The classroom remains the most radical space of possibility in the academy.
bell hooks, Teaching to Transgress “

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Teaching a Movement Unfolding

Posted on January 31, 2017 by Elli Goudzwaard

"The emergence of the Black Lives Matter movement— following the killings of Trayvon Martin in 2013 and of Eric Garner and Michael Brown in 2014—provided a language for progressive students and their allies at Dartmouth to link campus activism to national struggles against state violence, white supremacy, capitalism, and homophobia. The #BlackLivesMatter course at Dartmouth emerged as educators across the country experimented with new ways to learn from and teach with a rapidly unfolding, multisited movement."

  • BLACK LIVES MATTER - FERGUSON SOLIDARITY WASHINGTON ETHICAL SOCIETY, 2014 (IMAGE: JOHNNY SILVERCLOUD) Licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0

    Black Lives Matter - Ferguson Solidarity Washington Ethical Society, 2014 (Image: Johnny Silvercloud licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0)

"On January 16, 2015, the Dartmouth Center for the Advancement of Learning invited Reverend Starsky Wilson (President of the Deaconess Foundation in St. Louis, MO and co-chair of the Ferguson Commission) to talk about Ferguson and his work in St. Louis and to lead a discussion with faculty about the implications of Ferguson for teaching. It was at this meeting that Dartmouth‘s #BlackLivesMatter course was first conceived. As Rev. Wilson called upon everyone in the room to bring Ferguson into our classrooms, Aimee and our colleague, feminist geographer Abby Neely, set to immediate work figuring out how to get a #BlackLivesMatter course onto the books for spring quarter. It was helpful that the Provost was also in the room at the time and told us her office would support whatever we cooked up. Over the subsequent 48 hours, Abby and Aimee, while reaching out to department chairs, faculty, and staff who had expressed an interest in getting involved, pulled together and submitted the necessary materials for the Registrar to include the course in the Spring 2015 catalog.

The logistical obstacles were many, and we met those challenges with the strength that a sense of urgency and commitment to a burgeoning national movement can bring. We would not have time to send a new course proposal through the conventional review process, nor would the course be taught by instructors getting teaching credit for their labor. As new courses at Dartmouth often enjoy a trial run as special topics courses, we found a willing and generous department in Geography to host this pedagogical experiment forged amidst the exigencies of a quickly emerging social movement." Read more.

-Excerpted from "#BlackLivesMatter and Feminist Pedagogy: Teaching a Movement Unfolding," Bahng A. and Goldthree RN. Radical Teacher, Fall 2016.