Quick Facts
Name: Anselma Widha Prihandita
Courses Taught: ENGL 131, ENGL 109/110
Pedagogical Touchstones: Critical Pedagogy ; Encouraging sensitivity and critical attitude to power relations, especially so that marginalized students can explain their discomforts in ways other than “it’s my fault,” as they’ve often been trained to do ; bell hooks’ “education as the practice of freedom”
Favorite Course Themes: Autoethnography, in which students did an autoethnographic research project on their own educational experiences in order to make sense of how colonial, Eurocentric, capitalist, white supremacist, etc. the university is.
Q: How have your studies influenced your teaching and/ or how has your teaching influenced your studies?
My experience as a student does influence my teaching. Being a first generation graduate student, a person of color, and an international student, I feel some affinity with students from similar backgrounds. I’m aware of how for people like me, the lessons we get in classrooms here are not always most culturally relevant or sustaining. Therefore, I try to craft curriculums with better diversity and representation—for example by grounding my syllabi on works by scholars of color, or by simply encouraging students to embark on projects that may not immediately be in the interest of the dominant public (or scholarly communities), but are nonetheless closer to their hearts and homes. I would say that my teaching is greatly inspired by decolonial theories, which broadly work toward a delinking from white Western knowledge. This influence also goes both ways: my studies now focus on decolonial pedagogies.
Q: Could you describe a particularly crucial, defining teaching moment you’ve had throughout your career?
One memorable teaching experience that I had was my first time teaching ENGL 109 (a class reserved for students affiliated with the various student support programs under the Office of Minority Affairs and Diversity). When I read my students’ preliminary essays, I noticed that almost all of them wrote about how they didn’t feel confident in their writing skills. Many spoke of how they were often told that their writing was not up to standard, even though it was perfectly fine. Seeing the emotional challenges that these students faced, since then I tried my best to support students not only by teaching them writing skills, but also by fostering the habits of mind, resilience, and self-assurance necessary to move within and through this higher education institution—an experience that can be hurtful to some people.
Q: After completing your degree, what are your plans professionally? Have these evolved since entering your program? How has your teaching evolved?
Regarding my plans for after completing my degree, I honestly don’t know. I think a big part of that would be trying to decide whether I want to start a career here in the US or come back home to Indonesia. I left my home country thinking that I would definitely be coming back, but after 2 years here, sometimes I feel like I’m losing touch with that homeland. A lot of the things I’ve learned and practiced here are grounded on American contexts, which might not be easily translatable to how things are back home. I think that as you learn and teach, it’s very important to keep in perspective the context and geopolitics of the knowledge you’re gaining and practicing, and remember that nothing—not even pedagogies and theories—can be a one-size-fits-all kind of thing.