Abstract
This article analyzes the effectiveness of an activity we developed to help students better understand intersectionality. Intersectionality is an analytic concept that signifies ways that inequalities may overlap to create unique forms of privilege and subjugation. In the activity, students use assigned vignettes from the perspective of research participants in our own ethnographic data (including excerpts from interviews and field notes) to interact with peers assigned both similar and dissimilar perspectives and experiences. The vignettes draw attention to intersectionality in a way that helps students embody participants’ experiences with privilege and subjugation. Our analysis of the activity’s effectiveness demonstrates that when learning is interactive, is dialogical, and draws from real narratives, students and instructors can effectively explore nuanced interpretations of relatively tough concepts, such as intersectionality. We argue that the embodiment of ethnographic data is a useful mechanism for helping students connect abstract sociological concepts to uniquely experienced realities.
Intersectionality is a useful analytic concept that addresses how inequalities may overlap to create unique forms of privilege and subjugation (Crenshaw 1989, 1991; Hill Collins 2009; Hill Collins and Bilge 2016). “Intersectionality” refers to the idea that intersecting inequalities are more than the sum of their parts; for example, the intersectional disadvantage of being a woman and a person of color cannot be captured by thinking only about inequalities women face or those that people of color face. Instead, an intersectional approach would recognize that there are unique forms of subjugation that are the result of being a woman of color (or other intersecting inequalities).
Intersectionality, however, is a perplexing concept for students to grasp (Naples 2009). Conceptual challenges and critiques of intersectionality include the critique that the concept has simply become a “buzzword” (Davis 2008); the suggestion that intersectionality has lost its efficacy when taken up by institutions, such as universities, as a type of diversity-marketing strategy (see Bilge 2013); and approaching the concept primarily as an essentialized “identity” framework (Desmond and Emirbayer 2009; Mahrouse 2018).
While wrestling with these conceptual debates and critiques may be useful in some sociology courses, ensuring that students understand how intersecting forms of inequality have material consequences for people in their everyday lives (rather than treating intersectionality as merely an abstract academic concept) is an additional challenge. Thus, a recurring puzzle for some sociology instructors is, how do we help students make sense of intersectionality (to effectively articulate how overlapping forms of oppression systematically operate) without reproducing intersectionality as an abstract academic concept? In other words, how do we help students see intersectionality as a concept grounded in real experiences with inequality and privilege?
To address this issue, we designed an activity to help students understand intersectionality in a way that is complex, embodied, and based on findings from our published ethnographic research. Thus, the activity centered on two primary aims: (1) to help students better understand intersectionality as an analytic concept that captures how different aspects of domination overlap, creating unique experiences with privilege and subjugation for those in different societal positions, and (2) to help students better perceive research participants in articles and our own ethnographic research as real and complex human beings rather than merely as data points.
In this article, we propose that an effective way to teach intersectionality is through the embodiment of perspectives and experiences of participants from ethnographic research. 1 Embodiment is a feature of “global learning,” which is the idea that students must learn about interconnectedness with other people and places and their role(s) in the reproduction of inequality and privilege. According to Kahn and Agnew (2017:53), “Global learning requires the integration of multiple, and often diverse and conflicting, perspectives, across both macro and micro contexts. In global learning, difference is as much a primary component as is similarity.” Intersectionality is one way to foster global learning and cultural competency.
We want to emphasize how the activity described in this article can foster global learning, a space for taking on subaltern perspectives, and can also provide students with a sociological understanding of intersectionality. While space constraints limit the summary of scholarly debates and interventions from sociologists who study the body, we acknowledge that the body is not divorced from the mind and embodiment should certainly be a part of critical pedagogies (Mason 2013). Moreover, embodiment is different from role-playing; role-playing generally involves performing or enacting a role to learn about a particular topic by actually assuming an identity with space for improvisation with such roles. Instead of improvising through playing a role, though, we asked students to reflect on ethnographic and qualitative narratives, talk to others about the narratives, and attempt to put themselves in the shoes of research participants (Simpson and Elias 2011).
