Month: May 2024

Formative Submission

Teaching intervention enacting intersectional social justice within GCD at CSM

This intervention seeks to make a contribution to addressing the attainment gap between Home BAME / International students and Home white students on the BA Graphic Communication Design course at Central Saint Martins. Current UAL statistics show attainment for Home White students is 90%, Home BAME is 81% International 80% (UAL, 2022/23).

The canon of graphic design and typography is historically Eurocentric and male-dominated, resulting in teaching materials, references, and models of taste measures of excellence that are highly biased towards the white European male perspective. This privileges white middle-class male students. While “we sometimes don’t notice our own privilege because it is so ingrained within our culture” (Harding, 2024), being aware of this can help us diversify and decolonise the teaching environment.

My intervention is a short typography project. Students will be asked to choose a quote and design a poster that communicates the meaning of the words through typographic means. Although not explicit in the brief, my hope is that students will choose a quote that they connect to through their own, potentially intersectional, identities. Their choice will also be framed by each student’s positionality, acknowledging “the need to account for multiple grounds of identity when considering how the social world is constructed” (Crenshaw, 1991).

I’m conscious that these kinds of projects encourage students to “reveal hidden parts of their identity which leads to vulnerability and unpredicted exposure” (Thomas, 2022), and this is something to be mindful of.

By starting with language, students can explore the relationship of typography to various religious, cultural, social themes, allowing them to explore a decolonial approach. Language will create empathy, enabling students to step outside of their own experience and to understand the emotions, mindset, attributes of their peers’ diverse (religious/racial/social) backgrounds. Learning from diversity is a key aspect of the project, as Sister Corita Kent says “we are each other’s sources” (Corita Kent, 1992).

This intervention takes a small step in hope of changing this situation, creating what bell hooks calls “the most radical space of possibility within the classroom” (hooks, 1994). The hope is the work created, conversations had, empathy created, critique will lead to further challenging of the European perspectives on graphic design and typography and creating experimental new visual languages that will permeate out into design practice and industry, and as Sydney J Harris states as the purpose of education “to turn mirrors into windows”.

Bibliography

Crenshaw, K. (1991). Mapping the Margins: Intersectionality, Identity Politics, and Violence against Women of Color, Stanford: Stanford Law Review 

Harding, M (2022) Instructions for running the Privilege Walk, University of Warwick. Available at: https://warwick.ac.uk/services/dean-of-students-office/community-values-education/educationresources/privilegewalk/ (Accessed: 20 May 2024)

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

Kent, C. (1992) Learning by Heart: Teachings to Free the Creative Spirit. New York: Bantam

Thomas, C. (2022) Overcoming Identity Threat: Using Persona Pedagogy in Intersectionality and Inclusion Training. Social Sciences 11: 249. 

UAL Dashboard, Available at: https://dashboards.arts.ac.uk/dashboard/ActiveDashboards/DashboardPage.aspx?dashboardid=cdf319c3-c4df-49aa-abcd-00cbdb5186e2&dashcontextid=638524406282856029 (Accessed 23 May 2024).

#positionallity #intersectionality #privilege #decolonisation #diversity

Blog task 2

Religious Identity and Epistemic Injustice: An Intersectional Account
Jaclyn Rekis

Rekis article talks about how religion intersects with other identities to create unique ways in which people experience epistemic injustice. This is particularly felt for people from minority religions with intersecting identities. 

Secular and naturalistic-worldview contexts, such as academic environments are spaces where this epistemic injustice is felt.

Epistemic injustice ultimately results in voices from these people not being heard, or viewpoints and ideas not given credit or taken seriously. 

“Either the speaker or the hearer loses out on some piece of knowledge being exchanged, which reflects “a moment of dysfunction in the overall epistemic practice or system” (Rekis, p.781)

“Prejudice therefore operates as an “obstacle to truth” (Rekis, p.781)

This thinking has some really interesting ramifications for my teaching in that we may create an echo-chamber of Western/Cristian viewpoints, fail to be challenged by voices from outside of that community because they are dismissed and not given enough credit, or people from those minorities are not confident to offer opinions and challenge ideologies and methodologies.

