Encouraging students to theorize can accomplish many pedagogical goals: it develops their critical thinking skills; it represents for many what hooks has identified as a survival strategy; and it can help us reach Banks' levels three and four of multicultural curriculum reform. What I want to outline now are some journal exercises that incorporate all of these goals, building toward an activist approach to teaching which places teachers and students at the center of social change--Banks level number four. At its core, classroom activism requires allowing students to come to the material of any course as developing spiritual and emotional, as well as intellectual, beings. It goes without saying, perhaps, that we teachers must do the same. However, I encourage teachers to be self-revelatory only to the extent that they are comfortable.

Though I am focusing on Women's Literature here, I believe any course, large or small, humanities, sciences or arts, can utilize autobiographical journals. It will become obvious that multimedia and humor are essential parts of my methodology, as is collaborative group work, all of which speak to the many learning styles and abilities of the individuals in the classroom. As a way of introducing ourselves and getting to know each other, I begin every course with a personal journal assignment which may or may not be discipline-specific. A favorite I have (which is discipline specific) is to pose the following question after the preliminaries on the first day:

I ____________________ writing (or reading).

Any discipline can be augmented with writing or reading. Students fill in the blank and write briefly about this and then we have a discussion where a number of assumptions or at least feelings about the discipline are shared. In the best of discussions students begin to question and talk with each other. Often I hear things which are not complimentary about my field and things which are entirely antithetical to my own feelings about the discipline, but I learn a great deal immediately about the individuals in the class.

Another exercise for early in the course is to have students chart their positionality -- that is, who they are as individuals coming to the course. Reader response theories have taught us that it is important to emphasize that comprehension of the material will likely be influenced both by the authors' and the readers' positionalities or locations (which are of course not static).(9)

I show the students a triangle chart they can use which identifies me by race, class and gender, but I encourage them to go beyond that to much more complex representations of their selves. Many choose to do other visual representations and some just prefer lists or the triangular chart. They can be as self-revealing as they like in what they share with the class, but I ask them to be as honest as possible with the part that stays in the journal. We return repeatedly to positionality as the course moves along, emphasizing that, though fluid, self-identity and positioning is essential to self-understanding, as well as an understanding of where one fits into larger communities. In literature courses it also helps students' understand their responses to particular texts, as well as understand where writers themselves may be coming from.

As a teacher at a school with predominantly white students, I think this is particularly important. For many white people think of themselves as racially neutral or as having no ethnicity. Because they don't see their positioning they don't have to see the privilege and power that go with it. Furthermore, seeing oneself as non-ethnic or not racial allows one to see "others" as excessively ethnic or racial, thus underscoring cultural difference in a center/margin, norm/not-norm way. At a basic level these exercises about location are about allowing students who see themselves as neutral--often, but not always, white, middle-class, heterosexual, male--to find a racial, ethnic, gendered or sexual identity.(10)

In addition to looking at ourselves, Banks' level three multicultural curriculum reform requires us to look at our chosen discipline. As teachers we need to approach the course in both planning and implementation by asking questions which can be worked through with students in any number of ways. Sample questions which can be applied to any field are:

*Toward what political/social uses is the knowledge of this discipline geared?

*How can the discourse of the discipline be used to aid students in their quest for self-knowledge?

*In what ways can communities--local, cultural, global--benefit from research in this field?

*In what ways have communities been hurt by research in this field?

*What other disciplines inform and complement the material for this course and how can they be incorporated into it?

Other questions which probe students to think about social responsibility and their chosen field, or that of the course being taught, can be generated by the students themselves, and most of them offer the opportunity for in-depth research projects. Writing as a central component of a course can then be used to raise student consciousness first on an individual level, second on a disciplinary level (including examining its relationship to the world outside the academy), and finally it returns to the level of the personal: what will the student do with the knowledge she or he has gained in the course?

In Women's Literature, we begin the process of critiquing the discipline by deconstructing elements of the course title. Under the heading of "Definitions"--which is accompanied on the syllabus by a "Sylvia" cartoon pointing out that "Woman is as much a state of mind as a state of being"--the first writing assignment is multi-layered; First, I ask students to bring in an image of Woman the next time. For this class I bring a 7-foot cardboard Barbie cut-out made by an art student and a tape of Peggy Lee singing "I'm a Woman." We listen to the music while we peruse the images brought by students.(11) Additionally, the syllabus gives these directions:

*Without consulting a dictionary, jot down some ideas regarding your definition of WOMAN. What constitutes a Woman?