By taking the position of research participants who have experienced intersecting forms of inequality, we argue that students may better understand how intersectionality is a useful analytic tool. In this article, we detail how we were both able to draw from own ethnographic data—using published vignettes from the perspectives of research participants in our respective research projects—when implementing this activity at different universities. We suggest that instructors who do not use ethnographic research methods to study inequality could still effectively implement such an activity. Doing so would involve developing vignettes drawn from observations and quotations of participants highlighted in qualitative articles or books that demonstrate intersecting inequalities and privileges. The assigned vignettes allowed students to embody—or try to imagine—what the participants were feeling and how systemic inequities impact them. Thus, ideas about inequality became more “real” to students. Instead of intersectionality being some abstract set of ideas, students had something to think with in terms of how intersecting inequalities are structurally produced and subjectively experienced.
In the following section, we review relevant literature regarding intersectionality and embodiment while also taking into consideration select pedagogical activities that have aimed to teach about inequality. We then detail the proposed “Embodying Inequality” activity that we implemented in our classrooms and outline the methods we used to evaluate its effectiveness. We present our quantitative and qualitative data on the usefulness of the activity for teaching intersectionality in our Findings section. We conclude by suggesting that embodiment exercises can help students attach seemingly abstract sociological concepts to uniquely experienced realities.
Literature Review
Here we briefly review the concept of intersectionality and then review literature regarding effective activities for teaching inequality. We also reiterate that embodiment is an important learning exercise for thinking critically about, and developing empathy with, marginalized subpopulations.
Kimberlé Crenshaw (1989, 1991), a critical race scholar, first coined the term to bring attention to violence against women of color and their invisibility in the legal system when discriminated against based on race and gender. Though Crenshaw has been rightfully praised for conceptualizing how inequalities intersect, she was certainly not the first to theorize about how multiple inequalities come together. Nearly a century earlier, black activists and scholars, such as Wells-Barnett (1895), A. Cooper (1892), and Du Bois (1903), also noted the plight of black women.
As noted, one key feature of intersectionality is that it is more than the sum of its parts, meaning that intersecting inequalities are not simply additive or static. Moreover, intersectionality is not about identities only—identities are meaningful to the extent that they are linked to structures that produce them. Contextualizing how inequalities (and privileges) intersect in particular times, places, and spaces is another feature of intersectionality. For instance, though there are identifiable inequalities based on race, class, gender, sexuality, religion, age, and physical ability, there are certainly other ways people can be marginalized, and how those things come together and matter will likely be different based on context (McKinzie and Richards 2019). Realizing that intersectionality is context specific also helps to avoid stultifying analyses that take how inequalities matter for granted. Additionally, intersectionality is not only about diagnosis but also about action and social justice (B. Cooper 2016; Hill Collins and Bilge 2016).
Pedagogical Activities That Use Embodiment and Teach Inequality
Much research has focused on how to teach about inequality in classrooms. Here we review literature on some of these approaches, organized into two categories: (1) activities that encourage the use of body/embodiment, narratives, and biography and (2) activities that teach about intersecting inequalities.
Several teaching activities and articles on pedagogy emphasize the role of using autobiography, the body, and embodiment as a way to teach inequality, the sociological imagination, and intersectionality. Such activities have taken numerous forms, such as role-playing individual interactions across racial, gender, and social class lines (MacNevin 2004; Simpson and Elias 2011); writing autobiographical essays or journaling throughout the semester (Kebede 2009; Picca, Starks, and Gunderson 2013); and writing family histories that account for slavery and familial wealth obtained through legislation, such as the GI Bill (Mueller 2013). An example of using embodiment to teach students about inequality is Grauerholz and Settembrino’s (2016) modified version of the interactive activity “Hop on the Bus” (Nichols, Berry, and Kalogrides 2004). For this activity, they assigned students to use public transportation and take pictures of things that exemplified inequality at the downtown station. Students then wrote a reflection about their experience. However, many of these activities that use embodiment, narratives, and biography to address racism, classism, sexism, and other forms of discrimination do not critically engage with how embodiment exercises can address intersecting inequalities.
