UC Berkeley Pedagogy Podcast
By The American Cultures Center & The Center for Teaching and Learning
UC Berkeley Pedagogy PodcastNov 23, 2021
Seeing People: Understanding Homelessness' Roots, Stigmas & Solutions, featuring Colette Auerwald
Full Episode Transcript: https://americancultures.berkeley.edu/podcast/ep-5-seeing-people
Colette “Coco” Auerswald is a Professor of Community Health Sciences at UC Berkeley and Director of the UC Berkeley–UCSF Joint Medical Program. Her research is dedicated to exploring the social determinants of health of our society’s most disadvantaged youth and creating structural interventions to improve their health by employing community collaborative and youth-engaged approaches. She is also the Co-founder and Co-Director of Innovations for Youth (i4Y) and spearheads the Ending Youth Homelessness Catalyst Group as the faculty lead.
In this episode, we discuss a key aspect of Professor Auerswald’s work - her role as an educator. At UC Berkeley, she offers a course entitled “Seeing People: Understanding Homelessness’ Roots, Stigmas & Solutions - A Berkeley Changemaker Course.” This course aims to provide students with an in-depth understanding of homelessness, its origins, the systems and services set up to address it, and the potential strategies for effecting change. Professor Auerswald uses a variety of theoretical frameworks, such as the Social Determinants of Health, Critical Race Theory, Intersectionality, the Ecological Model, and theories of stigma, to inform students’ perspectives and approaches to addressing homelessness and ‘housism’ in surrounding local communities.
The Urban Experience: Race, Class, Gender and the American City featuring Brandi Summers
Full Episode Transcript: https://americancultures.berkeley.edu/podcast/ep-4-urban-experience
In this episode, the UC Berkeley Pedagogy Podcast team features Brandi Summers, a Professor in the Department of Geography at UC Berkeley. Professor Summers shares with us the philosophy that “the diverse teaching tools and strategies created in the class are part of my commitment to engaged pedagogy, which has developed based on the presumption that classrooms are spaces that hold promise for radical change and growth within and outside the classroom. As an engaged teacher, she asks that both she and her students take risks to see themselves and their lives as part of the critical process of inquiry, to be vulnerable enough to ask hard questions, and to see the world from different, and sometimes contradictory, points of view.” In 2022, Professor Summers received UC Berkeley’s American Cultures Excellence in Teaching Award (ETA).
The ETA recognizes faculty teaching a UC Berkeley American Cultures course for their inspiring and sustained commitment to creating a learning space that, among other things, includes addressing the multivocality of America’s diverse social fabric, the scales of geographic assemblage which support political and economical ways of being, the often contested nature of the political nation and the intersectional vectors that operate through everyday life. In the words of one of Professor Summers’ nominees, “Brandi’s teaching has been a critical resource for the university, especially as it has sought to understand and respond to the challenges of racial disparities over the past two years.”
Worldings: Regions, Peoples, and States
"Heck, my major is math, and I've barely taken any humanities classes in my life, but this sure was worth it." So states one student reflecting on their time in Dr. Jake Kosek's American Cultures course, Geography 10AC. Drawing students from across the disciplinary spectrum, and for many their first experience of a Geography classroom, the unifying theme of the class is the contested relations, practices, and processes in the making of central geographic concepts (empire, space, nature, and dispossession), concepts that often go unexamined and yet are deeply woven into the fabric of our lives. Geography's central concepts pepper the pages of newspapers almost every day –in stories of structural racism, immigration policies, international finance capital, the military industry, genetic engineering, global warming, natural disasters, surveillance, poverty, and terrorism. The conceptually capacious and literally global scale of the course is grounded in the intentional relationships created by Jake and the teaching team. A 'politics of care' pervades the student experience, fostering close listening and the unicorn of safe and brave spaces for deep study.
Dr. Jake Kosek, a faculty member at UC Berkeley's Department of Geography, was honored in November 2021 as one of the recipients of the 2021 American Cultures Excellence in Teaching Award.
Transforming Tech: Issues and Interventions in STEM and Silicon Valley
Bringing to the fore massive surveillance networks, playful apps, police checkpoints, and social media campaigns, Professor Abigail De Kosnik's 'Transforming Tech' American Cultures Course (New Media 151AC) takes a critical lens to a collection of high-profile issues within an industry of daunting influence, exposing the underpinnings of the power dynamics at play across issues including border enforcement, algorithmic bias, tech worker activism, misinformation, and more. It culminates in a call to action through creative digital assignments that raise the question of what possible interventions could be introduced to address these issues, the firms’ concentrated control over our futures, and how new media technologies might facilitate alternative collective imaginaries. Reflecting on their experience in 151AC, one student shared their advice for future students, "lean into this incredible learning opportunity. It will teach you to create and thrive in sustainable, inclusive futures."
In November 2021, Professor De Kosnik was honored as one of the recipients of the 2021 American Cultures Excellence in Teaching Award.
Dance in American Cultures
In the midst of frozen lives, students in Professor SanSan Kwan's Theater Dance and Performance Studies (TDPS) 52AC course danced, studied dance, and created dance, connecting the meaning-making of dance to the everyday. Chiefly concerned with embodiment and how identity is seen and felt through the body, the dance pedagogies of 52AC have taken on even greater relevance in the past year, from understanding the choreography of street protest to analyses of how the AAPI body has recently been the object of harassment and violence - connections that students felt respected their experiences and interests inside and outside of the classroom - or in one student's words, "To be in the company of someone, right now in this difficult time which is so knowledgeable, passionate, respectful. Just plain awesome." For SanSan, the classroom is deeply linked to her scholarship and practice as an artist. She introduces students to the concept that dance is more than just steps, styles, and physical techniques - it is a window into culture and identity.
SanSan Kwan is a Professor from the Department of Theater Dance and Performance Studies at UC Berkeley. In November 2021, she was honored as one of the recipients of the 2021 American Cultures Excellence in Teaching Award.