AFRICAAM 428: Intersectional Justice in Education Policy and Practice (EDUC 428, FEMGEN 428)

Course Description

This 3-5-unit, graduate course is designed to explore intersectionality as a "method and a disposition, a heuristic and an analytic tool" (Carbado, Crenshaw, Mays, & Tomlinson, 2013, p. 11). To do this we explore the intellectual lineage of intersectional thought from its Black Feminist roots and trace it through its use today in education research. Within these tracings, we will delve into the (mis)uses, contestations, and iterations of intersectionality in theory and empirical research. At the heart of this course is an examination of how perceptions of and beliefs about a myriad of intertwining inequities conspire to create vectors of oppressions that land in multiply "marginalized students" lives through the macrosociolpolitcal to the microinteractional. It interrogates the foundational ideological assumptions around culture, difference, deficit, and dis/ability in which education has traditionally been rooted. Students in the course will analyze the lineage and processes of intersectionality to understand how students at the intersections of multiple oppressions experience education within communities of practice that enact, reproduce, and resist policies and practices through their daily activities.