As an instructor of various English courses, I practice diversity in my classrooms, my curricular design, and my service-learning pedagogical approach to teaching literature and rhetoric. I value the opportunity that I have as a teacher to create learning spaces that are intellectually challenging while also maintaining boundaries in those spaces that facilitate learning environments in which students feel safe, so that differing perspectives can enrich one another and marginalized voices can be heard.
I recognize that I speak from a place of privilege as a white male who has a Ph.D. Having grown up with middle-class values in the American South, however, I understand the need for active intervention in promoting racial and ethnic diversity, the access to and representation within higher education for under-served populations being a top priority for our country at a time when racial tensions are once again on the rise. My current institution, the University of Texas-Arlington, is ranked in the top 5 national universities for undergraduate ethnic diversity (U.S. News & World Report, 2019), and number 2 in the state for best Hispanic-serving colleges and universities (Best Value Schools, 2018). I’m happy to work at a place that not only champions diversity but enacts and practices it every day.
In my own experience in the classroom, I have taught and learned from many international students from around the world, students whose families have recently immigrated from Mexico, students of different ages, abilities, and walks of life, retired and active-duty military students, LGBTQ+ students, student athletes who play for the baseball team, volleyball team, and the Movin’ Mavs (the university’s championship-winning wheelchair basketball team), and students of varying degrees of academic achievement, including a cohort of students enrolled in UT-Arlington’s TRIO Upward Bound program, the participants of which are either first-generation college students or belong to low-income families.
In designing courses, particularly surveys of environmental literature and nature writing, which tend to pile on canonical writers like Emerson, Thoreau, and Muir, I have begun “de-colonizing” syllabi to include more diverse offerings for students who do not identify as strongly with these authors as they would with non-white, non-masculine perspectives. In my “Trees and Forests of Literature” course, I introduce students to the work of writers such as Ursula K. LeGuin, whose The Word for World is Forest validates the ideas and viewpoints of ecofeminism and that of indigenous cultures. I have also taught Mexican-American authors like Ana Castillo and Rudolfo Anaya, whose work resonates with the many Latinx students at the university.
Finally, building on this base in classroom curriculum, I have integrated service-learning and experiential learning opportunities for students into my courses. I use themes such as “the politics of food” and “growing sustainable communities” in conjunction with community gardening. Campus community gardens connect students to one another as well as the larger community outside the university. Students who participate in this component of my courses are able to deepen their engagement with the various social and political issues they are researching, exploring, and writing about. The “real-world” dimension of community gardening encourages them to see and experience material realities they might have otherwise written about only in the abstract. Students are also able to carry on meaningful and relevant discussions with other students and teachers as well as community members in a relaxed setting that introduces them to important sustainability issues they will surely encounter in the coming years.
Jason C. Hogue, Ph.D. 