UMass Grad Student Promotes Diversity, Social Justice in All of Her Classes

, Spencer Irvine, Leave a comment

image via screenshot from UMass staff page

image via screenshot from UMass staff page

Campus Reform reported:

In a “Diversity Statement” posted to her personal website… Amanda Ruth Waugh Lagji writes that while her expertise is in “postcolonial literature,” she strives “to make diversity a perspective as well as a methodology in the classroom by considering the assumptions and values we (myself, and my students) bring into the classroom space,” adding that she tries “to make the classroom a safe space for these conversations.”

Lagji then cites a specific example of how she has incorporated her “Diversity Statement” into the classroom, noting times when she has asked students “to complicate the markers of diversity they might be familiar with—class, gender, sexual orientation for example—with alternative constructions and discourses of diversity.”

You can find her bio and published papers here.