Consortium of Undergraduate Law and Justice Programs
  • Home/About
    • FAQs
    • Contact
    • Board of Directors
    • Bylaws
  • Membership
  • Announcements
    • Fellowships
    • Job Postings
    • Calls for Papers
    • Newsletter
  • Programs
  • Resources
    • Syllabi
    • Transnational Education
    • Teaching Resources
    • Advising Resources
    • Moot Court & Mock Trial Resources
    • Undergraduate Research Prizes and Publishing Resources
    • Organizations & Research Institutes
  • Awards
    • 2022 Awards Recipients
    • 2021 Awards Recipients
    • 2020 Awards Recipients
    • 2019 Awards Recipients
    • 2017 Awards Recipients
    • 2016 CULJP Award Recipients
  • Meetings
    • Pre-Conference Workshop RSVP
    • CULJP-sponsored Conference Panels
    • CULJP Meetings
  • Blog

Renee Cramer - Teaching Social Justice on “The Line”

12/15/2015

2 Comments

 
Renee Cramer is associate professor and chair of Law, Politics, and Society at Drake University; she is also President of the Consortium of Undergraduate Law and Justice Programs.

Maybe you’ve seen the video circulating social media lately, highlighting “The Line” as an important teaching tool on privilege and social identity? Those of us who teach issues relating to social justice are likely familiar with it, and may have used an exercise similar to it in our classes. I’ve talked about this exercise quite a bit, with friends and colleagues who have done it, or have used it – and while we all have agreed that it is a valuable tool, I’ve been attentive to those voices that say things like:
  • “When I was all by myself off that line it only highlighted how isolated I am, how unique my experiences are.”
  •  “It felt alienating to be all alone out there in the middle of the room, like: hey!  I’m a queer black activist who’s parents didn’t make a lot of money.” 
  • “It made me wish I could be like everyone else.”

In other words, the exercise has the valuable impact of teaching privileged students about their privilege – but perhaps at the expense of those students in class who don’t hold much privilege themselves.

A few years ago, I had the chance to participate in a different form of this exercise – one I found nourishing  - while also emotionally challenging.  I was at a conference hosted by the Association for Contemplative Practice in Higher Education, in a session facilitated by Doreen Maller, a therapist, professor, and social justice activist.  The exercise was fundamentally similar to The Line, with a key difference:  we didn’t step behind or in front of a line – we all stood on a continuum of experience, and moved freely about the room, finding our space within community, not separate from it.

Since returning from the 2012 conference of the ACHE, I have used this exercise twice in my “Critical Race and Feminist Theory” classrooms – and have found it to be incredibly powerful for students, as well as useful to getting at some of the issues relating to standpoint epistemology, intersectionality, and anti-essentialism that I hope students will understand from their reading.  

In my next blog post, I will describe the exercise, and student responses to it!
2 Comments
Meenal Chaudhari link
5/22/2016 06:46:26 pm

Hi,
Doreen notified me about your article. We, Lain and I had accompanied her to the ACHE conference and are thrilled to learn that you used the technique in your classes. thank you.

Reply
buy facebook photo likes link
3/3/2017 09:49:06 pm

Thanks for such a great post and the review, I am totally impressed! Keep stuff like this coming.

Reply



Leave a Reply.

    In the Classroom:
    A Blog about Undergrad Teaching and Learning

    A group blog of the Consortium for Undergraduate Law and Justice Programs. Follow us on Twitter or Facebook for alerts about new posts.

    RSS Feed

    Archives

    March 2022
    January 2022
    June 2021
    March 2021
    February 2021
    January 2021
    December 2020
    November 2020
    July 2020
    April 2020
    February 2020
    January 2020
    October 2019
    September 2019
    March 2019
    February 2019
    January 2019
    April 2018
    May 2017
    April 2017
    January 2017
    December 2016
    August 2016
    June 2016
    May 2016
    April 2016
    March 2016
    February 2016
    January 2016
    December 2015
    November 2015
    October 2015
    September 2015
    August 2015
    July 2015

    Categories

    All
    Assignments
    Call For Papers
    Classroom Activities
    Conferences
    Constitutional Law
    Criminal Justice
    Graduate School
    Mentoring
    Prelaw Advising
    Primary Sources
    Social Justice
    Syllabi
    Teaching
    Television
    Undergraduate Curriculum And Program Design
    Undergraduate Research

Proudly powered by Weebly