⁠Full Episode Transcript: https://americancultures.berkeley.edu/podcast/ep-4-urban-experience

In this episode, the UC Berkeley Pedagogy Podcast team features Brandi Summers, a Professor in the Department of Geography at UC Berkeley. Professor Summers shares with us the philosophy that “the diverse teaching tools and strategies created in the class are part of my commitment to engaged pedagogy, which has developed based on the presumption that classrooms are spaces that hold promise for radical change and growth within and outside the classroom. As an engaged teacher, she asks that both she and her students take risks to see themselves and their lives as part of the critical process of inquiry, to be vulnerable enough to ask hard questions, and to see the world from different, and sometimes contradictory, points of view.” In 2022, Professor Summers received UC Berkeley’s American Cultures Excellence in Teaching Award (ETA).

The ETA recognizes faculty teaching a UC Berkeley American Cultures course for their inspiring and sustained commitment to creating a learning space that, among other things, includes addressing the multivocality of America’s diverse social fabric, the scales of geographic assemblage which support political and economical ways of being, the often contested nature of the political nation and the intersectional vectors that operate through everyday life. In the words of one of Professor Summers’ nominees, “Brandi’s teaching has been a critical resource for the university, especially as it has sought to understand and respond to the challenges of racial disparities over the past two years.”