ABSTRACT
Neoliberal logics exacerbate the historical privileging of rationality over emotion as ways of knowing in the US classroom. This chapter argues for the need to make space for emotional responses to the things faculties learn and for their responsibility as teachers to help students figure out how their emotions provide routes for knowing. This pedagogy [of emotion] mystifies emotion as a natural category and masks its role in a system of power relations that associates emotion with the irrational, the physical, the particular, the private, the feminine, and nonwhite others. Encouraging students to consider the impact that words have in the classroom extends readily to considering the impact that words have beyond the classroom. One of the hallmark strategies of the discussion-centered classroom is the group-developed contract. Recognizing the role of emotions in the American studies classroom requires a great deal of processing and a need for built-in self-reflection.
