Decolonizing geography of the Middle East: utilizing feminist pedagogical strategies to reconstruct the classroom

Abstract

This intervention reflects on what we can do to decolonize our pedagogy using a feminist relational ethics of teaching. I reflect on my day-to-day journey attempting to transform my Geography of the Middle East course from my embodied position as the only Muslim, Middle Eastern female in a white, male-dominated geography department. I consider my embodied role, teaching a course that historically is rooted in a patriarchal, colonialist-capitalist perspective. I explore my efforts to bring feminist scholarship into my classroom to expose the lived reality of Muslims, especially women in Islam. By acquiring feminist pedagogical strategies and facing my own embodied positionality, I wanted my students to re-think the student-teacher relationship, shifting the classroom from a one-sided learning experience to a shared journey. By exposing our biases and sharing our personal stories, we encountered and lent voice to socially-structured taboos: the current Islamophobic culture, the myth of ‘oppressed’ Muslim women needing saving from their own culture and religion; and the identity of the ‘terrorist’ fallen through the gap between cultures. Consequently, an active and fluid learning environment replaced the fixed and one-sided pedantic interaction. A relational pedagogical approach allowed us to think about the Middle East in a way that challenged enduring colonial attitudes, narratives, and relationships and to rethink our own positions within them.