This fall, I’m teaching for the first time in two years. It’s a seminar on digital media, a course I’ve taught twice, and always enjoy immensely, only this time, it will be taught, of course, entirely online. So, for the past two weeks, I have been meeting one-on-one with the 19 students I am fortunate to be working with this semester. I wanted my students and I to be able to get to know each other and have at least a taste of in person instruction, so, I proposed one-on-one Google Hangouts over the first two weeks of class. During our conversations, I could hear their desires to grow as writers and thinkers. I heard 19 students eager to read and discuss new ideas while demonstrating their improving abilities as communicators of complex issues related to digital media and digital culture. Like many teachers, talking with my students, and learning more about who they are as individuals, is fuel for me. Hearing about their interests and ideas gives me strength to make the next class better. These one-on-one meetings gave me something else, too: hope.
My students’ confidence in meeting the challenges of a new semester in unprecedented times, while facing increasingly unstable futures, speaks to Professor Kevin Gannon’s idea that teaching becomes a radical act of hope when students refuse to accept the problems of the present and instead seek to make a better future (p. 5). These students have sacrificed everything in the past six months. They have been even more confused, disappointed, and overwhelmed than usual, but they will not give up on receiving a quality education. They will fight for it and as educators, we are their allies in the struggle.
When Erin, Bill, and I first considered a roundtable discussion of Kevin Gannon’s Radical Hope: A Teaching Manifesto, we understood that higher education was already in dire straits. A sustained effort of disinvestment by state governments meant fewer jobs and resources, as well as a growing belief that a quality education is becoming more a private good rather than a public one. Our graduating students leave college with increasingly higher levels of debt, jeopardizing their future abilities to own a home or start a business or save for a family nest egg. Read about higher education in some of the U.S.’s elite newspapers and you’ll find many stories about freedom of speech issues or protests of controversial speakers but not enough about the pervasive sexual assault crisis or institutional racism of many American universities. With these serious issues already present, a global pandemic emerged and has completely upended what we consider a modern college education.
Contingent Magazine has published roundtable discussions before. In 2019 we asked scholars to consider what the film, Forrest Gump, said about U.S. history on the 25th anniversary of its theatrical release. Earlier in 2020, we invited contributors to write about how the COVID-19 pandemic had altered their lives, both as scholars and individuals adjusting to a new normal of quarantines, masks, and social-distancing. But we have never held a roundtable focused on one book, until now. This is something new for us, but Radical Hope: A Teaching Manifesto merits such a discussion. Released this past spring, the book is not only a call to arms for history teachers; Gannon’s work is a full-throated defense of the humanities, a liberal education, and the power of education as a transformational force. In his insightful book, the Tattooed Professor himself challenged teachers to rethink their pedagogical foundations and see ourselves, our students, and our academic institutions through different lenses (p. 6).
Our roundtable consists of three excellent essays by three impressive scholars. Historian Mary Klann’s essay discusses the state of adjunct instructors in higher education. It brilliantly examines how educators in the most precariously-employed positions very much practice pedagogies of radical hope. While adjunct instructors have little power in academia at large, that’s not true in their classrooms. There they work with students to create an inclusive learning space and challenge them to think differently and take risks.
Our next contribution is by Beth Lovern, an associate professor of anthropology at Piedmont College. Lovern’s essay unpacks the connection between a radical hope pedagogy and a liberal arts education. It digs into Gannon’s thoughts about a “school of life” versus a “classroom of death” (pp. 10–13). Lovern skillfully details how a liberal arts education facilities a lifelong relationship with learning. The power to think critically and better understand a complex world has many benefits for students and higher education continues to do them a great disservice by only focusing on skills related to employment.
Our third essay, written by Lone Star College Associate Professor of English Rhonda Jackson Garcia, focuses on how to bolster student agency through the use of languages and dialects other than standard English. Garcia’s essay deftly analyzes the ways languages and dialects can work together to create a more welcoming and inclusive classroom. By showing students that other forms of communication are not only accepted, but celebrated and even encouraged, instructors tap into a radical hope pedagogy where students feel free to express themselves. Radical acts like these break cycles of student doubts and fears that they do not belong or will be mocked for the way they have always expressed themselves. When instructors aid in relieving those concerns, students recognize that they too can meet the challenges of a rigorous college curriculum. To conclude this roundtable, we are fortunate to have the final words be from the author of Radical Hope himself, Kevin Gannon. We appreciate his involvement in the roundtable and know his responses to the three essays will be the most fitting to conclude our Radical Hope discussion.
We’re proud of this roundtable and excited for the conversation about Radical Hope. We look forward to hearing your thoughts about the discussion and encourage you to share the essays with teacher colleagues or other educators you know. Even though the book and the essays focus on teaching in college classrooms, we suspect that educators of all levels will find helpful ideas in the book and the roundtable. No matter where you teach or what you teach, every time you teach (whether in a physical or digital space), you are engaged in a radical act of hope; a hope of a better world for you and your students.
Arthur Radebaugh (1958), via Paleofuture.
