Community as Rebellion: Women of Color, Academia, and the Fight for Ethnic Studies

Community as Rebellion offers a personal testimonial with political analysis to create spaces of freedom within the university for students and faculty of color who experience violence and unbelonging. The author encourages readers to engage in liberatory practices of boycott and abolition, paired with radical community building, to fight back against a system that destroys them. Teaching in freedom is a progressive form of collective learning that prioritizes subjugated knowledge, silenced histories, and epistemologies from the Global South and Indigenous, Black, and brown communities.

Format: Hardback
Length: 120 pages
Publication date: 14 July 2022
Publisher: Haymarket Books

In a powerful personal testimonial intertwined with political analysis, Community as Rebellion delves into the realm of envisioning spaces of freedom within the university for students and faculty of color who frequently face violence and alienation as a result of the colonizing, racializing, classist, and unequal structures that uphold academia and the institution. Through the sharing of stories, personal reflections, and experiences, the author extends an invitation to readers, particularly Black, Indigenous, Latinx, and Asian women, to engage in liberatory practices of boycott and abolition, standing in stark contrast to the university's tokenizing and exploitative structures that shape our experiences in the academy and hinder our prospects for survival and success. Accompanied by radical community building, these practices become essential for our survival and crucial in our fight against a system that perpetuates harm.

One pivotal site for the creation of freedom within the university is the classroom. In their contemplation of teaching ethnic studies, the author encourages educators to consider activism and social justice as integral components of what they term "teaching in freedom," a progressive form of collective learning that prioritizes subjugated knowledge, silenced histories, and the epistemologies originating from the Global South and from Indigenous, Black, and brown communities. By teaching in and for freedom, we not only acknowledge the harm that the university has inflicted upon our individuals and our ways of knowing since its inception but also forge alternative pathways to be, create, live, and succeed through our work.

Weight: 312g
Dimension: 157 x 218 x 16 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9781642597400