Pauline Strong
Dr. Pauline Strong is a Professor of Anthropology and served as director of the Humanities Institute and its Difficult Dialogues Program from 2009 until 2022. She is also affiliated with American Studies, Native American and Indigenous Studies, Women’s, Gender and Sexuality Studies, and the undergraduate Bridging Disciplines Program. Her research focuses on representations and self-representations of Indigenous people in the US, dialogic pedagogy, higher education policy, and academic freedom. Her teaching areas include cultural anthropology, feminist anthropology, culture and health, museum studies, and Indigenous cultures and histories.
Initiative
Difficult Dialogues Faculty Learning Community
(Project completed 2021) Since its inception at UT in 2006, the Difficult Dialogues (DD) program has worked with over 40 faculty in 8 colleges or schools to develop Difficult Dialogue signature courses, i.e., introductory UGS courses that promote respectful and productive dialogue about difficult and controversial social issues, including race and ethnicity, gender and sexuality, religion, human rights, immigration, evolution, climate change and sustainability, and illness and mortality.
Impacts
Navigating Difficult Dialogues in the (FTF or Virtual) Classroom (American Anthropological Association)
On December 10, 2020, Pauline Strong coordinated and led a Difficult Dialogues-style workshop and panelist at the virtual meeting of the American Anthropological Association. Strong presented and spoke on a panel alongside other UT Austin colleagues. During this initiative we reached additional faculty through developing a Faculty Learning Community and extensive online Difficult Dialogues resources.