Emily Klein

Statement of Teaching Philosophy back to main page

As a teacher, my primary goal is to engage students in creating a classroom community that fosters two interrelated ideals: critical inquiry and collaborative exploration. Whether I am teaching a course in cultural studies, performance theory or women’s literature, I encourage students to think of our classroom as a malleable microcosm subject to many of the same dynamic social forces that exist in the larger world. Just as Augusto Boal conceived of theatre as a forum to imagine and rehearse social change, the classroom, too should be a space where students are empowered to rehearse new ways of understanding arguments, texts and the world in which they live.

Encouraging critical inquiry

One fruitful connection that I find between the approaches of materialist cultural studies critics and the foundational scholars in the performance theory field is that they all challenge traditional assumptions about the kind of cultural objects that can constitute “readable” academic texts. My objective is to equip students with the analytical tools they need to critically situate any argument, performance or piece of literature they encounter. Early in every semester I try to make students feel comfortable with a set of useful questions that will re-emerge throughout the course: How do social and historical forces shape the production and reception of texts? How do the discourses within which we circulate make some ideas seem natural and inevitable, while others seem utopian or untenable? And how are different knowledges produced by different kinds of texts?

Considering the learner’s point of view

In order to make these larger questions more accessible, I work first to scaffold our discussions with knowledge bridging exercises. Because I believe that effective teaching must always attend to the learner’s point of view, I try to use real world examples that are relevant to my students’ lives in order to explain theoretical concepts and critical arguments. In my course on Twentieth Century Feminism(s) and the Novel, I begin our first week by passing out an excerpt from the Declaration of Sentiments with the document’s date and title hidden from view. Without being told the circumstances of the text’s origins, I ask students to work in small groups to consider the ways that the passage makes meaning: Who speaks in the text and who is silent or silenced? Who is represented and who is absent? Who does the text address as its audience? What prior texts does it draw upon and what is the effect of that referentiality? This exercise helps to reveal students’ assumptions not only about the historical period in which our work is about to begin, but also about the heuristics they can use to articulate their own interpretations of a text.

Fostering collaborative exploration

While the above questions provide a pragmatic framework for students as they begin their interrogation of a theory or text, I have found that an inclusive learning environment, focused on real exchange and collaboration, is essential to students’ ability to synthesize new ideas and develop their own arguments. Diverse classrooms in which differences of opinion are welcomed and respected tend to spark the most generative discussions. When I teach classes that focus on interrogating power structures and analyzing texts of social change, I try to position myself not as the authoritative expert, but as the expert community member. My aim is to model the idea that collaboration is not just a democratic and feminist ideal, but also a deliberative skill that can be improved with practice. By asking each student to lead one discussion each semester and by giving students the opportunity to test out their arguments in peer review groups, I try to instill the idea that learning is a community act.