This relates to bell hooks writing about art criticism and race and how minorities need to be given the platform and the security to express opinions and speak critically about the work of others, for art criticism and art practice to develop.

Is religion good or bad?
Kwame Anthony Appiah

Kwame Anthony Appiah talks about the differences between major religions and how it’s a focus on the differences that often has caused aggression, violence, wars etc.

Is he talking about the intersection of religion and socio-economic status? Power? Idea of white Christian travellers and colonisers finding beliefs that were different to their own and wanting to convert these people to Christianity.

Appiah also talks about moment in the 19th century where there was the separation of science and religion. “was a kind of deal that was cut between science, this new way of organising intellectual authority, and religion.” (Appiah, 7.34 mins). So that thought no longer had to be framed by the assumptions of religion.

Is this about intersection of religion and science? Religion and power? Or about how the academic institution is in the position of power, the tutors are in a position of power and if the institution has the perspective of secular, naturalistic worldview then there is a danger that viewpoint is positioned as the dominant one in the classroom? Within the societal background of Christianity?

Or is it about us all acknowledging that intellectual thoughts no longer have to align with the assumptions of religion so we should not discriminating against the thinking of people from other belief systems, assuming that they are framing these thoughts by the assumptions of their religious beliefs?

“So there’s a big change, and that division, that intellectual division of labor occurs as I say, I think, and it sort of solidifies so that by the end of the 19th century in Europe, there’s a real intellectual division of labor, and you can do all sorts of serious things, including, increasingly, even philosophy, without being constrained by the thought, “Well, what I have to say has to be consistent with the deep truths that are given to me by our religious tradition.” (Appiah, 9.04 mins).

Appiah gives the example of the Asante people, of modern day Ghana, where “This is not a world in which the separation between religion and science has occurred. Religion has not being separated from any other areas of life”. So is this about being respectful of religious views and being mindful that in some cultures, religion has not separated from science?

Challenging Race, Religion, and Stereotypes in Classroom 
Simran Jeet Singh

Simran Jeet Singh talks about challenging stereotypes. In his context, he talks about the US as a society founded on equality and justice but also founded on discrimination and racism. Giving current examples of race issues manifesting, protests in Charlotte, police killings of young black men. Singh also talks about how we tend to paint entire communities with a single brushstroke, whereas each community is diverse.

“These sorts of things are issues that we like to think don’t exist in our society today but we can’t help but notice that they really do and we need to confront them. Though I think one of the real challenges we’re facing in our society is a tendency to try and paint entire communities with a single brush stroke” (Singh, 0.50 mins)

He looks to challenge basic stereotypes to highlight the difference in communities and states that in his teaching he will “Try and show students that there are multiple ways of looking at everything. Everyone has their own experiences. Everyone’s their own perspectives and if we can try and understand where people are coming from with empathy and sort of a human element then that allows us to really engage with difference in a way that I constructive rather than destructive.” (Singh, 1.54 mins)

In terms of intersectionality this piece relates to ideas around being aware that within religious and racial groups, there are differences. So not to apply stereotyping and think that discrimination will affect each person the same. Kimberlé Crenshaw’s theory of intersectionality tells us that other aspects of a person’s identity will intersect with religion and create unique experiences of discrimation.

Key terms

  • Epistemic injustice (Miranda Fricker)
  • Testimonial epistemic injustice
  • Hermeneutical epistemic injustice
  • Worldview
  • Social Identity

Bibliography

Trinity University (2016) Challenging Race, Religion, and Stereotypes in the Classroom. [Online]. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0CAOKTo_DOk

Reki, J. (2023) Religious Identity and Epistemic Injustice: An Intersectional Account. Hypatia 38, pp779–800.

Appiah, K. A. (2014) Is religion good or bad? (This is a trick question). Youtube [Online]. 16 June. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X2et2KO8gcY