Notes for Teleconference with Dr. Katie Geneva Cannon
“Translating Womanism into Pedagogical Praxis”
December 12, 2012
WATER thanks Rev. Dr. Katie Geneva Cannon for her wonderful
teleconference with us. She proves once again why she is considered the consummate
teacher, a pedagogue with few peers. We are honored to be in conversation with
her.
Please see the attached pdf file of her lecture,
“Translating Womanism into Pedagogical Praxis” (Temple University, April 2,
1997) in which she lays the foundation for this conversation. Dr. Cannon said
that she is now writing a book on this topic, which we await eagerly. The notes
that follow are from the conversation.
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Katie Cannon was named the Teacher of the Year by the
American Academy of Religion in 2011. The experience of receiving the award and
speaking at the conference made her realize anew the importance of her work on
pedagogy. Her approach is divided into three parts:
1. Historical Ethos
Until Katie
went to Union Theological Seminary in NYC in 1974, she knew only Black
educational culture. Teachers in that culture told students, “I will give you
the best I’ve got and I want you to be even better.” A white supremacy
environment was challenging to one who came from the rich legacy of enslaved
peoples’ hope for education, land, and freedom.
Mrs. Corine Cannon, Katie’s mother,
wanted Katie to be a teacher, a vocation she resisted initially because every woman
in the family who finished college was a teacher. But in the spring of 1971,
Katie did her practical training as a student teacher in a white public school
in Rochester, NY with children of IBM, General Electric, and Kodak employees.
She learned the subtleties of white ethnicity, for example how WASPS treated
Catholics in ways that were analogous to how whites treated blacks.
What Katie gleaned from this is that we each
have a history. Part of being a good teacher is knowing the roots from which
students have come, both positive and negative. Her own socio-economic background
is working-poor, which means according to Katie, “My parents labored everyday
of their working lives and our income was still below the minimum poverty
level.”
2. Embodied Pathos
A second part of her approach is
embodied pathos. It refers to helping students maximize their learning by
teaching themselves what they need to know. All knowledge is embodied-mediated
knowledge. In a provocative learning environment, we are invited to learn in
ways that enable us to “feel with our brains and think with our hearts” (This
phrase was used by Malidoma Patrice Some in his interview with Arthur Bloch, “African
Ritual and Initiation,” Thinking Allowed,
videotape H320; Berkeley, CA: Thinking Allowed Productions, 1988.).
There is a big difference between
an educated person and an educated fool. The educated person can take whatever
knowledge s/he is blessed to have and share it in clear and gettable ways; but the
educated fool mystifies information, intentionally confusing and confounding
the listening audience, causing people to feel like fools. Effective teaching
is not dumbing down material, but communicating relevant information from heart
to heart.
This approach makes Katie’s method
dialogical, an invitation to share constructive conversational perspectives.
She is a co-learner in every class. Back in the early 1980s, when Katie began
her career on the lecture circuit, folks in several audiences voiced their
frustration during the Q & A because they understood every word she said.
Some concluded that Katie was not very smart since they could comprehend her
lecture from beginning to end. They obviously had the perverse sense that a
scholar is brilliant only insofar as they, the listeners, are baffled,
mesmerized to the point of being clueless, not understanding what is being
said. To the contrary, the Cannon approach is to embrace all learners and
listeners with clear and straightforward language.
3. Communal Logos
The third aspect of Dr. Cannon’s
unique approach to pedagogy is communal logos. This means paying attention to
all voices, asking who is not here, who should be here, how can we include even
more people into the ongoing moral reasoning and right-relating logic of our
community. Everybody moves from individual particularity; we speak from the
integrity of our own embodied space and place.
The clearer we are about our own socio-historical-cultural-religious-economic
specificities, the sooner we can get the whole group to the common water table.
If we go deep enough into the truth of our own particularities, eventually, we
can arrive at common truth. Diversity and variety are key elements.
Lively discussion
followed the presentation:
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1. The first respondent expressed her appreciation for the
presentation. She described her own work on African American women in the
balcony of apartheid Jim Crowism in the USA. From that spot in segregated
balconies women could see what was happening in the center and assess if the
spaces below were safe for them to live, move, and have their being. Dr. Cannon
referred to this as the “epistemological privilege of women in the balcony.” We
await this forthcoming dissertation and the published work of this important
scholar.
2. A seasoned professor spoke about her 7:30 AM on Saturday
“Women in the Biblical Tradition” class in which she had three men. She asked
how Dr. Cannon handled single-gender classes.
