The ENF Podcast Episode 4: Interview with Annemarie Perez, Assistant Professor at CSU Dominguez Hills

By Zainab Cheema 

In this episode, I am joined by Annmarie Perez, professor of Interdisciplinary Studies at CSU Dominguez Hills. Annemarie has expertise in Chicana and Feminist Literatures; Detective Fiction; Harry Potter; and intersections between digital pedagogy work and ethnic/cultural studies. Here are some excerpts of our conversation below. Get ready to be inspired

You’ve talked about the impact of bell hooks on your work. In her books like Teaching to Transgress, bell hooks talks about pedagogy and the relationship to freedom. What does that mean to you, and how do you translate that to the classroom?

It’s hard for me to talk about bell hooks because she has been a presence in my education since I was an undergraduate. I was fortunate enough to hear her speak when I was a student at Ohio State, and I believe that at the time she was at Oberlin. I have always at least in my head, believed in a liberatory politic of teaching, of this idea of critical pedagogy. bell hooks has been and continues to be incredibly important to me, especially now when I have been listening to an audio book recording of Teaching to Trangress. She talks about dancing with her students that was just so inspiring. It was my own experience that as I tried to create a more liberatory space in the classroom after reading her works, the person that I ended up liberating was me. I am forever indebted to her work.

How can we make EdTech equitable. How can we integrate all the creative new ways of teaching students without going to the negative ends of the spectrum?

I love using technology in the classroom. However, I try to avoid using tools that are created without any thought of the implications of collecting students’ data. Honestly, its none of my business if my students are accessing work at 3 am in the morning or turning it in five minutes before it’s due—or whether or not they downloaded the material. I had the freedom to work at 2 am in the morning as an undergraduate without my professors judging me. I attended a workshop put on by the Hybrid Pedagogy group where they divided us into groups and had us read the Terms of Service of all of these different Ed Tech tools. And they were alarming. I find the Terms of Service of Turnitin—which print out to about 70 pages—to be alarming. I don’t see how we can teach students copyright when we are using a tool that has no respect for copyright. 

Low income and minority students are dropping out of Higher Ed at concerning rates during and after COVID-19. I’m curious if you have seen this in your classroom, and if you see it as temporary thing that will change when the pandemic subsides.

I am at a majority minority campus – around 80 percent of our students are students of color. The majority of my students are women who are of Latinx and African American background. They have families. They are caregivers of children, they do elder care. They are the lynch pin of their families. They had to let go during COVID-19. This is also true of my freshman, they’ve also been devastated by this. They have suffered enormous losses. We need to look at accessibility issue. A friend of mine, a Chicana instructor at another institution, lost her mother like me. I lost my mother during COVID, not not COVID but to cancer. We were talking about the weight of grief. We were also talking about Teaching to Transgress and Pedagogy of the Oppressed. She said to me, attendance policies are ableist as f***. I had some days when my grief was too heavy, I couldn’t teach. I had students who lost a parent and both of their grandparents that were living in their home. They are nineteen years old and had to deal with that. I don’t know how we can reckon with our student’s losses, especially someone like me who is coming from the incredible privilege of being able to work from home and keep my father safe.

Listen to the podcast to get the full interview

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