Humanizing Collectivist Critical Pedagogy

Acknowledgments

We would not have pedagogically developed in this same way or come together to write this book without the CUNY Humanities Alliance. We are deeply grateful to the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation for so generously supporting the creation of the CUNY Humanities Alliance and our participation in it from 2016 to 2020. We owe as much thanks to Cathy Davidson, who in conversation with the Mellon Foundation, developed the idea of the program, as well as Katina Rogers for developing much of the grant proposal when CUNY Humanities Alliance was just a dream. Of course, that grant relationship would not have been successful without the support of the Graduate Center Foundation, in particular Helen Koh, who supported the development and implementation of the program.

We would also like to thank the Graduate Center and LaGuardia Community College leadership for helping us build a meaningful collaboration across our campuses. In particular, we would like to thank Joy Connolly and David Olan for serving as Principal Investigators; Gail Mellow for being a remarkable partner; as well as Cathy Davidson, Bret Eynon, David Olan, Katina Rogers, and Luke Waltzer for being Directors of CUNY Humanities Alliance and guiding our goals and implementation through the years. We are also grateful to Kaysi Holman who developed and ran the program, tended to all the collaborations, and oversaw its growth throughout the first iteration, from 2016 to 2021. The Futures Initiative, particularly Cathy Davidson, Katina Rogers, and Lauren Melendez, were instrumental in getting CUNY Humanities Alliance established at the GC, and being supportive collaborative partners through the years. Similarly, our program would not have been possible without the initial and ongoing partnership with the Center for Teaching and Learning at LaGuardia, particularly Howard Wach, Michelle Piso-Manoukian, Eric Hoffman, Priscilla Stadler, and Aarkieva Smith, as well as the LaGuardia faculty who served as faculty leaders and our program liaisons throughout the years, including Demetri Kapetanakos, Jacqueline Jones, and Stefanie Sertich. The Teaching and Learning Center at the GC, particularly Luke Waltzer and CUNY Humanities Alliance Humanities Scholars Elizabeth Asop and Luis Henao Uribe, also played an important role in translating and pivoting our work to the GC more broadly. The postdoctoral researchers based in the Futures Initiative, Kitana Ananda and Sujung Kim, were also instrumental in leading our program evaluations to support the iterative process of our program, and for their intellectual contribution and pedagogical expertise.

As is referenced many times throughout this book, the CUNY Humanities Alliance was truly a community. All of the faculty mentors and graduate fellows that participated through the years contributed to our overall reflections, learning, and growth. That is especially true for those who pushed us to do better than we were normatively required to do, and helped us struggle through tough times—you know who you are. Most of our co-authors were participants in the program: Kaysi, Katina, and Sujung have been mentioned already; Leigh Garrison-Fletcher and Eduardo Vianna were both faculty mentors; Davide Giuseppe Colasanto, Mike Rifino, Micheal Rumore, and Oliver Sage were graduate fellows; Stefanie Sertich was the Codirector of the LaGuardia Mellon Humanities Scholars program; and Araminta Poole was a student participant in our sister extracurricular program, Peer Activist Learning Community, to which Rafael Costa added theoretical grounding and analysis. There were many other participants who wanted to contribute chapters, but either opted to take quicker publishing routes or had obligations that prevented them from joining in this journey. We wish more students could have co-authored with us, and we hope we did their work justice as we described the classroom communities that we built with them and the rigorous, scholarly, theoretical work they provided alongside us. Truly, our biggest debt of gratitude is owed to our undergraduate students—those who were in our classrooms, our extracurricular programs, and those who worked and volunteered in many different capacities through the years—all who were willing to engage in new and rather experimental educational spaces with us. We hope we offered you as much as we received!

There are still more folks who had a hand in our work: The LaGuardia Mellon Humanities Scholars program would not have had a showcase every year without Stefanie Sertich, Michael Alifanz, the LaGuardia theater crew, and the LaGuardia Performing Arts Center. The CUNY Humanities Alliance Conference would not have been possible without the amazing and dedicated graduate fellows, Emily Eagen and Chelsea Haines, and numerous LaGuardia students who served as conference staff and local ambassadors for attendees. As time passed and leadership shifted, Adashima Oyo became codirector of the Futures Initiative and provided guidance and leadership to the CUNY Humanities Alliance, and Kashema Hutchinson and Lauren Melendez served as Co-Directors, with Chinyere Okafor as a Futures Initiative Fellow, in our undergraduate leadership space, eventually renamed CUNY Peer Leaders as it expanded beyond LaGuardia. We also relied on a lot of infrastructure at both campuses: the IT crew, HR professionals, and financial administrators who supported our program over the many years; Security staff, who kept us safe, especially when there were very real threats, and unlocked many doors; the catering and janitorial staff who work tirelessly, without nearly enough thanks, to keep us well fed and our environment clean. Thank you for all of the time, energy, sweat, and (hopefully more smiles than) tears that went into making the CUNY Humanities Alliance come alive!

Finally, thank you to our families, friends, communities, and supporters, who have kept each of us going during this intense program and long book-writing process, who encouraged us through the process, and made sure we had food, sleep, and other human things.

Each of you made a difference; each of you shares a part of this book with us!

Introducing Humanizing Collectivist Critical Pedagogy

Sujung Kim, Kaysi Holman, and Leigh Garrison-Fletcher

Despite the contemporary focus on multiculturalism in our society, particularly in education, there is not nearly enough practical discussion of ways classroom settings can be transformed so that the learning experience is inclusive. If the effort to respect and honor the social reality and experiences of groups in this society who are nonwhite is to be reflected in a pedagogical process, then as teachers—on all levels, from elementary to university settings—we must acknowledge that our styles of teaching may need to change. Let’s face it: most of us were taught in classrooms where styles of teachings reflected the notion of a single norm of thought and experience, which we were encouraged to believe was universal. This has been just as true for nonwhite teachers as for white teachers. Most of us learned to teach emulating this model. As a consequence, many teachers are disturbed by the political implications of a multicultural education because they fear losing control in a classroom where there is no one way to approach a subject—only multiple ways and multiple references. (hooks, 1994, pp. 35–36)