Teaching

Thangaraj, S. I. (2021). Racing the Muslim: strategies for teaching race and ethnic studies in the education curriculum. Urban Education, 56(7), 1042–1066. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/0042085920972449

• Introduction to Ethnic Studies in Education Curriculum

  • Originated in the 1960s to address histories of race and racism.

  • Counters white settler colonial histories and acknowledges diverse perspectives.

  • Faces opposition from conservative educators valuing Western epistemologies.

• Challenges in Education Curriculum

  • Obstacles include attempts to remove diversity training and critical race theories.

  • Lack of representation of ethnic studies and histories in curriculums.

  • Need to prepare teachers to understand and teach race to diverse student populations.

• Expanding Notions of Race

  • Need to move beyond the black-white racial binary.

  • Focus on Middle Eastern and Muslim Americans to challenge dominant racial narratives.

  • Incorporate critical race theory to understand the complexity of race and racism.

• Teaching Strategies and Syllabus Design

  • Utilize storytelling to challenge dominant racial narratives.

  • Highlight historical experiences of Muslim and Middle Eastern subjects in the US.

  • Encourage interdisciplinary analysis to deconstruct universal understandings of race.

  • Engage with contemporary issues of anti-Muslim and anti-Arab racism post-9/11.

• Pop Culture and Pedagogy

  • Use pop culture to engage students in critical analysis of racial representations.

  • Encourage students to produce counter-narratives through various artistic mediums.

  • Challenge dominant ideologies and representations through pop culture analysis.

• Intersectionality and Black Muslim America

  • Explore intersections of blackness, Islam, and anti-black racism.

  • Understand racial formations through bodily performances and representations.

  • Reconceptualize normative regimes that govern interpretations of racialized bodies.

• Positionality of the Scholar

  • Acknowledges own identity as a gendered, male, Christian, heterosexual, middle-class, ethnic South Asian American.

  • Advocates for equipping future teachers to challenge dominant racial logic and incorporate non-Western epistemologies.

• Conclusion

  • Calls for innovative and politicized projects in the classroom to challenge the status quo.

  • Emphasizes the importance of critical race theory in addressing anti-Muslim racism and understanding racial power dynamics.

  • Advocates for a broader, more inclusive study of race in education curriculums beyond US-centric perspectives.