Diversity & Inclusion Resources

This article establishes a theoretical framework for critical library instruction (and thereby critical information literacy) that is built upon critical feminist theory, critical race theory, and engaged pedagogy, among others. Using the ideas and work of theorists to create a path linking the ideas of critical analyses together, the author demonstrates the importance and need for critical information literacy within library instruction to empower students, creating opportunities for lifelong learning. Noted within the article are the obstacles for librarians who focus on feminist engaged pedagogy in their teaching; however, the author shares with readers that the challenge is in fact worth the struggle. Overall, the article presents a theoretical foundation for the author's call to action -- it's time for librarians to move forward as teachers-as-activists roles and use library instruction as a transformation into a lifelong learning experience for students.

Students as partners (SaP) has seen an increase in focus as an area of active student engagement in higher education. Many complexities and challenges have been shared in this evolving field regarding inclusivity and power. We discuss, in this dialogue, insights that can be uncovered by exploring SaP through a feminist lens--illuminating the fact that both fields seem to be seated in similar radical processes of challenging, questioning, destabilising, deconstructing, and empowering. We unravel issues of power and exclusion by exploring: what feminist theories might add to SaP; embedded binaries and what they reveal about power relations within the language of SaP; and ways of writing about SaP that are inclusive. We aim to step away from dominant understandings, incite acts of self-reflection, and open possibilities for future research and practice by questioning the boundaries and binaries that currently shape the institutions of higher education.

This article outlines the impact of cultural shock and my way of overcoming it as I migrated to the U.S. as an international student. Often-times, even in academia, where we learn to question and look at things from multiple angles, we essentialize subject positions and as a result silence, alienate, and erase many people. Through the use of narrative, I am giving voice to my own struggles with silence and erasure inside of academia in the hopes that other scholars will consider their own complicity in this process and perhaps expand their own thinking and curriculum choices for the courses they teach. In addition, I hope to create space to build solidarity across difference both in and outside of the university.

Twitter has become a unique site for making sense of public discussions about authority and morality in the United States. This article addresses these discussions by analyzing the elements of conservative discourse that claim the health of the nation is in decline because of a diminished emphasis on masculine leadership. There is a long tradition of conservative politicians in the United States warning against “soft” or “weak” figures of authority. Such conversations take place within a range of contexts, including the sport of football. As a means to engage hegemonic masculine authority from a critical perspective, this article investigates Twitter users’ various reactions to Adrian Peterson’s suspension due to his disciplining his child with a “switch.”