Make no mistake: the classroom is not apolitical. Whether consciously or not and however hard to admit, when we teach we are teaching politics and teaching politically. Current events and the prevailing political climate in the US compel us to confront these issues head on. This workshop will look at how these external events come into our classrooms and how we might address them. But politics isn’t only what happens somewhere else, available for our critical scrutiny. We take a stand on political issues of class, race, and gender even when we teach something as seemingly innocuous and removed from the sphere of political action as music harmony. And there is also a politics of teaching itself—the unequal distributions of power and of educational and cultural capital, for example. This workshop will examine our responsibilities as teachers and how we can embrace the political character of educational contexts for the promotion of greater freedom and equality.

All graduate students are welcome.

Counts toward the CETLI Teaching Certificate.