"Technology is not the revolution but, in an increasingly technologized world, it is a critical part of it. Feminist teachers can use it and so contribute to a pragmatics and politics of hope and utopian yearning by imagining a world without injustice, inside and outside of the academy"
-- Carol L. Winkelmann, 35

For this spotlight on feminist pedagogy in the computer classroom, I spoke with Melanie Ulrich, graduating PhD Candidate in the English Department, about two of her courses: Reading Women Writers and the Rhetoric of Anglo-American Feminism. Throughout our conversation, we discovered that we would like to see more resources for feminist teaching in the computer classroom. This spotlight is an attempt to begin such a resource base; here I focus the spotlight on two of Melanie's central uses of technology, context and collaboration. In order to demonstrate the centrality of Melanie's own teaching work to a growing field of pedagogical writing on feminism and technology, I weave in voices of three authors from the field of feminist pedagogy and technology. This conversation between Melanie and the authors provides an accessible beginning for those instructors new to feminist pedagogy or for those feminist instructors considering a technology-based classroom.

I. Context in E314L: Reading Women Writers

Course Website: http://www.cwrl.utexas.edu/~ulrich/rww03/
Margery Kempe Context Website: http://www.cwrl.utexas.edu/~ulrich/rww02/margerykempe/

In Melanie's E314L, she recognizes that the distance in time between the texts and the students' lives may make inhibit "collaborative discourse [...] related to current social issues in their own lives," as Sara P. Pace, then Assistant Instructor at Texas Women's University, describes above. To generate understanding and collaboration in spite of this gap, Melanie explains, "I use the computer to create a cultural historical context for the texts. [...] Context makes alien texts more concrete, puts a face on people and places that are otherwise a blank for my students." By creating a context for the text, Melanie restores women's voices to historical narratives by placing women's works in conversation with 'standard' historical information. According to Melanie, this builds "connections between what you're doing and other things that are going on at the time," making a reading of women's texts "not hermetic, but relevant, larger." Melanie builds this context in two ways: through context websites she builds for her class and through a series of MOO [Multi-user domain Object Oriented] projects she conducts with her class.

The examples I offer here from Melanie's class relate to one text from that course, The Book of Margery Kempe, a text from the 1430s narrated by an illiterate Margery Kempe and transcribed by a monk (or several monks) and written in the form of a spiritual biography. Because texts like The Book of Margery Kempe present us with "an alien worldview," Melanie uses "technology to make that world clearer" to students. These context websites transform lecture topics into an interactive presentation guided by Melanie. She generates the website as a truly networked space that includes links, sound, images, and text to immerse students in the world of the text. Melanie guides her students through the website during class, but because it is online, students can access the website at any time. You can visit her context website for The Book of Margery Kempe at the website listed above, and you'll find other context websites linked from her course website, also listed above.

Melanie developed a companion project to the context website; the MOO projects provided space for students to participate in the world of the text. The MOO is a virtual space that can be shaped by students or instructor to include images, objects, and sounds in a series of rooms where students can 'talk' with each other in a text window. For a brief introduction to the MOO, visit http://www.cwrl.utexas.edu/technology/moo/mooing.shtml. Melanie developed MOO spaces for several of her texts in this course (including Aphra Behn's Ooronoko and Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre ). For The Book of Margery Kempe she constructed a medieval hall where students would interact in character as either Margery Kempe or another medieval person responding to Margery Kempe.

The MOO was a benefit for the class because it decentered authority, "made [Kempe] more fun," and offered students a break from classroom dynamics (like an aggressive student). Xavier University Associate Professor Carol Winkelmann explains cyborg feminist theory through which we might view the MOO as ideal for feminist pedagogy: "[C]yborg feminism rejects both androgynous and essentialist views of gender. Instead, human nature is understood in a multiple-term schema that 'allows for connection in difference rather than in constantly guaranteeing identity through opposition or uniformity'" (24). Providing a space to take on alternative identities and experience difference, the MOO offers context both for the text and for a feminist learning environment.

There were some problems with the MOO, however. Having several MOO projects worked for Melanie because the first time there were technology problems, and at first it was difficult to know how many rooms to set up or how to make sure people are equally distributed among rooms. Students continued to complain about the lag time in communication, challenging the MOO's billing as a "synchronous" environment. Sara P. Pace had similar problems with the "asynchronous" environment of the discussion board, and determined that one solution is to learn the "genre" of the tool so that we can "let students develop a familiarity with the [...] genre" of the learning tool. Repeated MOO projects throughout the semester again helps here to familiarize students with the goals and limitations of the tool.

