Engaged Encounters: Critical Pedagogy and Its Impact on Racialized Students in Cultural Studies

When identity, history, and culture converge, the university classroom is not only confronted by uneven power relationships, but it also functions as a space of possibility. This qualitative research study explored Cultural Studies higher education as a space for resisting dominant ideologies and institutionally privileged voices through semi-structured interviews with three Cultural Studies faculty members and three self-identified racialized students. The study found that faculty members enacted alternative, transformational pedagogies that created positive, enjoyable learning experiences for racialized students. Findings also demonstrated how cultures of care and personal networks were entwined with pedagogical decision-making despite institutional challenges. Through their educational experiences within and outside Cultural Studies, these students revealed how teaching practices both resisted and upheld dominant oppressive structures. This research contributes to understanding the ways that engaged critical pedagogy can be creatively used within an academic institution through cultural studies.