Inclusive Pedagogy Initiative

The International Spenser Society is fully committed to fostering inclusion in the research and teaching of Spenser.

Founded in 2020, our Inclusive Pedagogy Initiative hosts events each year designed to address the intellectual and practical aspects of teaching Spenser in an inclusive classroom. At each session we invite experts in inclusive education to speak about their work and to share resources that Spenserians might take up in their own practice.

Recent discussions have focused on Trans-inclusive pedagogy and Neuro-divergence in the inclusive classroom. If you have a suggestion for a topic for a future IPI event, please don’t hesitate to get in touch with Hannah Crawforth.

Past Events

November 19, 2024

Zoom session on "Neurodivergence and the Inclusive Classroom," a conversation with Bradley J. Irish and Laura Seymour, facilitated by Hannah Crawforth.

This session explored how understanding of neurodivergence can help inform our teaching practices, offering both discussion of some of the intellectual and pedagogical issues involved as well as practical suggestions for making our early modern classrooms more inclusive. Recognizing that neurodiversity is a spectrum that applies to everyone and that academic communities are made up of people across the full range of that spectrum can open up a broader awareness of the ways in which sensory experience, social interaction, processing issues and other neurological factors shape all of our classrooms (whether they include people identifying as neurodivergent or not). Our expert panelists will share their own teaching experiences and the session will also include chance for audience discussion.

This event was hosted on Zoom at 12pm EST/5pm GMT on Tuesday, Nov. 19, 2024.

Recording available here: https://lsu.zoom.us/rec/share/Y7_sGeBjwdVXxjrGmihqtCuen0Y-MagEv9gJcBt2d2qLPfKXvE_EzziNEso0eZI0.XpaBR8JxMz5yoOjb?startTime=1732034495000