II. Collaboration in RHE209: Rhetoric of Anglo-American Feminism

Course Website: http://www.cwrl.utexas.edu/~ulrich/RHE309/vicfemhome/
Women's Issues Then and Now: http://www.cwrl.utexas.edu/~ulrich/femhist/

Pamela Whitehouse, Technology Specialist at Harvard Graduate School of Education, designed her online women's studies course to achieve the feminist goals of "individual and group ownership of the class," "creating a safe place," and "building a community of active learners" (221); Melanie combines online with in-class learning to incorporate these goals into her rhetoric course. For Melanie, the computer classroom is a vital tool for countering student stereotypes about feminism: "The Internet helps to build a feminist bubble, especially when students say, 'Oh, feminists, what are those ? I'm not one of those !' We can say, 'Look, we've got a Web presence.'" Ultimately, students in Melanie's course contribute to that web-presence and thus become a part of feminist history.

Melanie introduces students to the existing feminist Web presence by assigning for the first project a rhetorical analysis of a website. Their final project, then, is transformed into a collaborative website. This prepares them to critically read websites as well. Carol Winkelmann points out that "electronic technologies are not inherently liberatory" (26), and Melanie conveys this to students, explaining, "So much of their culture is coming to them via Internet, they need to be alert when they're constructing and reading electronic texts." Winkelmann articulates this construction as a tool "used to reconceptualize or rewrite classroom life because [it evokes] reading and writing practices as naturally collaborative or collective" (26).

For Melaine, the Web project makes the class more student-focused because students can choose their own issues and the paper format prepares them for their independent application of that learning. Melanie sees her class, then, as providing "a space for feminist community," and "the website makes that more concrete." "We're exhuming buried histories." You can view these histories at the collaboratively-constructed website "Women's Issues Then and Now: A Feminist Overview of the Past 2 Centuries," at the URL listed above.

Sara P. Pace describes the significance of keeping these classroom histories from being buried: "Given that scholarship dealing with feminism in the technology based first year composition classroom is sparse, it is crucial to examine how well we as feminist instructors can fit our pedagogical objectives in both modes of instruction: face to face and online" (104). Melanie's use of technology to uniquely create a classroom that generates context for and collaboration among students offers another vital example of how feminist instructors use technology to achieve our pedagogical (and social justice) objectives.

Works Cited

Pace, Sara P. "Feminist Pedagogy and Daedalus Online: the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning." Academic Exchange Quarterly . 6.1 (Spring, 2002) : 104-110. Expanded Academic ASAP . Gale Group Databases. University of Texas Libraries, Austin, TX. 4 Nov. 2004. <http://www.infotrac.galegroup.com>.

Whitehouse, Pamela. "Women's Studies Online: An Oxymoron?" Women's Studies Quarterly . 3&4 (2002) : 209-225.

Winkelmann, Carol L. "Women in the Integrated Circuit: Morphing the Academic/Community Divide." Frontiers: A Journal of Women's Studies . 18.1 (1997) : 19-42.

Other Sources to Explore:

Blair, Kristine and Pamela Takayoshi, eds. Feminist Cyberscapes: Mapping Gendered Academic Spaces . Stamford, Connecticut: Ablex Publishing Corporation, 1999.

Gerrard, Lisa. "Feminist Research in Computers and Composition." Computers and Writing Conference. Utah State University, Logan, Utah. 30 May - 2 June 1996. 13 Nov. 2004 <http://www.hu.mtu.edu/cwc96usu/cwc96/papers/papers/G1LisaGerrard.html>.

Hawisher, Gail and Patricia Sullivan. "Women on the Networks: Searching for E-Spaces of their Own." Feminism and Composition Studies: In Other Words . Ed. Susan Jarratt and Lynn Worsham. New York: Modern Language Association of America, 1998. 172-197.

Haynes, Cynthia. "Inside the Teaching Machine: Actual Feminism and (Virtual) Pedagogy." Currents . 2.1 (Spring 1996). 13 Nov. 2004 <http://www.cwrl.utexas.edu/currents/cwrl/v2n1/haynes/index.html>.

Selfe, Cynthia L. [1997-8 CCCC Chair] "Technology in the English Classroom: Computers through the Lens of Feminist Theory." Computers and Community: Teaching Composition in the Twenty-first Century . Ed. Carolyn Handa. Portsmouth: Boynton/Cook, 1990. 118-139.

Melanie's Homepage: http://www.cwrl.utexas.edu/~ulrich/
Academic Portfolio: http://www.cwrl.utexas.edu/~ulrich/main/