Eliana Luxemburg-Peck | Doctoral Candidate in Philosophy, CUNY Graduate Center

Writing is among the more isolating practices of our academic lives. No surprise; cultural images portray the (white, male, middle-aged) scholar alone at his desk, and even when we can imagine the writer differently, most of us are understandably reluctant to share unfinished work. Undergraduate students – bombarded with warnings against plagiarism, the threat of punitive grades, and ambiguous demands that their ideas be “original” (rarely accompanied by guidance about how to meet this standard) – are left confused and fearful about whether, and from whom, they are permitted to seek support. For students from underrepresented groups – including first-generation students, students of color, and students for whom English is a second language – the task of writing a formal academic paper may be especially alienating, as it forces them to obey norms and communicate in a language that may feel quite inauthentic to their personal voice (and the voices of their loved ones, and even non-academic writers with whom they do identify). At this year’s WAC Anti-racist Pedagogy Lab, we have reflected on how to transform our writing-oriented pedagogy and assignments so as to encourage community, mutual vulnerability, and self-expression rather than isolation and alienation. But despite our shared commitment to education as the practice of freedom (Freire 1970/2018; hooks 1994), it is often unclear which practices, strategies, and assignments will help.

For inspiration, I turn to two sources that we read for our February 2023 session: bell hooks’ Teaching to Transgress: Education as the Practice of Freedom (1994) and adrienne maree brown’s Pleasure Activism: The Politics of Feeling Good (2019). These texts have a number of things in common, including their authors’ shared belief that the practices by which we seek liberation – including those that belong to the classroom – should be self-actualizing, cooperative, and joyful (also in common: the authors’ choices to lowercase their pen names). What I wish to explore, however, are three strategies employed by both hooks and brown for incorporating others’ voices and presences into their writing and practice. These strategies are: a) recording an intellectual lineage, b) dialogue and interview, and c) leaving space for others’ expertise and experiences. By infusing their writing with the voices and inheritances of others, hooks and brown eschew isolation in favor of collaboration and personal expression. Let’s explore these strategies and practices, and ask: how we might we adapt them for our own courses?

Recording an Intellectual Lineage

In academic contexts where originality and novelty are prized (sometimes misguidedly; see Davis 2022), students are rarely asked to reflect critically on the ways in which their ideas are not just their own, but shaped by the ideas and inheritances of others. In brown’s Pleasure Activism and hooks’ Teaching to Transgress, we find models of how recording one’s intellectual lineage – a term we find in brown (2019, 21) – can be an enriching exercise, making others’ presence felt in one’s writing and infusing a text with relationality. In an early section called, “Lineage, an Overview,” brown traces how others – her grandmother, Octavia Butler, Audre Lorde, and present-day friends, teachers, and comrades – have shaped her ideas about and practices of pleasure activism; the next chapter consists of Lorde’s “Uses of the Erotic,” accompanied by brown’s conversational footnotes and annotations. Similarly, a chapter of Teaching to Transgress is devoted to explaining the influence of Paulo Freire over hooks’ work. In a self-directed interview (more on this later), she writes, “Reading your books…it is clear that your development as a critical thinker has been greatly influenced by the world of Paulo Freire. Can you speak about why his work has touched your life so deeply?” (hooks 1994, 45). By tracing how other thinkers have shaped their intellectual and personal development, hooks and brown infuse a sense of fellowship and community into the text; they locate themselves in a shared history and give credit to teachers, heroes, and friends. For readers, exploring this lineage leads to a more intimate and enriching experience of the text. 

Taking these texts as a model, it would be fruitful to consider how engaging in the exercise of tracing their intellectual or personal lineages might be useful for students. What might we learn about our students if we asked them to write about the people, thinkers, or texts that have changed their lives? What might they learn about us – or the texts we assign them – if we share our own lineage as teachers and scholars? How, further, might making lineages explicit expand the way that students think about “originality,” making them more comfortable with the ways in which others can, do, and should shape their ideas? Leaving these questions open-ended, I conclude with some assignment ideas inspired by these texts and by our discussions in this year’s pedagogy lab.

