Provocations, Perspectives, and Possibilities of Chicana/Latina Feminist Pedagogies

Chicana/Latina feminist thought and pedagogies offer interdisciplinary contributions that reimagine family, community, liberation, teaching, and learning rooted in de-colonial praxis. Chicana/Latina feminist thought and pedagogies have cultivated theoretical, methodological, and epistemological cartographies that map questions such as: what are the evolving conditions that shape the oppression Chicanas face in their daily lives?; how do Chicanas cultivate multiple subjectivities that strive for embodied wholeness rather than partiality?; in what ways can intersectionality as a theory of oppression not difference dismantle systems of privilege and inequality that are pervasive within institutions such as education, healthcare, the prison industrial complex, the military, religion, families, and mass media?; and how can theories of the flesh which emerge through the lived experiences of Chicanas’ lives offer new pathways to coalition building, activism, scholarship, and teaching and learning that remain bridged to equity, and to justice as praxis not place? Chicana feminist thought includes themes of the history and material conditions of Chicanas as the basis for feminist consciousness, reclaiming malinchismo and marianismo, sexuality (Chicanas as sexual subjects), a commitment to political action, coalition building and recognition of difference among Chicanas, and challenging the vendida logic within Chicano culture. Chicana/Latina feminist pedagogies are insistent that everyday experiences of Chicanas are worth studying because they serve as key sources of knowledge that are necessary to theorize new de-colonial visions of life, family, labor, community, and education. Chicana/Latina feminist pedagogies are multidisciplinary in their approach and are culturally specific ways of organizing teaching and learning in informal sites such as the home and community, ways that embrace Chicana ways of knowing and creating knowledge that point to schooling spaces as full of creativity, agency, movement, and coalition building.

Centering the “T”: Envisioning a Trans Jotería Pedagogy

In this piece, the author reflects on his Trans Chicanx identity and how his embodiment shapes his teaching and pedagogy. The author begins with a spoken word piece that captures his journey to his own trans-conocimiento. Then the author looks to the foundational work of Chicana/Latina Feminist pedagogies and transpedagogies to envision a trans jotería pedagogy that centers trans migrants—and trans women and people of color—that is grounded in disruption and vulnerability through the unsettling of borders and binaries tied to systems of power. In doing so, the author reflects on his trans jotería praxis in the classroom and through his podcast Anzaldúing It. The author concludes with looking to the tensions that arise when disruptions of systems of power are central to teaching and pedagogy and highlights the vulnerability necessary of both teacher and student to embark on consciousness raising and healing exchange.

22. Embedding Feminist Pedagogies of Care in Research to Better Support San Youth in South Africa

Outi Ylitapio-Mäntylä and Mari Mäkiranta discuss how to make sensitive interventions across cultural divides with a focus on the San people of Africa. In line with feminist practices, they outline how a caring ethos can protect the individual from some of the challenges customary within a neoliberal society but reveal that this is hard to achieve within a multi-nation collaborative project where value bases differ.