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PGEP
Issue I: Resistance
Towards a Pedagogy of Care: Re-imagining academia for graduate-international students in the post-pandemic era Fairuz Sharif - Ph.D. student at University of Ottawa in the Institute of Feminist and Gender Studies Sohini Ganguly - Ph.D. student at University of Ottawa in the Institute of Feminist and Gender Studies
Introduction: The 2020 pandemic has brought life-threatening challenges closer to home. Globally, it is affecting every section of the population in varying degrees. Our paper focuses on academia and the challenges faced by graduate-international students within academia in the pandemic era. We discuss the challenges of incoming graduate-international students during Covid-19 in two parts- (1) challenges students faced during distant learning and (2) challenges they encountered while relocating to their designated learning institution during a global pandemic. The article shares anecdotes of graduate-international students’ personal experiences, the necessity to overcome the challenges faced by them, and how we can reimagine pedagogy in the post-pandemic era. Issues such as inclusion, diversity, and intersectionality have become
The ideas emphasized in this paper is a form of resistance to the existing system which can be silently oppressive to certain bodies and races. By system, we refer to the neoliberal, white supremacist academic structure and systematic barriers that privileges white bodies. Our ideas pose a challenge to the normative academic space, advocating the need for effective engagement and inclusion towards the marginalized bodies of color in academic spaces. The pedagogy of care is both a form of change and resistance.
even more critical. Universities must cultivate care, understanding, and concrete engagement with students from varied backgrounds. We are suggesting a Universal Design (UD) to pedagogy, as theorized by Dolmage (2017), which is used to make university spaces more accessible to all. Keeping Universal Design (UD) as our theoretical framework, we are coining the term “pedagogy of care” to discuss building communities, building better pedagogy, building designs for all, and build-
ing opportunities where international students have more agency to hold institutions accountable for their actions (Dolmage, 2017, p. 118). In post-pandemic times, we propose a shift towards a “pedagogy of care”; instead of temporarily accommodating people, physical and virtual structures should be designed with a wide range of citizens in mind and includes planning for the active involvement of all (Dolmage, 2017, p: 115). However, UD, like inter-