There are several challenges to teaching students about intersecting forms of oppression. One challenge is that while intersectionality is now more commonly included in introductory sociology textbooks, aspects of domination usually are not presented as operating simultaneously through social interactions. For example, textbooks usually discuss gender at the micro level, race at the meso/macro level, and class at the macro level. Furthermore, race and class are typically covered only in relation to the topic of poverty (Puentes and Gougherty 2013).
Some class activities encourage students to critique the notion that the United States is a postracial society and critique color-blind frames (see Khanna and Harris 2015). Another challenge for teaching intersectionality is that students have trouble seeing inequality by race, gender, class, sexuality, age, and disability because of social norms that emphasize color-blind frames and meritocracy (see Becker and Paul 2015; Cebulak and Zipp 2019; Villa-Nicholas 2018). Color blindness is the notion that people “don’t see any color, just people” (Bonilla-Silva 2013:1). This is incredibly problematic, precisely because society is organized and built upon racial inequality and its intersections with other marginalized experiences.
A handful of studies examine effective approaches to teach intersectionality, but many do not deeply engage with embodiment. For example, these include drawing from the distinct biographical experiences of instructors through collaboratively taught courses (Pliner, Iuzzini, and Banks 2011); assigning students to think through ethical dilemmas that draw attention to race, class, and gender (Lee 2012); and playing an “Intersectionopoly” game, which is a variation of a stratified version of the board game Monopoly that further develops and deepens inequalities as the game progresses (Paino et al. 2017).
Building on this literature, we suggest that several key features for effective approaches to teaching intersectionality include connecting intersectionality to histories of injustice faced by people of color and other marginalized subpopulations, complicating identification, and illuminating how power and structure operate to create opportunities and constraints (Salu 2013). Furthermore, we echo the significance of embodiment for critical pedagogies (Mason 2013). Thus, we argue that one of the ways to help students grasp intersectionality is through active and purposive exercises that attempt to engender learning through embodiment. It is for this reason that we designed an activity centered on embodied learning to teach students about inequality.
“Embodying Inequality” Activity
To prepare the activity for our classrooms, we each created vignettes from the perspective of research participants in our respective ethnographic studies. By using quotations from qualitative interview data and details from field notes, these first-person vignettes captured varying experiences with racism, classism, and sexism. 2 Although the vignettes we created were different (drawing from two separate ethnographic studies), both sets of vignettes emphasized power, oppression, and the importance of geography that were characteristic of these two studies. We assigned each student a vignette and instructed them to become familiar with the perspective of the research participant. Doing so, we encouraged students to “put themselves in the shoes” of that individual. In some iterations of the activity, we even assigned students to write an interior monologue from their assigned perspective. Students then interacted with others in the classroom while embodying the perspective they were assigned from the ethnographic data. In these interactions, students were able to meet others with similar and dissimilar perspectives and experiences with oppression (and privilege). Of course, by meeting others, we are actually referring to students interacting with other students and sharing their own interpretations of the perspectives and experiences noted in the assigned vignettes. In other words, students were not sharing their own personal experiences with sexism or racism. Rather, they were representing, and meeting others representing, the diverse perspectives assigned through the vignettes. Following these interactions, we led class discussions about what such diverse perspectives can teach us about intersecting forms of inequality.
While the above description outlines the common essence of this pedagogical activity and its design, there were also some specific distinctions between how we carried out the activity in our courses at different institutions and how the activity varied based on our research. Gardner’s vignettes included perspectives and experiences from indigenous (Maya-Mam) men and women from different social class backgrounds in Guatemala and Mexico. McKinzie’s vignettes included perspectives and experiences from research participants experiencing racial, class, and gender inequality while navigating disaster recovery in Joplin, Missouri, and Tuscaloosa, Alabama.
