Feminist pedagogy in the neoliberal university: on violence, vulnerability and radical care

What tensions do feminist educators face whilst working within the neoliberal university? In this paper, I reflect on the difficulties of practicing feminist pedagogies within a context of systemic violence, asking what space there is to create transformative classrooms whilst working within a marketized higher education system which produces widespread mental distress, over-stretched support structures and spiralling workloads. I provide autoethnographic reflections on my experiences of teaching an undergraduate module on gender, sexuality and space, a course that sought to challenge gendered systems of domination, and where students often drew upon personal experiences of violence. I reflect upon how feminist pedagogies can often be troubling and discomforting, and how discomfort is always a risk in a system which treats students as consumers. Ultimately, I explore the limits and vulnerabilities that feminist educators can often encounter when attempting to create liberatory and radically caring classrooms.