L E SSON S FR O M A GE NDE R S T UD I ES C L AS S R O O M
Continued from page 11
tensions, and lifting up women like Truth,
Terrell, and Burke who are to thank for much
of the progress that occurred, seems like a
good place to start.
Lesson #4: Let Students Lead
Jahari Shelton, SFS ‘19
As is consistent with my spiritual journey, I
have spent Winter Break reflecting. In my sa-
cred time, I have noticed that some of the
most salient moments in my life happened
in 2018 over the weeks I spent in the Wom-
en’s and Gender Studies seminar. Gender
Studies, as it is affectionately called at our
institution, exists to guide young people
through the history and context of sexual-
ity, gender, and the intersecting social con-
structs that shape our lives and affect our
livelihood on a daily basis. That is probably
what I value most about the moments I’ve
shared with others in the group: the respect
“...it felt extremely important
for me to have control
over the discussion of my
culture, especially in the
elite, white normative
environment of the
private school classroom.”
and integrity, honoring the experiences of
those different from ourselves as well as
those not represented by the array of faces
sitting in the chairs. But that does not mean
it came easy. As an African-American male
who is heterosexual, religious, and from a
working-class family, I always feel respon-
sible for honoring each part of my identity,
especially those that subject me to an op-
pressed class. And I particularly worried
about entering a space like Gender Studies
where I assumed we would focus on gender
rather than race and class. Fortunately, bell
hooks, Audre Lorde, Patricia Hill Collins, Kim-
berlé Crenshaw, the Combahee River Collec-
tive, and especially Brittany Cooper and the
Crunk Feminist Collective proved me wrong.
Getting to lead class on essays from the
Crunk Feminist Collective (CFC) is still the
topic and moment from class I hold closest
to my heart.
For my seminar lead on Hip-Hop Feminism,
my peers and I read three articles from The
Crunk Feminist Collection 10 : “Do We Need A
Body Count to Count?,” “My Brother’s Keep-
er and the Co-optation of Intersectional-
ity,” and “Disrespectability Politics: On Jay Z’s
Bitch, Beyonce’s ‘Fly’ Ass, and Black Girl Blue.”
Within the seminar itself, we explored hip-
hop feminism as a discursive space where
Black women have written themselves into
existence, using their own language on their
own terms. We covered violence against
Black women, images of Black women in
10. Cooper, Brittney C, Susana M. Morris, and Robin M. Boylorn, The Crunk Feminist Collection (New York: Feminist Press, 2017).
Page 20 Summer 2019
CSEE Connections