Becky Aanerud

Principal Lecturer Emeritus

B.A., Full general Studies (with concentration in feminist theory), University of Washington
M.A. English, Academy of Washington
Ph.D. English, University of Washington

Phone: 425-352-3687; 206-543-5139
Electronic mail: raan@uw.edu
Mailing: Box 358530, 18115 Campus Fashion NE, Bothell, WA 98011-8246

Education

I think what keeps me able to teach well is that I take not yet forgotten what it was like to be a pupil. Throughout my undergraduate pedagogy I was on Pell Grants, student loans, piece of work study, merit scholarships, and I cooked at a eatery. Every bit such, I understand the difficulty of wanting to be an excellent educatee, figuring out how to pay bills, and stressing nigh hereafter loan payments. My goal is to teach through the eyes of my students (diverse equally they are).  I try to remember that my students are juggling many responsibilities and therefore demand me to be consistent, clear, compassionate, and set up high standards. I am dedicated to figuring out how to explicate difficult concepts in equally many means every bit possible. Ultimately, I want students to grapple with complex ideas and situations so they can begin to develop their own intellectual insights. I want them to see that their ideas and perspectives might change over the course of their teaching through their critical date with the world.  For me didactics, both graduate students and undergraduate students, is a securely intellectual activity that is fundamentally about connecting with students. When I won the distinguished teaching award in 2008 (on the Seattle campus), it was simultaneously an acknowledgement of my commitment to students and renewal of the high bar that I set for myself each and every time I walk into the classroom.

Recent Courses Taught

BIS 224 Introduction to Feminist Studies
BIS 300 Interdisciplinary Research
BIS 499 Portfolio Capstone
BISGWS 303 Approaches to Feminist Inquiry

Inquiry/Scholarship

My scholarship focuses on feminist theory, critical race theory, and wisdom studies. My primary work has been in the field of critical whiteness studies in which I explore the various ways in which whiteness is reproduced equally racial norm and a dominant position inside the context of the Usa. While my publications on whiteness vary considerably, the connecting theme is on accountability and how to ask new questions. A driving question that shapes my enquiry: How can we learn to exist accountable to the histories of structural privilege and oppression in which we find ourselves to enable new forms of inquiry that offer the potential for more than but futures?

This question informs my current research on wisdom. Wisdom has largely been overlooked in feminist analysis in favor of more conventional studies of knowledge equally epistemology. By taking wisdom as a site of study, I am interested in opening new avenues for social critique and transformation. Different noesis, wisdom presupposes and invites greater dubiousness, exploration and ambiguity. I am fatigued to the words of Patricia Kennedy Arlin, who suggests that, "wisdom may be more a matter of interrogatives rather than declaratives…[it is] the role of the question that is plant under atmospheric condition of uncertainty" that characterizes wisdom

Selected Publications

"Humility and Whiteness: 'How did I look without seeing, hear without listening?'" in How Does it Feel to Be A White Problem? Ed. George Yancy (Lexington, 2014).

"The Legacy of White Supremacy and the Claiming of White Antiracist Mothering" Hypatia (vol 22 no2 spring, 2007).

"Widening the Lens on Gender and Tenure: Looking Beyond the Academic Labor Market" Lead author with Lori Homer, Emory Morrison, Elizabeth Rudd, Maresi Nerad and Joseph Cerny. Special issue Women and Tenure in National Women Studies Clan Periodical (vol xix no3 fall, 2007).

"Thinking Again: This Span Called My Dorsum and the Challenge to Whiteness" in This Bridge We Phone call Domicile. Eds. AnaLouise Keating and Gloria Anzaldua. (Routledge, 2002).

"Now More than Ever: James Baldwin and the Critique of White Liberalism" in James Baldwin Now. Ed. Dwight McBride (New York University Printing, 1998).

"Fictions of Whiteness:  Speaking the Names of Whiteness in Us Literature," in Displacing Whiteness: Essays in Social and Cultural Criticism Ed. Ruth Frankenberg (Duke University Press, 1997).