Caring about the elephants in feminist classrooms

This article explores how feminist teachers can engage with affective pedagogies when teaching intersectional gender studies. In the context of global corporate universities that emphasise action plans on diversity, equality, and inclusion, and alongside a rise in anti-gender and anti-diversity politics both within society and on campuses, feminist scholars encounter challenges in navigating affective contestations and tensions when teaching intersectional gender studies. These tensions can both evoke uncomfortable atmospheres and offer hopeful glimpses of societal changes and solidarities. In addressing this, we employ the idiom of ‘the elephant in the room’ to exploring how affective tensions emerge in the classroom and how feminist teachers may respond to and care about them. Drawing on literature on affective pedagogies, we conceptualise affects as intensities that move within and infuse feminist classrooms and analytically unpack two experiences of elephants emerging when teaching an intersectional gender studies programme at a Danish university. Specifically, we offer two takes on affective pedagogies that we name ‘swaying the elephant’ and ‘holding the elephant’ and discuss the ways in which feminist teachers can nurture ethico-political and affirmative practices in education.