Katie said she had never had the experience. She did say
that some Black men studied homiletics with her, but others would not enroll in
her course, “Ethical Themes for Relevant Preaching,” despite her writing the book
on a leading Black homiletician: Teaching
Preaching: Isaac Rufus Clark and Black Sacred Rhetoric (NY: Continuum,
2007). She asked her questioner what she had experienced. The professor said
that she could tell by students’ body language that their levels of awareness
changed as they realized how women were treated in the Bible, especially on
issues of sexuality and law.
Dr. Cannons said, “The greyer my hair gets the more young
men talk with me as mother/confessor.” Some, she said, even wonder if she is a
‘real’ minister, due to her progressive, open-mindedness regarding contemporary
dilemmas.
3. Another
experienced colleague affirmed her own commitment to embodied pedagogy, her
consciousness of her own presence in the room. She asked, “As a womanist what
do you have to say about bringing our full selves, not simply being talking-heads
in the classroom, in ways that meet privilege and dis/ease?”
Katie replied that there is a need for checks and balances.
She requires a paper every time the class meets. With this requirement, she can
comment on weekly papers about any negative/destructive ideas, attitudes, and behaviors
that played out in the classroom. How to handle negativity is a challenge for
every teacher. The challenge is to be as compassionate as possible with what is
going on, while not getting sucked into reacting to negative quicksand. Reflecting
back on the implications of what students are thinking/feeling/doing is
helpful, and all of this becomes a tool for teaching.
Dr. Cannon described a process of open-ended questions
following a presentation where everyone gives feedback both orally and in
writing to the speaker. She described one student who was brilliant in his
articulation of philosophical discourse, but his ethical interactions were poisonous/full
of death dealing antics, especially the way he spewed forth racism and other
forms of hatred. Based on his weekly writing assignments, Dr. Cannon was able
to discern that a major source of this student’s intellectual venom was an external
projection of internal failed father/son dynamics. About mid-way through the
course she was able to say to him that “the alienation with and estrangement from
his father must hurt a whole lot.” Gradually, the isms he lashed out against
others started to lessen.
The questioner asked about the personal cost to Dr. Cannon
as a professor in such situations.
Katie replied that the there is only so much one can take
in. Though she loves the church and teaching, there is a tremendous cost we pay
when we work in hostile environments. She sometimes copes by dancing out the
negative energy to Mo-town music, at other times weeping, and/or simply going
to bed, taking long, restful naps. She described a case of a white woman student
who simply could not bear to have an African American woman teach and evaluate
her work. White feminist colleagues arranged
to get the student removed from the educational program. She said, “We need people watching our backs.
We also need a balance of self-care in the midst of this work that needs to be
done.”
4. Another colleague inquired about on-line teaching as a
way to spread the word.
Dr. Cannon expressed as to how she is not wildly
enthusiastic about the new technologies, but will be teaching her first hybrid
course soon. Conversation ensured about this important topic, underscoring the
need for womanist pedagogy on-line, in order to reach the many people who want
it. There is a need to get a grant ASAP to help colleagues learn how to teach
online in an effective way. Now that the Association of Theological School is
moving toward accrediting on-line M.Div. degrees this learning objective is
imperative. One colleague encouraged others to use the available technologies
as she did with great success.
6. The issue of grading was brought up.
Dr. Cannon shared that she has a very straightforward
method. Her syllabus includes the various tasks a student must complete to get
an ‘A’ so there is no guessing. A weekly paper is part of the expectations.
Each assignment is a kind of learning container, an educational form that
students must fill up with their own intellectual substance, though there is
plenty of room for multiple-intelligence and personal creativity.
8. Another call asked
about the relationship between embodied pathos and communal logos.
Katie spoke of her early experience at the Annual Meeting of
the American Academy of Religion (AAR), when she spoke on a panel about Beverly
Wildung Harrison’s book focusing on bodily integrity and abortion, Our Right to Choose. When Katie stood up
to speak, she instantly fainted in front of the audience. She was revived by the hotel physician, got
up and delivered her remarks, sure that if she did not, many African American
women who were in doctoral programs, and the numbers of Black women coming
along, would never be accepted and recognized as full-fledged, scholarly
intellectuals in the AAR.
9. The final speaker talked about her peace studies work, Just Peace Theory http://justpeacetheory.com.
This work, like all of Dr. Cannon’s is part of the radical
subjective responsibility to make the world different.
WATER is deeply grateful to Katie Geneva Cannon for her
important contribution. Please join us on Wednesday, January 16, 2013, 1 PM
EST, when Carol P. Christ will be our guest to talk about her current work.
Happy, peaceful holidays to all!
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