Applying Anthropology to General Education

Reshaping Colleges and Universities for the 21st Century

Jennifer R. Wies, Hillary J. Haldane, Jennifer R. Wies, Hillary J. Haldane

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2022
• Print ISBN: 9780367642181
• eBook ISBN: 9781000548044
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Anthropology
• Index: Social Sciences

The current higher education policy and practice landscape is simultane-ously marked by uncertainty and hope, and nowhere are these tensions more present than in discussions and actions around general education. This volume uses an anthropological approach to contemplate ways of re-imagining general education for the 21st century and how faculty, teach-ers, administrators, and others can transform the educational endeavor to be holistic, comprehensive, and aligned with the needs of people and the planet in the decades to come. Included are analyses of general education concepts such as "diversity, " case studies of general education and con-necting curricula, opportunities for faculty development, unique general education student populations, assessment strategies, and philosophical/ pedagogical challenges. Contributors make the case that far from receding from a central role in higher education, there is a need to strengthen general education curricula as key to the educational needs of students, for the skills and competencies they require in the workplace and for civic engagement.

1Racial Sociocultural Awareness through Conceptualizing Arrivantcy in the Classroom

April Petillo

DOI: 10.4324/9781003123453-2

The writing concept of a “fourth wall” originates in theater, where the characters and activities operate within three visible walls and an invisible fourth wall through which the audience can see. This is one of the ways that teaching has historically functioned theatrically—with instructors and academics often demonstrating how to move through a process or idea as though the realities that students, our audience, are not relevant to the matter at hand. There are also times that theatrical characters break that invisible fourth wall, turning to the audience to interact directly or share a moment that a vocalized internal dialogue behind that fourth wall fails to render accurately. In theater and the classroom, those moments among the smashed structures that keep us firmly planted in our roles can reveal why and how education matters. No matter the discipline, and particularly in general education, developing critical skills, such as unbiased and/or self-aware analysis, perseverance in the face of academic/disciplinary uncertainty, and creative problem-solving, can require that the instructor leave behind the safety of the stage and reveal the personal social and cultural landscapes that shape the classroom experience. Few disciplines hold space for that practice as well as anthropology.

This chapter describes experiences in the classroom in 2017, a year when I found myself breaking the fourth “academic wall” as a junior, cisgender, woman professor of color while the United States found itself gazing at its history of race relations (or refusal to do so) and unhappy with what the reflection back revealed. At the time, I taught American ethnic studies courses that relied heavily on anthropological and sociological perspectives. Some students, savvy enough to check with the grapevine and student gossip, were somewhat prepared for designated classroom space to discuss the connections between our everyday lives and the sociocultural explanations of current race relations. However, to my delight, many a student wandered into my courses, whether through their related disciplinary major or their general education requirements, with the misconception that we would “discuss ethnic culture” such as food and traditions. As a result, my classrooms could become exploratory spaces where students could examine their thinking and the impact that such thoughts had on their internal and external worlds and others.

The Tale: Being an Arrivant in the Classroom¹

I have been thinking about Blackness.

My university community stands shaken by the race and ethnicity politics that have been the subject of news and commentary for more than two years. In this regard, we were like any other small PWI (predominately white institution) in a small, predominately white town—the spots where Midwestern sensibilities concerning “polite conversation” and fears about saying the wrong thing regularly collide with a recognition that conversations about race and anti-Blackness are far from over. Located 20 minutes from a military base and a few hours from Ferguson, MO, this university was—and still is—also grappling with militancy, patriotism, and a commitment to service as these values relate to the systemic injustices seemingly embedded in the fabric of the Midwestern landscape these days. In these spaces, and among a sea of white faces, frustrated students of color figuring out how to “get woke” often ask, “Why do you talk about history? What’s happening to us in the streets is not about history. It’s about the here and now.” Nearly every time, I pause. I’ve yet to find a quick, straightforward response. The street militarism demonstrated by the likes of my students, regardless of their ethnic or racial identity, when they engage in protest, has everything to do with our cultural—and yes, historical—understanding of Blackness. So, there isn’t a simple and easy answer. It is about history…and it isn’t…as easy as that.

