Knowledge Exchange: Consciousness Raising

It's Women's History Month, and the Women's Center is thinking specifically about all of the ways the feminist movement is built on friendships. A critical part of feminist history and relationship building within the movement is "consciousness raising," wherein women and other activists would come together to share experiences and learn together. For this knowledge exchange, we want to think more about the history of consciousness raising, how it works in the present, and how it might work in the future.

Faculty Guest: Dr. Jodi Kelber-Kaye, assistant director of the Honors College

What's a knowledge exchange?

A knowledge exchange is a way for folks from various disciplines, life experiences, and perspectives to come together and share in an equitable dialogue. This is a way for the UMBC community to work as learning collaborators, and learn from each other.

Inspired by the tenets of radical pedagogy that are outlined by scholars such as Paulo Freire and bell hooks,  the Women’s Center wants to create space for learning that blurs the power dynamics of a typical teacher-student relationship and posits, instead, a team of “co-investigators.” We envision an opportunity for professors, students, staff, community members, etc. to all come together to learn from each other and work out problems using their unique knowledge bases.

In our knowledge exchanges we aim to do several things:    

• Create a network of lifelong learners and curious co-investigators among all aspects of the UMBC community
• Collaborate on dynamic solutions to complex, multi-faceted problems
• Have fun! No really. A big goal with these knowledge exchanges is to build relationships across campus and make friends with the folks that are gathered together.

Read more here!

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