Building Our Students’ Foundation in Intersectionality

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Session Type: Concurrent Sessions

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This session starts from the premise that teaching our students to approach communities and problem solving from an intersectional lens is a foundational skill. Intersectionality is a term coined by Kimberle Crenshaw to describe how socially constructed categories like race, gender and class intertwine and compound discrimination. Teaching intersectionality in clinical courses is a deliberate pedagogic tool to empower students to make their analysis of structural inequalities more agile and sophisticated, while matching their knowledge with the lived reality of clients and communities. But how does one make intersectionality central to our teaching? This session does not seek to answer that question so much as struggle with it. The four presenters—directors of a transactional clinic, a social justice clinic, a civil rights clinic and an immigration clinic—share some strategies that we have developed and hope to lead a discussion that draws from the collective wisdom of the clinical teaching community. Specifically, the session will include examples of lesson plans used to introduce intersectionality and follow up exercises. The presenters will then ask participants to engage in a discussion of: • What skills or teaching methods do you use to raise issues of intersectionality in the clinic seminar and/or supervision meetings? • What are the benefits/challenges of engaging in a truly intersectional approach to your seminar teaching and/or methods of supervising student work? • How does your own identity play a role in whether you teach about intersectionality and if you do, how you teach it?