On some level, these students of color, as well as the students not of color willing to be social justice accomplices in this place where many others were “tired of multicultural work,” are asking for a space to operate as though Black life actually matters, or at least learn how to operate that way. This is a choice to consciously show up, on this day and each day thereafter, to our lives and work ready to meet Sameena Mulla’s call to “make sure to do whatever it is that we do like Black lives matter” (Karpiak and Mulla 2016). As she put it, write, dance, teach, speak, care, grieve, and transform like Black lives matter. “Take those words, black lives matter, and ask how to commit to them, to make them more than a platitude” (Karpiak and Mulla 2016). Mulla’s search to find ways to engage the hard work of changing the world while using/doing anthropology in a way that affirms a belief in Black humanity leans into the idea that when the stakes are high and large-scale transformation is the goal, our work exists within and beyond the “typical” classroom experience.

So, I have been thinking about Blackness. A lot.

I was not thinking about Blackness merely as ethnicity, race, ethnorace, and embodied heritages connected to diasporas forced, coerced, and voluntary. Instead, I’ve been contemplating Blackness as Fanon broadly conceived it. I have pondered the shape of Blackness and its conception, à la Hortense Spillers and Sylvia Wynter. Blackness swirls around me as the colonially “blackened” Other, as embedded in the consciousness of Black joy and resurgence, as Black power and politics, and as Black righteous indignation and elevated grief. I have been thinking about the embodiment of a process of becoming and unbecoming, physically representing a critical questioning of a colonialist, imperialist, settler order. Sitting in Blackness’s parlor waiting for the answer, I have bided my time by flipping this idea of the Arrivant (Brathwaite 1988) and how I could expand my thinking around Arrivant status (Petillo 2020) over and over to see where and how Blackness functions within it.

See, higher education maintains an unspoken expectation, if not requirement, that I think about Blackness a lot, even as these academic walls demand objectivity that they will not let me actually use (Navarro et al. 2013). I am a Black woman who stands in front of a classroom talking about race and ethnicity each and every day. My training is anchored in Native and Indigenous studies and, among other things, my work often looks at the intersections of Indigenous and African experience. Regardless of which community’s story lies at the center of the day’s lesson plan, I am very aware and regularly reminded that my Blackness impacts how the information I provide is received. When I discuss race or ethnicity broadly, I know that the assumption is that I am speaking about Black people and Black experience disconnected from the experiences of other communities of color and/or difference. If you doubt that this is true, ask yourself what faces popped into your imagination when, knowing how the world categorizes me, you read about my frustrated students of color a few paragraphs above.

I’ve been out as an Arrivant engaging in Indigenous and ethnic studies scholarship for some time now.

My more advanced undergraduate students and I discuss this idea of forced and coerced arrival, invitation, Arrivants, and Arrivantcy in a colonial, imperialist context in my courses included in general education course plans. These kinds of discussions may surprise some faculty who avoid too much theoretical or philosophical content in their general education courses. We professional academics often think of students as unable to process these ideas or not ready for this kind of conversation. However, if students ask why history matters in their current cultural climate and political landscape, aren’t they ready to consider that this lack of sociocultural and historical awareness may be part of what keeps them stuck in an environment and landscape hostile to them? As students of color and/or students navigating some difference deemed as Other, how can they be self-aware if they are never to consider the impact of colonial unknowing (Vimalassery et al. 2016) on their everyday? As they are current and future architects of their social and cultural worlds, how can we expect students to embrace innovative, real-world problem-solving if they are not encouraged to examine the social trends and cultural meanings that have shaped their lives and how they understand their lives to function? In the context of race, how can we address racial inequities and injustice if we don’t discuss race? And is that conversation possible if we never grapple with the ideas we receive about what race is and means?