Assignment Ideas:

• Have students write an “intellectual lineage” of the thinkers (and/or experiences, texts, people, places, etc.) that have been transformative for them.
• Sketch an intellectual or scholarly “family tree” (perhaps as a way for students to introduce themselves).
• Have students trace the “lineage” of a text or thinker on the syllabus, engaging in historical and interpretive research that contextualizes the view.
• At the end of the semester, write a reflective letter on a text or thinker on the syllabus that has become part of the student’s lineage and will shape their ideas going forward.

Dialogical Writing and Interviews

Perhaps with the exception of the social sciences – where interview may be taught as a research method – it is unusual for teachers to incorporate the communicative practices of interview and dialogue into writing-intensive courses (whether real or imagined, as in a play). However, these practices are opportunities for combatting isolation in writing and inquiry. Reading hooks and brown, we noted that both include interviews in their texts (about fifteen, in brown’s case); in one chapter of Teaching to Transgress, Gloria Jean Watkins even interviews herself, as bell hooks. Both thinkers comment on the value of conversation as a means of crossing disciplinary boundaries and fostering solidarity; both also observe that the communicative modes of dialogue and interview present more opportunities for intimacy, playfulness, and expression than can be found in the academic essay. Some notable quotes:

“This is a playful dialogue with myself, Gloria Watkins, talking with bell hooks, my writing voice. I wanted to speak about Paulo and his work in this way for it afforded me an intimacy – a familiarity – I do not find it possible to achieve in the essay. And here I have found a way to share the sweetness, the solidarity I talk about” (hooks 1994, 45).

“To engage in dialogue is one of the simplest ways we can begin as teachers, scholars, and critical thinkers to cross boundaries, the barriers that may or may not be erected by race, gender, class, professional standing, and a host of other differences” (hooks [in conversation with Ron Scapp] 1994, 130).

“In these pages, I am intentionally bringing academics into conversation with experiential experts, to show the patterns of aligned interest and learning happening across the language barriers that exist between us. I am bringing together a lot of different styles of expression in order to weave this tale” (brown 2019, 12).

In the dialogues themselves, we see how the interlocutors actually speak, and watch them collaborate and learn from each other in real time; these transcribed and imagined conversations also leave more space for questions and uncertainty than we would typically find in a formal paper. Finally, these dialogues are joyful; they showcase the pleasure of shared inquiry and intellectual fellowship.

How might students benefit from incorporating (imaginary or transcribed) dialogues into their written assignments, or from writing a set of interview questions and recording the subsequent conversation? Could these methods of communication – perhaps more so than the traditional academic paper – encourage students to center their own questions, display intellectual humility, and sit with their uncertainty? How might transcribed (or recorded) dialogue furnish students with opportunities to speak and write in ways less governed by the exclusionary constraints of formal academic prose?

Assignment Ideas:

• Imagine a conversation between two figures on the syllabus. What would they discuss? Write up an imagined dialogue. (Alternatively, pose a question to two thinkers on the syllabus and have them discuss or debate the answer).
• Write and record an interview, podcast-style, with someone in the class.
• Write and perform (and, optionally, record) an interview, about course topics, with someone outside the class. Then, write up an analysis of what you learned from the experience; include transcribed portions of the conversation where relevant.
• Instead of an annotated bibliography, pose a sophisticated question to each writer on a source list.
• For a twice-weekly class, assign “presenters” to the first session and “respondents” to the second; the latter should engage the former in conversation, asking questions designed to enhance, extend, or critique (in a friendly manner) their presentation.
• Inspired by hooks, write an imagined interview with yourself (note: this could be an introductory assignment, an end-of-course reflection, or an alternate way of engaging with course content).

