Gender & Politics Research Group: Frances B. Henderson, Associate Professor of Gender and Women’s studies and Affiliated Faculty, African American and Africana Studies at the University of Kentucky

Teaching race and gender in the context of increasing threats to academic freedom

In the twenty-first century, scholars who teach gender, race, intersectionality, and sexuality operate under intensifying institutional and political scrutiny. The legislative assaults on universities across multiple US states included the systematic defunding of campus Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion initiatives and the dismantling of both Gender and Women's Studies and Ethnic Studies programs at numerous American universities.  These measures have produced a precarious landscape for those who work in these fields. While these developments are concentrated in the United States, their reverberations are felt across academic communities globally, raising urgent questions about academic freedom, disciplinary legitimacy, and the conditions under which critical knowledge is produced and transmitted.

This presentation draws on a broader series dedicated to examining the ways scholars engage with complex concepts in Gender and Women's Studies (such as feminisms, gender, sexuality, and intersectionality) within institutional settings. Centering the ethical, emotional, and pedagogical dimensions of teaching these subjects, I attend to both the challenges and the generative possibilities that the classroom presents. I conclude by offering reflective strategies for navigating institutional constraints while advancing a pedagogy committed to epistemic justice and the critical recentering of marginalized knowledges in the scholarship of teaching and learning.