Digital Pedagogies and the Possibilities of Undisciplinarity in the Latin@ Studies Classroom

This panel brings together educators using promiscuous strategies to reimagine and rethink the possibilities of digital pedagogies in the Latin@ Studies classroom – particularly through the lenses of Chicana/Latina feminism,... [ view full abstract ]

This panel brings together educators using promiscuous strategies to reimagine and rethink the possibilities of digital pedagogies in the Latin@ Studies classroom – particularly through the lenses of Chicana/Latina feminism, social justice scholarship, community activism, and critical race and ethnic studies. Encouraging students to use both critical thinking skills and digital media tools, presenters will discuss how they open up the classroom to forms of knowledge production, community building, and collaboration that challenge the limitations of the ivory tower. Panelists will discuss and theorize documentary film making, film criticism, blogs, and Twitter in the context of digital pedagogies that simultaneously employ and break free from the boundaries of traditional academic disciplines. In her presentation, “Toward a Social Justice Digital Pedagogy and Praxis” Amanda E. Gray focuses on the successes and challenges of teaching critical ethnic studies using the mixed-media format of interactive social justice documentary. Rooted in a foundation of critical race theory, critical pedagogy, and urban studies the course entitled, “Social Justice Documentary: East Austin Voices and Beyond” exemplifies a pedagogical aspiration for a practice of “theory in action.” Introducing students to basic understandings of social inequities of race, class, gender, and sexuality within one’s urban environment, student groups collaborated with a community organization to produce a documentary project that foregrounded their community partner’s commitment to social justice. Presenter Michael Cucher discusses his experiences using Twitter in the classroom in a short talk entitled, “Talking back to the screen in the critical ethnic studies classroom: Live-tweeting film screenings.” Speaking to different opportunities and challenges based on course materials and class dynamics, he suggests that Twitter can connect students to one another, connect them to worlds outside of the classroom, and help them to engage in critical relationships with all of these contexts. This short presentation suggests that if many students engage culture through multiple screens at once, today’s digital pedagogies should attempt to incorporate these viewing practices into active, personal, and collective learning through talking back to the screen during careful viewing of various media. Presenter Annemarie Perez addresses the challenge of integrating the “digital” into Chican@ Studies curriculum. She argues that digital humanities and pedagogy remain largely focused on pre-twentieth century white culture, and will discuss the use of student-developed websites to explore how twenty-first century digital media landscapes reflect the textual communities and print cultures of traditional Chican@ studies efforts to collapse classrooms and communities. In her presentation, “Mapping A World,” presenter Linda Garcia-Merchant discusses the ways traditional place based pedagogy succeeds and fails through a series of mapping “self as public history” projects and as a method of introducing culture to a demographic reflective of First Year Composition at an R1 Midwestern, land-grant University. The student essays and accompanying annotated compositions produced through these projects reflect a variety of authored media (musical compositions, fine art, poetry, google mapping) reinforcing an individualized representation of voice. Students emerge with an understanding of their relationship to “culture as self and public history” from the perspective of multi-cultured world citizens.