This session will be held on Friday, March 12th, 2021 at noon.
Classrooms are affective spaces and our disciplines have affective cultures; STEM-related fields are no exception. Students expect to have very different emotional experiences in women’s studies than they do in courses related to soils, nutrition, or animal biology. When bringing in Equality, Diversity, and Inclusion (EDI) and de/anti-colonial content into a course, we need to unpack social problems in their complexity, emphasizing and confronting painful topics associated with historical and on-going forms of oppression and injustice. The affective load, emotional labour, and potential for re-traumatization that result from engaging in these topics in a STEM classroom is unequally distributed along students based on race, gender, sexual orientation, and class (and other forms of social oppression and discrimination). We need to be more intentional about curating the affective dimensions of our classrooms so that we can stay generative when encountering tensions and discomfort in our classrooms. In this session, we will
- Define key terms and concepts associated with affect in post-secondary classrooms, such as affective load, affective circulation, and affective curation
- Critically analyze the historical and current norms and practices related to affect in STEM and health sciences
- Discuss strategies for developing students capacities to be safe, self-aware, accountable, and intellectually generative when engaging with EDI and de/anti-colonial content
Suggested reading: Fawaz, R. (2016). How to make a queer scene, or notes toward a practice of affective curation. Feminist Studies, 42(3), 757-768.
To register for the session, please visit https://ubc.zoom.us/meeting/register/u5cscumsqDwrG9OI5NHXco_FeqnmI0pzdWM1