Integrating Others’ Voices and Expertise

This strategy is related to the last, but draws from brown and hooks some additional lessons about how integrating others’ experiences and expertise into one’s writing and communicative practice can enrich our teaching. brown describes herself as having “written and gathered” the chapters of Pleasure Activism, and explains that incorporating others’ expertise has been an essential feature of her project. She writes, “In the writing and gathering process, whenever I came to one of my edges or limitations, I reached out and gathered in a comrade who knows more than I do—about sex work, BDSM, burlesque, legalizing marijuana, pleasure during gender transition, recovering pleasure after childhood sexual abuse, pleasure while battling cancer, pleasure over age sixty, and parenting to generate pleasure-oriented children. I think the tapestry of voices here shows how many people are orienting toward and around radical pleasure in this political moment and just how many ways there are to do that” (brown 2019, 6). By incorporating others’ voices into her writing – including several chapters wholly written by others – brown positions herself as one of many figures with relevant knowledge, and makes others’ expertise available to her readers. There is an important lesson, here, for our classrooms. As teachers, we are not the only ones with knowledge to share; by drawing on our students’ expertise, we can affirm them as knowers and fill gaps that would otherwise be left by our own limitations.

We also, however, need to make space in our classrooms for students’ personal voices to be heard, whether or not it is knowledge they are sharing. This is something that hooks, in particular, emphasizes. She describes an in-class activity by which she ensures that every student will have the chance to speak and be heard: “In the classes I teach, I have students write short paragraphs that they read aloud so that we all have a chance to hear unique perspectives and we are all given an opportunity to pause and listen to one another. Just the physical experience of hearing, of listening intently, to each particular voice strengthens our capacity to learn together” (hooks 1994, 186). I recently tried this activity myself; first, we read this section of hooks aloud, and then my students took a few minutes to write a passage in response to a prompt, which they later shared, one-by-one (see my prompts, below). While some students were uncomfortable with the pressure to speak, the chance to write their comments, first, allowed them to be more selective about what they were willing to share; furthermore, by reading hooks together, they were able to appreciate the activity’s importance.

Inspired by brown and hooks, we should ask how we are honoring others’ knowledge and experience – particularly that of our students – in our pedagogy and assignments. How can we build classroom communities that affirm students as knowledge-producers? Through what assignments and practices can we reshape the directions in which authority flows in the classroom, and encourage our students to see themselves and each other as sources of knowledge? How can we affirm the value of our students’ voices and experiences in our assignments and pedagogical practice?

Assignment Ideas:

• Try out bell hooks’ “every voice” activity (1994, 186).
• Have students “gather” (brown 2019) relevant material written by others.
• Have students keep a journal over the course of the semester.
• Incorporate a “teach the class” assignment – have students educate their peers about a reading, concept, or idea from the course (you can help them prepare, in office hours).
• Design flexible writing assignments that allow students to draw on their other areas of interest or expertise.
• Do a jigsaw activity in which students become “experts” on some topic.
• Invite guest speakers (professionals, faculty, former students, etc.) into the classroom.

Final Thoughts

Though students (and teachers) often feel lonely in our writing, the practices and strategies employed by hooks and brown can help us transform writing-intensive courses into locations of collaboration, playfulness, and personal expression. I hope that the prompts and assignment ideas included above have been helpful, but please note that so many other strategies and ideas exist in our WAC community, and these lists are incomplete. By reading texts like these in tandem, and communicating with each other about our strategies and practices, we can resist isolation and extend the work of educating for the practice of freedom.

Eliana Luxemburg-Peck (formerly Peck) is a doctoral candidate in the Philosophy Department at the Graduate Center, City University of New York (CUNY). Her research areas include ethics, feminist philosophy and social epistemology, and critical philosophy of race; she is currently writing a dissertation on complicity. Her research has been published in Metaphilosophy (2017; with Ellen K. Feder) and Critical Philosophy of Race (2021). Contact: peckeliana@gmail.com

Works Cited

brown, adrienne maree. 2019. Pleasure Activism: The Politics of Feeling Good. Chico, CA: AK Press.

Davis, Emmalon. 2022. “Novelty.” The Philosopher 110, no. 4: 39-44.

Freire, Paulo. 1970/2018. Pedagogy of the Oppressed. Translated by Myra Bergman Ramos. New York: Bloomsbury Academic.

hooks, bell. 1994. Teaching to Transgress: Education as the Practice of Freedom. New York: Routledge.