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Colored Girls and Controlling Images: Using Multiracial Feminist Theory to Transform Pedagogy Celeste Atkins Abstract This reflection is the culmination of an innovative, graduate level, group independent study created and led by students focusing on feminist works by women in traditionally marginalized groups. The author, a Black, female sociology instructor and department chair at a rural community college now embarking on a doctoral program in higher education, explores her own experiences as a marginalized student and how that influenced her approach to teaching. Throughout the paper the author shares her journey from a pedagogy based on “I hated that as a student; what can I do differently?” to struggling with the idea of giving up power (a central concept in feminist pedagogy) to a broadly inclusive and learner-centered pedagogy based on empirical evidence, yet shaped by multiracial feminism and intersectionality. And the colored girls say Do dodo do do dodododo Do dodo do do dodododo Do dodo do do dodododo ooooo This simple refrain, from a poem entitled “The Black Back-Ups” by Kate Rushin, in the seminal, multiracial, feminist anthology This Bridge Called My Back, led to a pedagogical epiphany which changed the course of my teaching. This reflective essay is the culmination of the most challenging, enlightening, illuminating, disheartening, reinvigorating, soul-draining, reaffirming, isolating, empowering, frustrating, exhausting semester of my entire academic career. My first semester of graduate school after a decade-long hiatus has inspired me to critically reflect on my teaching philosophy and practices. My “aha” moment, about which students tend to star in the classroom and which students are relegated to backup roles, coupled with the realization of how controlling images 2
