From the Feminist Classroom, a new feature of the academic journal Feminist Modernist Studies, launched with the feature editor Laura Hartmann-Villalta, UWP lecturer, at its helm. In her introduction to the feature, titled “From My Feminist Classroom to Yours,” Hartmann-Villalta explained that the inspiration for this platform was to create a space for modernist studies academics to discuss their pedagogy with the same level of intellectual rigor as their scholarship. At a time where feminism, inside and outside of the classroom is under attack, From the Feminist Classroom will serve as a beacon, model, and a repository for feminist pedagogical instruction.

The abstract of Hartmann-Villalta’s feature introduction is below. The inaugural essay in From the Feminist Classroom is Laura Tscherry’s “Startled into Frankness: Style, Difficulty, and Self-Disclosure in the Classroom with Gertrude Stein.” 

Abstract

This essay introduces a new feature of the Feminist Modernist Studies journal, From the Feminist Classroom, and outlines six reasons for the feature’s launch: first, to host a publication venue where scholars can join their scholarship to their pedagogy; second, to recognize classrooms as a vital space for intellectual meaning-making in literary study, but woefully undervalued as such; third, to inspire feminist pedagogical innovation across the literary discipline by providing exemplary models to follow; fourth, to create an alternative archive that represents the diversity of teaching outside of elite R1 seminar rooms that are often presented as standing in for the teaching work of the larger discipline; fifth, to collect teaching-related ephemera and reflections on lessons that are still in progress and foster a conversation among scholar-teachers; sixth and last, to serve as a beacon and record for feminist pedagogy even as we are living in an era where the values at the core of the feminist project are under threat, actively being dismantled at the institutional, state, and national levels, and – in some cases – could cost instructors their jobs if they implement them.