TY - JOUR AU - Gardner, Jeffrey AU - McKinzie, Ashleigh PY - 2020/02/19 Y2 - 2024/03/28 TI - Embodying Inequality Activity: Teaching Intersectionality with Ethnographic Data JF - TRAILS: Teaching Resources and Innovations Library for Sociology JA - TRAILS VL - IS - SE - DO - UR - https://trails.asanet.org/article/view/embodying-inequality-activity-teaching SP - AB - Intersectionality is an analytic concept that signifies ways that inequalities may overlap to create unique forms of privilege and subjugation (Crenshaw 1989, 1991; Hill Collins 2009; Hill Collins and Bilge 2016). However, intersectionality is a perplexing concept for students to grasp (Naples 2009). A recurring puzzle for some sociology instructors is the following: how do we help students make sense of intersectionality (to effectively articulate how overlapping forms of oppression systematically operate) without reproducing intersectionality as an abstract academic concept? In other words, how do we help students see intersectionality as a concept grounded in real experiences with inequality and privilege?To address this issue, we designed an interactive activity to help students better understand intersectionality in a way that is complex, embodied, and based on findings from published ethnographic research. In the activity students use assigned vignettes from the perspective of research participants in our own ethnographic data (including excerpts from interviews and fieldnotes) to interact with peers assigned both similar and dissimilar perspectives and experiences. The vignettes draw attention to intersectionality in a way that helps students embody participants’ experiences with privilege and subjugation. We present here two iterations of the activity that draw from our distinct ethnographic projects. We also suggest that instructors could develop vignettes for this activity from their own research or from others’ published ethnographic work. The activity demonstrates that when learning is interactive, dialogical, and draws from real narratives, students and instructors can effectively explore nuanced interpretations of relatively tough concepts, such as intersectionality. Thus, we suggest that the embodiment of ethnographic data is a useful mechanism for helping students connect abstract sociological concepts to uniquely experienced realities. ER -