Counternarratives & Storytelling: The Lived Experiences of CUNY Students

This episode sheds light on the way female-identifying City University of New York (CUNY) students with immigrant background straddle college along with gendered expectations within the family and the workplace. It features Transformative Learning in the Humanities (TLH) Mellon Student Scholars who were taking either the Sex and Culture, Culture and Personality, or American Cultural Pluralism and the Law course taught by Anthropology Professor Mengia Tschalaer at John Jay College of Criminal Justice in Fall 2022.

Transformative Learning in the Humanities (TLH) Mellon Student Scholars in Professor Popy Begum's courses: Capstone Seminar in Criminology; Crime and Delinquency in Asia; and Women and Crime at John Jay College of Criminal Justice engage in a dialogue by drawing on their lived experiences to discuss their socialization around education, navigating stereotypes as Black, Asian, and Latinx students, and its cumulative impact on student performance. Students also discuss the outcomes of participating in a transformative learning project featured in their courses that not only centers students’ skills and competencies, but allows them to be in charge of the assignment produced and how it is graded.

Professor Khanh Le’s episode features students who are in the Multilingualism in the United States course. Students in this class actively engage in discussion and assignments as they learn about the dynamic language practices of various communities. In turn, they question how language can be used to exclude and other communities of color. Student Scholars Nafees, Laiba, and Trisha share with us their experiences of being immigrants/brown living in Queens, New York City.

Professor Julie Bolt’s students enrolled in her creative writing course are freed to explore multiple subjects, methods and prompts in their writing. In addition to free-writing, process writing, we used Transformative Learning in the Humanities (TLH) methods, such as: ungrading, upgrading, co-creation of the syllabus after midterm, and think/pair/share. Students' poetry included topics such as: individuating within family dynamics, learning to build a stronger queer community, critiquing institutional racism, and conflicting realities in their immigrant experiences. Students also generated topics about finding spaces for nourishment in nature and love.