Searching for Answers in Fiction?: Examining the Femicide and Gender Violence Crises in Literature Courses

The year 2019 ended with women of different countries taking to the streets as part of Un violador en tu camino, a global chant and performance that took place in front of governmental institutions to signal the State as one of their rapists. With grassroots feminist movements gaining global attention, a question that has come up for high school and college instructors is how to effectively translate these conversations to the classroom environment. How can instructors use popular literature, art, and the media in the classroom to open and create a new space to dialogue with students about the crises of femicide and gender violence? What sort of pedagogical tools could and should one employ, and what teaching practices are effective in exploring these hard-to-navigate topics? And lastly, what can we ask students to produce in response, or put differently, what should or could student output look like when we teach about femicide and gender violence?

As a literature professor whose own research is at the intersection of literary and gender and women studies, in each of my courses, I devote a few weeks solely to the topic of gender violence and femicide. In this article, I document my own teaching practices around these topics, and assess the results of these practices by considering students’ analytic and creative output during the course. Moreover, I discuss my use of a critical engagement model and an engaged pedagogical approach in addition to some teaching strategies that I employ to create a space where an open and yet respectful discussion of these topics can take place through literature. The examples I will draw on in this article are from Women Writers in Spain, a sixty-student upper-level undergraduate literature course that I teach.

By an engaged pedagogical approach, I am referring to bell hooks’ terminology in Teaching to Transgress (1994) in which she suggests that engaged pedagogy stimulates intellectual growth through a holistic model of learning by empowering students to share their ideas and experiences in a safe classroom environment (21; see also Hatch 2013: 4–5). This engaged pedagogical approach aligns with a critical engagement and participation model, whereby students are required to become active participants in the classroom by encouraging collaborative exchanges both in small group format as well as with the entire class. Alison Hatch (2013) explains that engaged pedagogy in courses that center on gender violence “means presenting the material in a way that encourages students to understand how intensely personal events [narrated in assigned materials] also connect to larger social phenomena, like patriarchal systems of violence and control. It also means encouraging students to think critically about systems of injustice and what can be done to combat gender violence” (4–5). While encouraging students “to engage with the material” as Hatch suggests (4–5; emphasis in the original), I find that it is also necessary to draw on Elaine Showalter’s advice in Teaching Literature (2003), where she emphasizes that “[o]ne important principle is candor and clear labeling—telling students in advance that they may be offended or upset; contextualizing the topic with some sociological or historical background; being prepared for some students to be shocked or upset no matter what you do, and allowing opportunities for them to respond” (126).

With an engaged pedagogical approach as my framework and active student participation as my goal, I employ a few different strategies to encourage engaged learning while establishing a safe classroom environment. To encourage students to engage with the material, I require discussion-question assignments, small-group discussions in class where certain students are designated as group leaders, analyses of literary passages or film scenes, group reflections following in-class activities, and a creative final group project to help generate an active and collaborative learning experience. To create a safe classroom environment, I include a course content disclaimer in my syllabus, where I explain that there is material that can be potentially upsetting to students and include a list of resources and phone numbers for UC Davis and the general community. In addition...