*Apologies for cross posting. Please share with potentially interested colleagues*
Dear Colleagues,
We would like to invite you to participate in our workshop on "Microaggressions and Resistance in the Classroom", at the 12th Equality, Diversity and Inclusion International Conference to be held in Rotterdam between July 22-24th, 2019.
The deadline for submitting your abstract is April 26th, 2019. The call for submissions can be found below. Please do not hesitate to contact us if you have any questions.
We are looking forward to receiving your submissions,
Audrey J. Murrell, Nisha Nair & Deborah Good
CALL FOR PAPERS
The 12th Equality, Diversity and Inclusion International Conference
July 22-24, 2019, Rotterdam, Netherlands
Workshop Stream: Microaggressions and Resistance in the Classroom
Conveners:
Audrey Murrell, University of Pittsburgh, amurrell@business.pitt.edu
Nisha Nair, University of Pittsburgh, nnair@katz.pitt.edu
Deborah Good, University of Pittsburgh, debgood@katz.pitt.edu
Deadline for Submission: April 26th, 2019
Decision for Acceptance: May 17th, 2019
The concept of microaggressions has drawn a lot of recent research interest (Caraves, 2018; Nadal et al., 2017; Gartner and Sterzing, 2016; Sterzing et al., 2017). Microaggressions refer to the small and subtle ways in which exclusion manifests itself, often through everyday discourse, which is perceived as exclusionary or discriminatory. Popularized largely through the work of Sue (2007; 2010), the study of microaggressions has largely focused on race and gender. Sue and colleagues define racial microaggressions as "brief and commonplace daily verbal, behavioral, and environmental indignities, whether intentional or unintentional, that communicate hostile, derogatory, or negative racial slights and insults to the target person or group" (Sue et al., 2007, p. 273). Increasingly, microaggressions directed at different marginalized groups such as ethnic minorities and people of color (Balsam et al., 2011; Clark et al., 2014), people with non-conforming sexual orientations (Shelton and Delgado-Romero, 2011; Woodford et al., 2013) and religious minorities (Husain and Howard, 2017), are also being studied.
Even with the expanding interest in microaggressions, there is much debate around what constitutes a microaggression (Lilienfeld, 2017), with clarity around the microaggression experience and its conceptualization still evolving. Some like Sue (2010) argue that even if a slight is unintended by the purported issuer of the microaggression, if the receiver perceives something as a slight, a put down or a marginalization, then it would still constitute a microaggression. It is also believed that microaggressions although subtle, can be more potent than active discrimination and far more detrimental to non-majoritarian identities such as women, people of color, or non-conforming sexual orientations, as the exclusion can be implicit and the slights hard to address or reveal themselves as compared to active racism or sexism (Sue et al., 2008).
Given the early stage of research on microaggressions in general (Lilienfeld, 2017), the complexity of studying the experience of exclusion directed at different marginalized groups (such as those based on race, gender and intersectional identities) and the often invisible nature of how microaggressions play out, new ways of exploring the experience and concept of microaggressions are called for.
There have been very few studies exploring microaggressions with the classroom as a reference point. Of the few studies with the classroom as a focal point (Hartwood et al., 2012; Kohli and Solórzano, 2012), the emphasis has been on studying the experience of microaggressions from the lived experience of the students and uncovering racial microaggressions themes such as the use of racial slurs and the presence of segregated spaces (Hartwood et al., 2012). Kohli and Solórzano (2012) also report on the K-12 classroom experience of racial minority students who experienced cultural disrespect with regard to their names. To the best of our knowledge, there have so far been no studies examining microaggressions within the college classroom that focuses on multiple minority and intersectional identities, studied from the perspective of the teacher or the academic in the classroom, someone likely to be familiar with class interactions and dynamics and the likely occurrence of microaggressions in the classroom.
Our workshop thus proposes to examine the microaggression experience of multiple minority identities through the prism of different classroom instructors engaging varied classrooms with diverse student populations. Since the workshop is open to unconventional procedures, we envisage the workshop to run like a large focus group where workshop participants share and reflect on their experience of microaggressions in the classroom. Our plan is to facilitate this dialog by offering several open-ended questions for group discussion and dialog. The purpose is to examine the varied nature and forms of microaggressions and other subtle forms of resistance from a critical self-reflective lens. Topics would include sharing examples of microaggressions within a classroom setting, strategies for engaging students in dialog concerning these indigence as well as examples of how resistance can be passive, hidden or active within a classroom setting. The hope is to also draw attention to and build awareness of microaggressions that permeate the classroom space and devise ways to actively counter and limit the negative impact of such exclusion.