Regardless of how our bodies are politicized, while in the classroom together, my students and I ponder what it might mean to examine, contemplate, make, and remake ourselves regardless of the labels that have been crafted for us to wear like imposed, permanent garments. We try to stretch our thinking beyond the boundaries structured for us as politicized bodies. We step into an awareness that the concept of Blackness is also wrapped up in how we relate (and are taught to relate) to one another, whether we identify as Black or not. From the relational reality of race, I can’t help but land on this concept of Arrivant.

As I explain my embrace of Arrivant status, we connect Tiffany L. King’s “unthought” Black discourses on conquest (2016)² and settler colonialism as we trace the ongoing structuring and historic anchoring of our ethnoracial relations. We maneuver through the profound historical disassociation that dismembers us from what Ann Stoler describes as unspeakable, unintelligible colonial pasts (Stoler 2011). As if on a tour, we pinpoint the places where our contemporary experiences reinforce a false reality, simultaneously locating colonialism everywhere and nowhere, thus reinscribing the resulting colonial displacement into the now.

By the time we get to the ideas of arrival, Arrivants, and Arrivantcy, my hope is that we are all ready to see Blackness anew instead of returning to now tired tropes about an inability to “see color.” From my vantage point, at this moment, the air seems to stop moving for students of color in this class. Our lungs expand, and we breathe in new survival tactics, new ways to live in this world, and new points of departure from which we find ourselves, as Jodi A. Byrd suggests (2011, xix) à la Brathwaite (1988). I can see these students take in the connections that, until this moment, felt abstract. Attuned to the expansive and ongoing acts of conquest in everyday life, that silent intake of extra air means everything. The audible movement of air is a recognition of, as King puts it, Christopher Columbus as an enslaver as well as genocidal murderer. At that moment, I think I can see more Arrivants recognizing themselves.

That’s likely because I have been thinking about Blackness. A lot. For a long while now and even more so of late. I have been hoping that more of us work to understand that this—right now—is both about our histories and how they are relationally connected but not at all about what we are usually expecting to learn or see.

A Fitting Epilogue³

While I am breaking the fourth academic wall, I’ll clarify what could, and should not be, ignored. When you sit at the intersection of several disciplines, operating as though Black life actually matters can feel like sitting in sniper crosshairs. This description can feel especially true when addressing related sociocultural realities in general education courses that aren’t expected to “challenge students too much.” In academic institutions outside of urban centers and/or entrenched in the politics of fear, looming crosshairs keep you in an unyielding loop of “explaining, justifying, and clarifying” your perspective, your methods, and your tools. That repetition is rather cute in a romcom movie but not so charming in everyday academic life. And let’s face it: the academy can be a very lonely, isolated place regardless of whether you are an administrator, faculty, staff, or a student.

Further, the impacts and nuances of anti-Blackness—within the sociocultural environment and as a disciplinary focus—are scary. Thus, committing to naming and addressing anti-Blackness with a decolonized approach doesn’t usually expand your circles in these already lonely spaces. However, within th...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• List of contributors
• Introduction
• 1 Racial Sociocultural Awareness through Conceptualizing Arrivantcy in the Classroom
• 2 Teaching General Education: Anthropology for Undergraduate Students and Future Publics
• 3 Critical Pedagogies of Hope: Teaching an “Anthropological Imagination” in an Era of Unfolding Crises
• 4 So You Want to Teach About Race and Inequity: Toward Anti-Racist Anthropology in General Education
• 5 Reshaping General Education as the Practice of Freedom
• 6 From Freire to Foucault: Designing a Critical Prison Pedagogy
• 7 Anti-Racism, Inclusion, and the Role of Anthropology in Institutional Culture Change in General Education Curricula
• 8 The Diversity Slot: The Case for Letting Anthropology Burn in Community Colleges
• 9 Applying Anthropology in the Classroom: Communities of Practice and Activity-Based Learning in a General Education Course for First-Year Students
• 10 Multimodal Ethnography as Pedagogy: Developing Interculturality in General Education
• 11 Cultivating Change in the Curriculum through International Faculty Development
• 12 Laying the Groundwork for General Education: Insights from an Independent Secondary School
• Index