In Issues in Feminism, we discuss societal injustices based on gender.  Because most of us have strong feelings and values about gender and how it shapes our lives and the world, I emphasize learning to think clearly and critically about these emotionally laden issues.  Since I teach this course as an FYS course, we focus on writing and I teach students the kind of writing used in the social sciences to develop and support an argument.  But before we write about such complex issues and the social injustices surrounding them, it is important for students to have in-depth conversations about how we see these issues and what shapes our views.  During the semester, students are introduced to a process of communicating with each other called circular dialogue.  This communication process requires active listening and following the core ideas, values, and feelings another person expresses.  I’ve learned that students write better papers when they have fully considered the perspectives of others in the class.  We read about this process, practice it and incorporate it into classroom dialogue—particularly when the issues we discuss are those we’re the most invested in, but don’t agree on (e.g. sexual identity, religion, race, etc.).  

In addition, to the regular small group and class-as-a-whole discussions, the course requires at least one collaborative presentation.  In these presentations, I require students to incorporate an evocative element in addition to the theoretical elements of their presentation.  Evocative refers to some element that helps the audience understand the experiences of those affected by the issue—by “evoking” a more personal connection with the audience.  Students learn to conceptualize and frame something that draws on  feelings, senses, intuition to promote understanding of their topic and its consequences in the lives of real people.   I evaluate what students choose to use (e.g. images or metaphors, excerpts from film or television, quotes, poetry, song lyrics, to name a few), and help students build skills in not only expressing the intellectual importance of what they choose to include, but build skills in making the performance or presentation of this component match the purpose of their presentation and honor the population they are talking about.  For example, a presentation (or a paper) on the issue of date rape and Greek life would need to deal with a sensitive issue in ways that were respectful of women’s experiences, that addressed the violation of rape, but did not over generalize about “all” Greeks.  Using both theory and evocative elements in presenting this information helps create the kind of full understanding needed to see issues clearly and decide how to resolve them.