This flexibility in the activity’s design allowed us to guide our students to find different, albeit similar, understandings of how inequality may intersect while creating unique opportunities and constraints. In Gardner’s classes, the students used a handout that guided them to meet other students embodying the perspectives of indigenous individuals with similar and dissimilar experiences from the vignette they were assigned. For example, the handout asked students to find someone who lived in a different country (either Mexico or Guatemala) than the participant they were representing and to write about an experience that person described having with racial discrimination. Likewise, the handout had students find someone of a different gender than the participant they were representing and to describe whether that person they met had experienced any privileges or disadvantages because of their social class. In McKinzie’s classes, students read an article on disaster recovery and color-blind racism, reflected on the meaning of intersectionality, read three vignettes, and wrote about how their own background related to these perspectives in the vignettes. These students then met with others to discuss similar perspectives of oppression and privilege in their assigned vignettes.
Although we used different versions of the activity, we maintained the essence of the activity across these distinct contexts. This is important to emphasize for this particular activity because it was designed to encourage pedagogical variation. The activity’s design may inspire instructors to draw upon different research articles or potentially one’s own ethnographic data when teaching intersectionality. Through these diverse materials, distinct versions of the activity, and different instructional contexts, the crux of the pedagogical activity is centered on teaching the embodiment of intersecting forms of oppression. Thus, the intentional variation (both in the courses that were taught at different institutions as well as the distinct versions of the activity) was justified in the sense that the data speak to varying approaches and contexts for capturing how students may learn about intersectionality through the embodiment of diverse perspectives and experiences with intersecting forms of oppression. Additional details about the “Embodying Inequality” activity (including vignette materials from both versions) are available at TRAILS: Teaching Resources and Innovations Library for Sociology of the American Sociological Association (Gardner and McKinzie 2020).
Method
We evaluated the effectiveness of this activity by drawing upon data from four sociology courses (seven total sections) taught at a large public university in Texas and in Tennessee, respectively. The university in Tennessee serves a great deal of commuters, adult learners, and first-generation college students and has a racially diverse student body (34.2 percent nonwhite in 2016). The university in Texas also serves many first-generation college students (54.3 percent first-generation in 2019) and a racially diverse student body (47.2 percent nonwhite in 2019). The courses included an Introduction to Sociology class and a Sociological Theory class taught by McKinzie and an Introduction to Ethnic Studies class and a Racial and Ethnic Inequality class taught by Gardner. These classes were also of different sizes, which created unique variations of the activity. There were 17 student participants in McKinzie’s Introduction to Sociology class and 34 and 11 student participants in her two sections of Sociological Theory. There were 23 and 48 student participants in Gardner’s two sections of Introduction to Ethnic Studies and 16 and 14 student participants in his two sections of Racial and Ethnic Inequality.
Before the activity, students learned about intersectionality through assigned readings—courses were assigned some combination of A. Cooper (1892), Crenshaw (1991), Hill Collins (2009), and Wells-Barnett (1895)—and also a lecture and discussion class period. All students were then assigned to write about what intersectionality means. This open-ended conceptualization query constituted a pretest (prior to participating in the intersectionality activity). After the activity, all students were assigned to write about what intersectionality means again (as a posttest).
After an initial semester implementing the activity, we added another pretest and posttest question in three additional sections (53 students) the following semester. This question gauged students’ ability to recognize two common conceptualizations of intersectionality and distinguish it from other concepts. Students were instructed to “check all options that apply” (out of four options) to define intersectionality. Two correct options included defining intersectionality as (1) an approach that explains how people have multiple aspects of identification (e.g., race, class, and gender) and (2) an approach that captures how aspects of domination overlap (e.g., racism, classism, and sexism) as systems of oppression. Two incorrect options alluded to other sociological concepts regarding race and ethnicity: color-blind racism and double consciousness. These incorrect options phrased intersectionality as an approach that explains how “whites who claim to be color-blind use coded language, which sustains the racialized social system” and how “African Americans experience a ‘two-ness’ (as Black and American) and may see themselves through the lens of how African Americans think whites see them.”
Findings
In this section, we present our quantitative findings and two primary qualitative findings. The quantitative findings suggest that students demonstrated an ability to more precisely define intersectionality after implementation of the activity. Our qualitative findings provide nuance to the quantitative results with narratives from our students.
