On Interdisciplinary Presentism in Hispanic Studies

In this article, “presentism”—bringing current events into the classroom to discuss historically rooted structural inequalities (Spratt and Draxler 2019)— is examined as a pedagogical tool in the context of a service-learning class in which students participate with different Latinx partnerships. During COVID-19, this service-learning class has been restructured as a distance learning experience where students meet synchronously with different schools organizing projects that range from bilingual readings to university and career orientations. A presentist pedagogy is employed to explore how COVID-19 has exacerbated the inequalities in Latinx communities and how these inequalities relate to current and historical issues of access, language, and race. It is argued that embracing a presentist perspective in Hispanic Studies is necessary to make our courses relevant to the present crisis

Class (philosophy) · Context (archaeology) · Epistemology · Geography · Inequality · Pedagogy · Perspective (graphical) · Presentism · Service-learning · Sociology · Computer Science · Immigration and Intercultural Education · Inclusive Education and Diversity · Mathematics · Philosophy · Second Language Learning and Teaching