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Dynamics of power and subject formation are at the forefront of my thinking around teaching. These concerns not only influence the kinds of classes that I offer, but also the ways in which I plan these courses, think about pedagogy, and understand my role in the classroom. Drawing upon Michel Foucault’s critique of how knowledge functions as a means to power, an idea later picked up by pedagogical theorists, I recognize the way in which classroom dynamics have established and continue to maintain certain systems of power that are predicated upon the mastery and performance of knowledge in a particular manner. In fact, education as a performance of knowledge becomes even more complicated around issues of race and gender. What intelligence and the mastery of knowledge look like within the Western educational context is often influenced by normative white, male ways of behaving, speaking, and appearing. And insofar as knowledge establishes power, power consolidates among white men, with women and people of color needing to learn to approximate and perform accordingly.

If this critique of traditional Western approaches to education is correct, professors are faced with an important question: How do we challenge and potentially destabilize the normative structures of knowledge and power in the classroom? My answer is heavily influenced by subversive pedagogy, an idea that I first encountered while participating in a year-long Wabash Center teaching fellowship.^[1] Subversive pedagogy identifies the purpose of education as equipping students to think critically and creatively in a manner that liberates and transforms their sense of self and, thereby, alters how they engage the world. Challenging the assumption that knowledge acquisition takes place through the reproduction of white masculine ways of knowing and being, ways that are frequently embodied by the professor, scholars like Paulo Freire and bell hooks claim that everyone who walks into the classroom is equipped with valuable knowledge.^[2] Predicated on this postmodern perspective, it is the particularity of each student’s social location that provides them with fresh insight into course readings, lectures, and prompts. The particularity of their lived experience allows them to see things differently. This belief in diverse sites of knowledge inevitably transforms the learning process into a shared responsibility, with each student bringing their own knowledge set, ideas, and ways of reading to the table. Frequent dialogue between students is not only a byproduct of this belief, but also demonstrates that knowledge can be found outside traditional lectures and assigned readings.^[3] It is present in the sometimes imprecise conversations that takes place between classmates.

For students to share fully in the process of learning as communal responsibility, however, there must be a certain degree of honesty and vulnerability. Authentic dialogue requires a willingness to open ourselves up to others, to risk getting things wrong, to reveal what we really think and who we really are. Authentic dialogue means learning to trust others. This can only happen when people feel safe. In an effort to create this kind of shared learning space, I have students create their own community rules of engagement at the beginning of the semester. Each class gets to decide how they want to dialogue together as well as how they want to listen to one another. Student feedback suggests that the cultivation of a classroom dynamic marked by curiosity, trust, and intellectual generosity enables them to practice openness and honesty in a manner essential to the difficult conversations that arise around race, gender, and sexuality.

Class discussion, however, is not the only method of de-centering power. The same lesson can be reiterated through the reconfiguration of classroom space. Instead of sitting in straight rows with their attention solely directed toward the professor at the front of the room, having students sit in one large circle facing each other or in clusters of four can displace the expected position of the professor and help cultivate a different posture of learning within students. Additionally, something as simple as assigning texts by non-male and/or non-white scholars can begin to uncouple the implicit imaginative connection that exists between intelligence and white masculinity.

Recognizing that subject formation is a natural part of education, I tend toward assignments that privilege synthetic thinking and real world application, such as case studies and op-ed articles. The question is not whether education will inform student subjectivity, but in what ways it will do so. The goal of integrative learning for the sake of social change is at the heart of my approach to course design and pedagogy. My identity as a teacher and a scholar is shaped by my belief in the social relevance of religious studies. Regardless of what students believe theologically, my goal is to encourage them to recognize that what they believe makes a difference in the reality of who and how they are in the world.

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^[1] I also use backwards course design and the significant learning model when constructing a new course. I begin constructing every course by asking myself what kind of significant and long lasting change I hope my students will experience as a result of my class. What do I hope students will remember ten years after taking the course? How do I hope they will be changed? What kind of people do I hope they will have become? These kinds of questions about significant transformation help determine not only the structure of the course, but also the reading materials and assignments. (Grant Wiggins and Jay McTighe, Understanding By Design, 2nd Expanded edition (Alexandria, VA: Assn. for Supervision & Curriculum Development, 2005); L. Dee Fink, Creating Significant Learning Experiences: An Integrated Approach to Designing College Courses, 2 edition (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2013).)

^[2] Paulo Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed: 30th Anniversary Edition (Bloomsbury Publishing USA, 2014).

^[3] In these discussions, I try not to take up too much space. While there are certainly times when I must gently guide class conversation by posing questions that encourage students to entertain new perspectives, discussions tend to introduce both important insights and diverse ideas in an organic manner.