Quantitative Pretest and Posttest Comparisons
The pretest showed that even though students had already been instructed about intersectionality, most (68 percent) could not define it and distinguish it from other sociological concepts. The posttest demonstrates that the activity facilitated substantial improvement and enabled students to more precisely define intersectionality. Most (56.6 percent) selected only the correct options after the activity. Our data suggest that there was about a 25-percentage-point increase in the share of students who could correctly define intersectionality.
As this is a convenience sample, with a relatively small sample size, we interpret bivariate analysis with caution. That said, our data provide preliminary evidence that the “Embodying Inequality” activity was associated with a significant increase in student performance. We conducted a McNemar chi-square test to compare students who marked only the correct options to those who did not, both before and after the activity (see Table 1). The McNemar test shows that the difference in the discordant pairs is statistically significant (p < .001), which suggests that after the completing the activity, students were more likely to answer only the correct options defining intersectionality.
Cross-Tabulation for Students Who Answered Only the Correct Options before the Activity and after the Activity (N = 53 Students).
Note: Binomial distribution used. McNemar test, p < .001.
The activity also improved student confidence in their ability to explain intersectionality. On the pretest and posttest, students answered on a 5-point Likert scale how they felt regarding the following statement: “I’m confident that I can explain intersectionality to a friend.” Valid responses ranged from 1 (strongly disagree) to 5 (strongly agree). The pretest mean for student confidence in their ability to explain intersectionality was 2.98 and the posttest mean was 3.92 (see Table 2). A paired-sample t test shows that the mean difference of .94 is statistically significant (p < .001), suggesting that after the activity, students reported more confidence in their ability to explain intersectionality than before the activity.
Paired-Sample t Test for Students’ Level of Confidence in Explaining Intersectionality, Measured on a 5-Point Scale (1–5) of Increasing Confidence (N = 53 Students).
Note: The value for the difference column is the change in mean from the pretest to posttest.
p < .001.
Using the same Likert scale mentioned previously, after the activity, students also responded to their level of agreement with the statement that “The activity gave me a better sense of how people experience discrimination.” Out of 53 students, 17 students agreed and 32 students strongly agreed (i.e., 92 percent in total) that the activity gave them a better sense of how people experience discrimination, which the students also noted in their open-ended responses about the activity.
Qualitative Findings
Our analysis of qualitative data reveals two primary findings: First, students demonstrated a more precise and complex understanding of intersectionality following the activity, and second, students expressed empathy for participants’ situations, which helped them view intersectionality as a “real” (i.e., less abstract) sociological concept.
Clearer understanding of intersectionality
Many students showed that the activity helped them define intersectionality more precisely. Several themes emerged in how students demonstrated an improved understanding of intersectionality after the activity: First, more students specified certain aspects of oppression that intersect; second, more students referred to nuanced forms of discrimination; and third, more students provided concrete examples of intersectional inequality. Importantly, these three themes emerged across the different versions of the activity.
First, student definitions of intersectionality improved by specifying certain aspects of oppression that intersect. Some students did include specific identity characteristics in their definitions of intersectionality before the activity but failed to describe how intersectionality may help us see the ways that such characteristics are linked to discrimination and social structure. After the activity, several of these students more precisely defined intersectionality by specifying that such identity characteristics (e.g., race, class, and gender) could be linked to discrimination (e.g., racism, classism, and sexism). For example, before to the activity, one student wrote, “Intersectionality is multiple identities that ‘crisscross’ and make up a person.” They also listed four characteristics next to their definition: gender, race, ethnicity, and social class. In this student’s definition, intersectionality is an identity concept. After the activity, this student continued to define intersectionality in identity terms, but they also centered their definition on potential discrimination. They wrote, “Intersectionality allows for people to understand discrimination through a broader spectrum (instead of just ‘race’ or just ‘gender’). Intersectionality shows what people face at their intersection.” This student’s definition of intersectionality improved following the activity by drawing attention to how discrimination may be encountered at the intersection of such identity characteristics.