*Read the segment entitled "Ain't I a Woman?" by Sojourner Truth keeping in mind how ideas about what a woman is or should be is defined. How does Sojourner's self-image intersect with the implied definition?(12)

The piece by Sojourner Truth allows us to talk about how race and racism play central roles in defining people. While students of color may be aware of the dynamics of race, dominant culture students often haven't questioned their assumptions about race as a construct which intersects with other categories of identity such as gender. From there it's a short step to talking about what literature is and why writing by some people has not been considered worthy of the name literature at all, while other writing has been validated through publication and canonization. Because my literature courses introduce students to a wide range of women's voices, it is essential to discuss the silencing of particular groups--such as African-American women--early on and to show how that silencing branches out, through language, into the social and political arena.

I choose books for the course which I find to be aesthetically beautiful or interesting, as well as issue-oriented. For example, Harriet Wilson's Our Nig; or, Sketches from the Life of a Free Black, called in its introduction "a fictional third person autobiography," raises numerous literary, as well as philosophical, questions: Questions about truth, fiction and rhetoric, slavery and freedom, personal responsibility, racism, child abuse and much more. How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents by Julia Alvarez can be read as an amusing, chronologically backward, collection of assimilation stories and memories, as well as a history of dictatorship, disappearances and class privilege.(13) Writing exercises which are assigned to accompany these and other texts continuously bridge the literary with the social and political, making for lively discussions which force students to be personal, while dealing with issues which involve multiple cultural communities, the United States, and the world.

I like to end the course with books which broadly address a number of social issues. Texts which do so invite students to think more actively about the issues and what they can do about them. Also, to bring the course to closure I find it productive to bring the course back to the individual student. Because science fiction/ fantasy as a genre usually provides strong critiques of society, I often use Marge Piercy's still current 1976 novel, Woman on the Edge of Time, which deals with the social construction of race and gender, environmental destruction, overpopulation, relationships, crime and punishment and just about anything else you can think of.(14) A truncated version of my rather lengthy final assignment reads like this:

Woman on the Edge of Time lays out for us various futures and asks us to think about what choices we can and will make in order to ensure the kind of future we want to have. In short, it theorizes a "politics of possibility." In your journals this semester I have been asking you to theorize about your lives, our world and our future. Therefore, as a final journal assignment, and to bring the course to closure, I would like you to do the following:

1. Look through your journal and the responses you have had to the literature and the issues it raises. What kind of evolution of thought do you see? Are there patterns to your writing or thinking? That is, do certain issues repeatedly seem to come up for you?

2. Identify the issues which are most important to you and think about their relevance to your life. How do you "make sense of your world" and your part in a larger whole in relation to these issues?

3. Think in concrete terms what you have learned from this course; what will you take away from it?

4. Name at least three active things this course and theorizing about your life in relation to it has prompted you to think about doing.

Here is a sampling of what some students have written:

"I feel I have been aware these past several years of racial barriers that exist in our society. This class has partially focused on these barriers. I have been prompted to do my part in changing race relations."

"I have . . . learned a lot about myself in studying these books and characters. If anything this class has been wonderful for me in that it has really opened my eyes up to the world and what is happening all around me . . . This type of awareness everyone should be in tune with . . . I will continue to watch out for the repression of others and do what I can to keep it from happening. This effort could take many different forms from attending meetings and conferences/talks to participating in some of the protests that take [place] about similar issues."

"I think that a really important issue to me, and one which came up numerous times during the semester is oppression. But more important to me is the `tying in' of all of the issues brought up into one concept: Self-growth . . . Mostly what I feel I have learned from this course is respect for other people. Whether they are authors, literary characters, or people in the actual class, I developed a greater sense of gender and cultural diversity."

"I admit that I was not at all excited about taking this course. But I know that this was one of the best courses I could have taken as I graduate and 'go face the world.' I think about different conditions more now, particularly my own and people like me."

"This class definitely empowered me. . . It's great to take a class that affects your life outside of the classroom. . . I have been thinking that when my life is less chaotic I would like to volunteer at a women's shelter or at a foster home for children. I think opening people's minds and hearts to their personal power could actually change our future."

What comes up repeatedly in these responses is a new sense of self-awareness, awareness of others and a call to action. That is, action out there in what students like to call the "real world." These responses might seem full of the kind of false promise that early stage political awareness can provoke. But most of them exemplify changes in consciousness, no matter how small. They also signify a recognition of the multicultural bodies both in the class and in the world and the inequities that follow from them--a recognition that every body counts. I like to think that, had Go-go Dancer or Tim been a student in my course, the structure of the course and the students themselves would have acknowledged their presence. This, to me, is what multicultural education is about. And, as the final comment says, "opening people's minds could actually change our future." As a feminist interested in radical education and multicultural teaching, that is a project in which I am invested.