I recognize my students as knowledge producers and complex, holistic beings. Thus, to support intellectual and personal growth, I encourage us to engage with new conocimiento (knowledge) that challenges “traditional” – white supremacist, patriarchal, and colonial – ways of knowing and understanding. Once we learn to identify how these harmful, oppressive structures and ideologies have historically threatened our humanity, we can work toward creating a world that centers our well being instead of perpetuating cycles of violence.
Because women’s and gender studies has always been in dialogue with and molded by social justice activism outside the academy, we include but push beyond “academic” texts to film, music, poetry, zines, and social media. I want students to feel a sense of urgency, to be inspired, to be angry. And to learn how to wield their anger into transformative power so that they may develop creative and critical strategies that merge social justice theorizing with practice.
Courses Taught
Undergraduate
Gender and Social Change: An Introduction to Multicultural Women’s Studies
US Women of Colors
GABRIELLA V. SANCHEZ 