Inclusive Pedagogy Series

CMDI’s Inclusive Pedagogy Series is designed to be a space for faculty and graduate students to engage in conversations, practice and action centered on issues related to inclusion and education. This series hosts workshops, mixers, lectures and more that are designed to share emerging practices and thought leadership related to the use of inclusive teaching strategies to make learning experiences meaningful and valuable to students. Events typically take place monthly during the academic year and are connected by an underlying theme.

A companion effort to this initiative is a cohort of Inclusive Pedagogy Ambassadors. Members attend the entire series of events and disseminate learnings and experiences with their colleagues throughout CMDI.

Inclusive Pedagogy Series 2025-26

Audience Inclusive Pedagogy

The Imagination Series, Part II: Who’s Afraid Of ...

Inspired by Derrick Bell’s 1995 Who’s Afraid of Critical Race Theory?, this series is a continuation of the conversations we had about carceral logics, pedagogies of hope and abolitionist imaginaries, with an emphasis and intentional engagement of ideas, concepts, practices and discourses we are made to be—or should be—afraid of.

Over six sessions, the series will explore the following questions: Who should be, or is, afraid? Why are we afraid? What can we do, pedagogically, with our and others’ fear? How can our fear work as the impetus to think expansively and carefully about our teaching? What methods, strategies and discussions should we take up, lean into and think differently about within the current context—one ripe with terror, consternation and unease?

Inclusive Pedagogy Keynote

Annual keynote

“‘Mama Said Knock You Out’: Historical and Pedagogical Lessons From Black Radical Traditions of Refusal and Creative Escape”

Carmen Kynard, Texas Christian University

In a moment when critical approaches to curricula are under fire everywhere, creative and imaginative learning are even more important. In this presentation, Carmen Kynard shares perspectives from college classrooms where Black radical traditions of truth telling, curriculum objection, alt-linguistic modeling, multimodal crafting and digital activism inspire reading and writing instruction. She situates distinct histories of Black literacies and teaching as an architecture of education built upon protest, imagination and future-making design.

Inclusive Pedagogy

Upcoming sessions

Each session takes place from noon to 2 p.m.

April 17: Closing session. Danielle Hodge, 91ý.

Past sessions

Oct. 31: Welcome session. Danielle Hodge, 91ý.
Jan. 16: “Fear and Loathing in the University: Pedagogy, Courage and Compassion.” Karma Chávez, UT Austin.
Feb. 6: “Harmony and Harassment: Tracing the Headwaters of Radical Pedagogy and Critical Race Theory.” Aja Martinez, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, and Robert Smith, University of North Texas.
March 6: “Beyond Tyranny: Radical Imagination to Build Beyond the Moment.” Amber Johnson, UC Berkeley.