Read a summary of our conversation with Professor Basu »
Professor Amrita Basu began her career at Amherst College in 1981, a time when the College had only recently begun admitting women. She notes that most of her students were white, male, and privileged. As the only woman and person of color from the Global South in her department, she felt responsible for teaching courses about the majority of the world’s population. In fact, early in her career – before the expansion of the faculty and the addition of the SWAGS Department – she often found herself teaching about regions, groups, and issues that were quite far afield from her research training and disciplinary expertise.
Professor Basu spoke about the kinds of changes that she’s made to her classes over time. One such change relates to the structuring of her assignments. She makes selections of readings based on whether they present illuminating questions, rather than whether they provide full coverage of the background material on a topic, and she assigns less reading than she used to. In class, she facilitates the class discussion around topics of debate, in order to encourage students to consider and express divergent points of view. She also asks students to complete a set of pre-class questions; in class, she draws on the contributions of students and asks them to speak to these previous reflections, in order to bring more voices into the class. About her students in the class, she said, “They often ask questions that I’m still grappling with.” And, she said that the better she is at framing the questions under debate in the class, the better the quality of the discussion. “Students always rise to the challenge.”
She also spoke about several challenges and ongoing questions that she continues to process around her teaching, and teaching at Amherst College more generally. These challenges included students’ differential interest in learning about some areas of the world more than others. As a result, most of her courses have a comparative focus in which she can incorporate resources and materials about South Asia. She also spoke to the benefits of teaching using a dialogical pedagogical style, while recognizing the limits of that approach in larger classes. And finally, she reflected on her observation that students’ identities influence who does and does not feel as though they belong, or are comfortable speaking, in an Amherst classroom.
Throughout her reflections, Professor Basu expressed a deep gratitude for her colleagues and of course, her students. She closed by saying, “I’ve had many inspiring teachers in my life, but the ones who have pushed me the most and inspired me the most, have been my students.”
