Abstract
This critical commentary reflects on Cooks’ 2007 article, “Accounting for my Teacher’s Body: What can I teach/What can we learn?” by reconsidering power and body relations in light of the concept and pedagogy of body neutrality in the classroom in the 2023 COVID-19 era. The digital and physical classroom are spaces where the (embodied) body is never neutral. By extension, the body is never neutral anywhere regardless of the mindful body neutrality practices suggested by Pellizzer and Wade (2023). In this commentary, we first discuss how the teacher in physical and digital space communicates ideals of competence in performance of gender, sexuality, race, class, and ability in knowledge production. Then, we theorize and analyze how relational performances of teaching and learning are constrained and made possible through our bodies and/in technology. We wonder how our bodies become in/ authentic producers of knowledge and discuss a few ways in which we might challenge institutionalized forms of sexism and racism. We reflexively analyze how our whiteness, gender, class, and ability intersect to provide moments of learning for ourselves and our pedagogy as well as for our students.
Recommended Citation
Cooks, Leda M. and Zenovich, Jennifer A.
(2025)
"Still Accounting for my Teacher’s Body: The Objective Body/Body as Objective in the Classroom/ClassZoom,"
Feminist Pedagogy: Vol. 5:
Iss.
4, Article 3.
Available at:
https://digitalcommons.calpoly.edu/feministpedagogy/vol5/iss4/3
Included in
Critical and Cultural Studies Commons, Gender, Race, Sexuality, and Ethnicity in Communication Commons, Interpersonal and Small Group Communication Commons, Other Communication Commons