Likewise, some students showed an improved understanding of intersectionality by not only specifying aspects of identity (e.g., race, class, and gender) but also explaining that discrimination overlaps as a system of oppression. Before the activity, one student defined intersectionality pretty inaccurately as “the way we look at someone and assume things such as race and gender based off how they look. An example would be when you guess someone’s race.” But as in the previous case, this definition draws attention to multiple aspects of identity without capturing intersectionality as an approach for understanding how discrimination overlaps. After the activity, this student demonstrated a much-improved understanding of intersectionality by defining it in this manner: Overall, I think that intersectionality [refers to] the struggles that people overcome in their daily lives. Before learning the true meaning of intersectionality through this activity, I would say its definition was just racism. But while talking about it and doing the in-class activity I think it really helped me view it as an issue of more than just one [type of] oppression.
While this student’s explanation is still fairly vague, it is certainly an improvement from their definition of the concept before the activity. Moreover, they noted that interacting with other students through this activity helped them better understand how discrimination takes on varying forms that constitute an ongoing struggle for people in their everyday lives.
Second, student definitions of intersectionality improved by referring to nuanced forms of discrimination. The activity helped several students see that oppression can take on different forms, which helped them conceptualize intersectionality in a more complex fashion—even beyond the most common aspects of domination (e.g., racism, classism, and sexism).
One of the ways that students referred to nuanced forms of discrimination was simply by highlighting that there are many ways that discrimination may take form. Before the activity, one student defined intersectionality as “a system of crossroads of social groupings” and then they listed gender and race as an example. But after the activity, they improved their definition of intersectionality by pointing out that there are countless nuanced variations in how people experience overlapping opportunities and constraints. They explained, “I define [it] now as an infinite multiplicity of social groupings (in other words, sex, race, class) that can lead to discrimination and prejudice amongst an ever-expanding globe of social opportunities and activities.” In this case, the activity aided the student in considering the unquantifiable variations in how opportunities and constraints for accessing valued societal resources may overlap.
More specifically, some students’ understanding of intersectionality after the activity extended beyond conventional forms of discrimination (e.g., racism, classism, sexism). One student explained, An individual may be discriminated based on his/her complexion (racism), economic status (classism), gender (sexism), language (ethnicity), geographical location in the society, the level of education or what kind of opportunities he/she has access to. The overall effects of all these on an individual will determine the kind of oppression such an individual will go through. These overlapping effects [are] referred to as intersectionality.
And this same student wrote, [The activity] makes me see how people within the same geographical location could be discriminated against based on their class, gender, ethnicity, sexism, indigenous background, and so on. The kind of clothing people wear, the language spoken, as well as whether they are actually indigenous or not could [affect their] discrimination.
Like several others, after the activity, this student demonstrated an improved understanding of intersectionality by including references to geography and culture as potential sites of struggle that were not considered prior to the activity.
Indeed, a theme that emerged across the different iterations of this activity was that after the activity, several students acknowledged geography as a nuanced aspect of intersectional inequality. For instance, another student similarly reflected, Joplin, being predominately white and middle-class had an easier time recover[ing], and thus recovered faster. Tuscaloosa is poor[er] and [has more] African-Americans, so they did not seem to receive the same support as Joplin. They didn’t have the same means to rebuild as Joplin.
By referring to this more nuanced aspect of discrimination (i.e., geography), this student articulated how intersecting inequalities present themselves in some ways in some places and other ways in other places. Due to the importance of geography in both ethnographic studies that the vignettes were based on across the different iterations of this activity, students were able to incorporate these geographical insights into their comprehension of intersectionality. For instance, after the activity, another student wrote, “With race, class, and gender, it seems that any race besides white, lower classes, and women tend to have a harder time getting through a disaster. Also, where the location of the disaster is plays a big part on how easy it is to recover.” In other words, the activity helped students improve their understanding of intersectionality not only by drawing upon conventional forms of oppression highlighted in textbooks (e.g., racism, classism, and sexism) but also by referring to a more expansive interpretation of intersectionality that could potentially include other intersecting forms of oppression (e.g., cultural, political, and geographical considerations).
And third, student definitions of intersectionality improved through the usage of concrete examples. By using specific examples, often drawn from the vignettes in the different iterations of the activity, students demonstrated that their conceptual understanding of intersectionality could be linked to how people experience intersecting opportunities and constraints.
