Dialogues with More-than-Human Worlds: Approaches to Writing, Methodologies, and Pedagogies

Dialogues with More-than-Human Worlds: Approaches to Writing, Methodologies, and Pedagogies

AnaLouise Keating, Kakali Bhattacharya, and Mildred Boveda as moderator

March 25, 2020

Typically, we think of dialogue as various types of exchanges between two or more human beings, but how might we define dialogue more broadly, to include encounters between embodied human beings and beyond-human beings and worlds? What can US women-of-color theorists and other traditions teach us about these dialogic encounters? How can we use these encounters to develop transformational pedagogies, innovative research methods, and the intellectual humility that can facilitate this potentially transformative work? In this panel, the moderator facilitates a discussion with Drs. Keating and Bhattacharya about their engagement with more-than- and beyond-human beings. The U.S.-based scholars discuss how their ability to engage in these types of dialogues, within and despite the westernized academy, inform(ed) their approach to writing, methodology, and pedagogy.

AnaLouise Keating is a professor of Multicultural Women’s and Gender Studies at Texas Woman’s University in Denton, Texas. Her work primarily focuses on transformation studies, U.S. women-of-color theories, Gloria Anzaldúa and pedagogy. She is the author of numerous publications, including Teaching Transformation: Transcultural Classroom Dialogues, Women Reading Women Writing: Self-Invention in Paula Gunn Allen, Gloria Anzaldúa, and Audre Lorde and The Gloria Anzaldúa Reader. She also co-edited this bridge we call home: radical visions for Transformation alongside Gloria Anzaldúa. She is currently working on two projects including a book on Anzaldúa’s theories, which is under contract with Duke University Press, and a book on womanist spiritual activism, which is under contract with the University of Illinois Press. Her book on womanist spiritual activism will be a part of her book series, Transformations: Womanist, Feminist, & Indigenous Studies.

Kakali Bhattacharya is a professor of Qualitative Research at University of Florida. Her research interests include de/colonizing epistemologies and methodologies in transnational contexts of higher education. She explores technology-integration in social and learning spaces, transnational issues of demographics and socioeconomics in higher education, and sociocultural approaches to qualitative inquiry and educational research.  She is also deeply immersed in arts-based approaches in qualitative inquiry. Dr. Bhattacharya is the author of Fundamentals of Qualitative Research: A Practical Guide. She received the 2017 Outstanding Book Award from the International Congress of Qualitative Inquiry, or ICQI for her co-authored book Power, Race, and Higher Education with Norman K. Gillen, her former graduate student.

Mildred Boveda is an Assistant Professor of Special Education and Cultural and Linguistic Diversity at Arizona State University. In her scholarship, she uses the terms “intersectional competence” and “intersectional consciousness” to describe educators’ preparedness to address intersecting equity concerns. Drawing from Black feminist theory and collaborative teacher education research, she interrogates how differences are framed across education communities to influence education policy and practice. Dr. Boveda earned an Ed.D. in Exceptional Student Education at Florida International University and an Ed.M. in Education Policy and Management from Harvard Graduate School of Education.