“Feminist choir for collective slow studies / Teaching with Care / A choir of co-shouting and song
In our group project we explore "collectivity" and "slowness" as feminist strategies for creating better student lives on IKK campus. Our little group consists of postdoc Katrine Wallevik, adjunkt Maria Bee Christensen-Strynø and postdoc Birgitte Thorsen Vilslev. We teach in different sections at the Institute for Arts and Culture: Katrine in Musicology/Ethnomusicology, Maria in Visual Culture and Birgitte in Art History.
Our point of departure and motivation for doing this particular project is an awareness towards students mental fragility, and towards what we as former students, researchers and teachers experience as challenges connected to what we perceive as heightened tempo, time pressure, loneliness and lack of deep meaningful learning processes for students (as well as our selves) at our institute.
We find inspiration in feminist pedagogy e.g. the article ”For Slow Scholarship: A Feminist Politics of Resistance through Collective Action in the Neoliberal University” (2015). Here a number of geography researchers, under the name Great Lakes Feminist Geography Collective question the demands for efficiency and high performance in what they understand as the neoliberal university. In the article they investigate:
”alternatives to the fast-paced, metric-oriented neoliberal university through a slow-moving conversation on ways to slow down and claim time for slow scholarship and collective action informed by feminist politics.” (1236)
Taking up on this, we wish in this project to investigate how collective and collaborative practices and learning infrastructures potentially contribute to the experience of being a student at IKK. Through a two-part focus we explore how a feminist slow pedagogy affect the students well-being and engagement in their studies. We explore in the following those matters in relation to 1) study-groups and 2) peer-feeedback in thesis writing processes and in the practices around thesis supervision.”