For example, after a version of the activity on disaster recovery, one student was able to provide a more concrete example of what intersectionality entails by briefly describing an intracategorical difference among African Americans. The student explained, For instance, the Black African American women [sic], even though she was middle class, was treated differently because of [the] color [of her skin] when compared to the white women. The white women got more respect and better help. This is about racism and poverty and the color line between people.
In this explanation, the student was able to provide a specific example of how race, “the color line,” and gender put some women at a disadvantage even if they were middle class. Additionally, this example highlights how racism can be gendered. Likewise, in the version of the activity that focused on Maya-Mam experiences, a student improved their definition of intersectionality after the activity by referring to specific examples of racism intersecting with classism. This student made no mention of examples of intersecting inequalities in their definition of intersectionality before the activity. But after the activity, they noted that people may experience “a combination of racism and classism.” They then described an example where one Mam individual sought more education, and as a result of their education and class status, they were considered by several peers to no longer be “indigenous enough.”
Some students explained that their exposure to—and ability to use—concrete examples when defining intersectionality made the concept more “real” to them. One student explained, There were individuals who were poor and discriminated by the wealthy, but at the same time were discriminated by their race. There were also individuals who were discriminated by race as well as their political views and gender. This activity gave me a real-world perspective of what it is like to [be] discriminated because of multiple things at the same time.
As noted by this student, the activity provided a space for students to become familiar with—and share—a variety of concrete examples that relate how inequality intersects. Another student wrote, “I feel I had an understanding of intersectionality at play before and these vignettes helped provide some real-world examples. After discussing everything with my group, I think we’ve all come to a similar understanding.”
In sum, the activity helped many students more precisely define intersectionality. Students demonstrated an improved understanding of the concept by specifying certain aspects of oppression that intersect, referring to nuanced forms of discrimination, and providing concrete examples of intersectional inequality.
Empathy through embodiment
Not only did the activity help students gain a clearer understanding of intersectionality, but many students described how the concept became more “real” to them through the activity (Kahn and Agnew 2017). Several students described how embodying the narratives of different individuals from our ethnographic research helped them empathize with the ways different people experience discrimination. Doing so helped them view intersectionality in less abstract terms. One student wrote, It really opened my eyes to the realities of what people face depending on intersections of social class, gender, and race. The research was very interesting and made me feel empathetic for those that have to go through this and rebuild their lives. Re-reading the excerpts emphasized the realness of the disparity.
This reflection highlights that the embodiment of these diverse perspectives not only helped students understand how different forms of oppression may intersect. But embodying these perspectives also helped some students empathize with such intersectional experiences.
Indeed, students explained that hearing from the perspective of these embodied narratives helped them feel close to people who are denied access to valued resources in society. For instance, one student wrote, Through this exercise, one was able to see in real life situations how intersectionality affects people all over the world. In a way, students were able to put themselves in the shoes of those who experienced discrimination and get a better understanding of intersectionality. People are discriminated [against] differently throughout their lifetime, often in more than one way.
Just like this student, several others explained that the activity gave them the experience of “putting myself in someone else’s shoes.” Likewise, another student wrote, “The activity let me see more closely into the subject of intersectionality. Being able to read from someone who has personally been affected by intersectionality allowed me to see how someone can truly be held back from certain activities.” This explanation captures how the activity promoted feelings of being personally connected to intersecting forms of oppression. Thus, students described that these embodied perspectives allowed them to feel close those who have experienced racism, classism, sexism, and so on by putting themselves “in the shoes” of others.
Embodying these perspectives helped students feel that intersectionality is not merely an academic concept confined to textbooks. Rather, students noted that these embodied experiences show how intersecting forms of oppression are real. One student wrote, In participating in this activity, my eyes were opened to the fact that intersectionality is not only a work in our textbook, but it is a real concept that is occurring around the world in many different circumstances. [There are different ways] to which intersectionality can affect an individual.
