina & Disaster Law Seminar" (Van Cleave 2011).8 See the crowd-sourced "Ferguson Syllabus"(Chatelain 2014) and the Sociologists for Justice's "Ferguson Syllabus" (2020). 9 See, for example, "Race, Racism, and the Middle Ages" (Teaching Association for Medieval Studies 2018) and "Race and Medieval Studies: A Partial Bibliography"(Orlemanski and Orlemanski 2018).10 See, for example,Westfield (2008), Kwok, González-Andrieu, and Hopkins (2004),Walvoord (2007),Riswold (2015),Teel (2014),Wright (2019),Byron (2012), andTrelstad (2008).…”