Participants in the workshop must have experience facilitating diverse classes and will be expected to send in a three-page write-up based on their own experience with microaggressions in the classroom. The write-up can be based either on participants' own experience of microaggressions or on secondary data as an observer of classroom dynamics having witnessed microaggressions directed at students of marginalized identities.
Submission instructions: Submissions to the workshop is in the form of long abstracts (3 pages or 750 words minimum) by the deadline of April 26th, 2019. The deadline for acceptance is May 17, 2019. Submissions are to be made directly through the EDI conference website (https://www.edi-conference.org) after registering your profile and selecting our workshop stream to upload your submission.
References
Balsam, K. F., Molina, Y., Beadnell, B., Simoni, J. and Walters, K. (2011), "Measuring multiple minority stress: The LGBT People of Color Microaggressions Scale", Cultural Diversity and Ethnic Minority Psychology, Vol. 17 No. 2, pp.163-174.
Caraves, J. (2018), "Straddling the school-to-prison pipeline and gender non-conforming microaggressions as a Latina lesbian", Journal of LGBT Youth, Vol. 15 No. 1, pp. 52-69.
Clark, D. K. S., Spanierman, L. B., Isaac, P. and Poolokasingham, G. (2014), "Do you live in a teepee?" Aboriginal students' experiences with racial microaggressions in Canada", Journal of Diversity in Higher Education, Vol. 7 No. 2, pp.112-125.
Gartner, R. E. and Sterzing, P. R. (2016), "Gender microaggressions as a gateway to sexual harassment and sexual assault: Expanding the conceptualization of youth sexual violence", Journal of Women and Social Work, Vol. 31 No. 4, pp. 491-503.
Harwood, S. A., Huntt, M. B., Mendenhall, R. and Lewis, J. A. (2012), "Racial microaggressions in the residence halls: Experiences of students of color at a predominantly white university", Journal of Diversity in Higher Education, Vol. 5 No. 3, pp. 159-173.
Husain, A. and Howard, S. (2017), "Religious microaggressions: A case study of Muslim Americans", Journal of Ethnic & Cultural Diversity in Social Work, Vol. 26 No. 1-2, pp. 139-152.
Kohli, R. and Solórzano, D. G. (2012), "Teachers, please learn our names!: racial microaggressions and the K-12 classroom", Race, Ethnicity & Education, Vol. 15 No. 4, pp. 441-462.
Lilienfeld, S. O. (2017), "Microaggressions: Strong claims, inadequate evidence", Perspectives on Psychological Science, Vol. 12 No. 1, pp. 138-169.
Nadal, K. L., Griffin, K. E., Wong, Y., Davidoff, K. C. and Davis, L. S. (2017), "The injurious relationship between racial microaggressions and physical health: Implications for social work", Journal of Ethnic & Cultural Diversity in Social Work: Innovation in Theory, Research & Practice, Vol. 26 No. 1-2, pp. 6 -17.
Shelton, K. and Delgado-Romero, E. A. (2011), "Sexual orientation microaggressions: The experience of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and queer clients in psychotherapy", Journal of Counseling Psychology, Vol. 58 No. 2, pp. 210-221.
Sterzing, P. R., Gartner, R. E., Woodford, M. R. and Fisher, C. M. (2017), "Sexual orientation, gender, and gender identity microaggressions: Toward an intersectional framework for social work research", Journal of Ethnic & Cultural Diversity in Social Work, Vol. 26 No. 1/2, pp. 81-94.
Sue, D. W. (2010). Microaggressions in Everyday Life: Race, Gender, and Sexual Orientation, Wiley, Hoboken, NJ.
Sue, D. W., Capodilupo, C. M., Nadal, K. L. and Torino, G. (2008), "Racial microaggressions and the power to impose reality", American Psychologist, Vol. 63, pp. 277–279.
Sue, D. W., Capodilupo, C. M., Torino, G. C., Bucceri, J. M., Holder, B. M., Nadal, K. L. and Esquilin, M. (2007), "Racial microaggressions in everyday life: Implications for clinical practice", American Psychologist, Vol. 62 No. 4, pp. 271–286.
Woodford, M. R. Howell, M. L., Kulick, A. and Silverschanz, P. (2013), ""That's so Gay": Heterosexual male undergraduates and the perpetuation of sexual orientation microaggressions on campus", Journal of Interpersonal Violence, Vol. 28 No. 2, pp. 416-435.
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Nisha Nair
Clinical Assistant Professor
University of Pittsburgh
(412) 624-7923
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