Rather than viewing intersectionality as an abstract concept, this student’s description emphasized that the activity helped them connect the concept to “real-world” experiences. Similarly, another student explained, “The [activity] really showed me how [intersectionality] truly has an effect on people. I was unsure about how this term came [into] play with people and this activity definitely showed me how it’s a real thing.”
Likewise, another student wrote that it was easier for them to relate to the embodied narratives because they draw from actual individuals. The student wrote, This activity specifically helped me learn about intersectionality because we got to learn from a perspective that we know really happened instead of from a textbook where it may have happened, but it was a hundred plus years ago. But I personally am more interested in the things that happen in my time. I also loved that we got to be a person and play a role, but also go around and learn about other people who have been faced with similar issues. Doing an activity like this helps me remember and understand it better.
Strikingly, this student also expressed a lack of confidence in textbooks and accounts that may have taken place too far in the past. These examples suggest that some students may feel that certain sociological conceptualizations are questionable if they are not grounded to uniquely experienced realities.
In sum, our quantitative and qualitative findings suggest that the activity helped students more precisely recognize intersectionality as both an approach used to explain multiple aspects of identification (e.g., race, class, and gender) and also an approach that captures how aspects of domination overlap (e.g., racism, classism, and sexism) as systems of oppression. By embodying the perspectives of research participants, our findings suggest that the activity helped students see intersecting inequalities and research participants as “real.” The embodiment of perspectives and interactions with similar and dissimilar perspectives helped students grasp intersectionality as a useful tool for understanding and empathizing with how people experience overlapping forms of oppression and privilege.
Conclusion
This activity was especially useful for generating rich discussions about inequality. Informed by critical and feminist pedagogical approaches, we suggest that small-group discussions are an invaluable space for critical thinking. For example, one student reflected, “After discussing the research with my group, I feel that the research gave me a broader view of the situation.” And another noted, “I found that the group discussions of the reading were beneficial because it helps put things into perspective and discussing helps clarify personal opinions.” Indeed, dialogic learning may validate knowledge while producing critical insights (Hill Collins 2009).
Furthermore, such discussions about inequality may also have the potential to equip participants with tools to dismantle structures of oppression through understanding how intersecting inequalities are institutionally produced. In fact, many students described the importance of connecting intersectionality and their knowledge about inequality to social justice and praxis. For instance, a student wrote, “It is surprising to see the difference [based on inequalities] in disaster recovery and it makes me wonder how we can fix the problem, or how it can be remedied so that this doesn’t happen again.” Additionally, another student explicitly drew attention to “the goal of intersectionality is that these things do not occur again.” As we previously mentioned, from the earliest iterations of intersectional thinking, there has always been a focus on change and social justice (see B. Cooper 2016; Hill Collins and Bilge 2016).
Unfortunately, not all of the students demonstrated a better understanding of the concept. Many students still articulated the thorny “identity-only” conceptualization after the activity. To address the salience of this emphasis on “identity,” we suggest that instructors introduce intersectionality as a structural, macro concept. By doing so, instructors can highlight how intersecting inequalities are systematically produced and then introduce students to examples of how systemic disadvantages inform subjectivities and shape processes of identification.
“Embodying Inequality” is a useful activity for helping students make sense of intersectionality while grounding the concept to real experiences with privilege and subjugation. The activity was designed in a manner that encourages pedagogical variation—even developing vignettes that draw from one’s own ethnographic data or from data presented in articles that demonstrate intersecting inequalities. We suggest that students and instructors can effectively explore nuanced interpretations of relatively tough concepts, such as intersectionality, when learning is interactive, is dialogical, and draws from real narratives. Embodiment can facilitate the attachment of sociological concepts to uniquely experienced realities.
Footnotes
Acknowledgements
We thank Bart Stykes and Tze-Li Hsu for statistical direction. We also thank the anonymous reviewers and the editor, Michele Kozimor, for their helpful feedback on previous drafts. We’re especially grateful for the encouragement to publish the “Embodying Inequality” resource in TRAILS.
Editor’s Note
Reviewers for the manuscript were, in alphabetical order, Joslyn Brenton, Kristjane Nordmeyer, and Maria Paino.
