by Heidi Juel, Professor, Composition and Literary Studies

My name is Heidi Juel and I am a professor in the Composition and Literary Studies Department at ACC. I was a member of the Global Education Faculty Learning Community 2022-2023. We often met jointly with the Global Peace and Conflict Studies FLC, which made for a broader application of the topics we discussed. The focus was on human rights and social justice in various contexts and places worldwide.

Two presentations in particular captured my attention: Dr. Angela Williams, Associate Director, Center for South Asian and Middle Eastern Studies, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign who presented “Conscious (W)raps: The Genius of MENA Women Rappers.” Due to my personal interest in Iran’s culture and current political situation, I found this presentation fascinating and relevant. Artists use their skills for political and social critique and often do so at the peril of their own lives. Dr. Williams presented a unique perspective by focusing on women, in Islamic countries, engaging in political and cultural protest using rap as means of expression. The result of her presentation led to me join local activists in pressuring the U.S. government to support the bi-partisan MAHSA Act. Due to rap’s appeal to the younger generation, I intend to share with my students the YouTube videos that Dr. Williams shared with us in an effort to raise awareness about human rights violations in a country that most American students have little understanding of.

The second presentation I found especially meaningful and relevant was that of Dr. Maria Luisa Mendonça, Visiting Scholar, The Center for Place, Culture and Politics, The Graduate Center, City University of New York. I particularly appreciated her focus on the consequences of climate change, government (in)actions, and foreign intervention on the Indigenous people of Brazil. I teach an Honors course here at ACC on Indigenous North America, so my students learn of these topics, but from her presentation, I learned a lot about the ways that American entities, such as Harvard University, are involved in other countries’ affairs to the detriment of Indigenous people. Dr. Mendonça’s presentation led to the topic of my Global Education project: climate change’s effects on people: their culture, their historical place on the land, and their very lives.

I incorporated the project into my ENGL 1301: Composition 1 class. Students researched the lesser-known causes and consequences of climate change in various parts of the world that are lesser-known to Americans, e.g. the Indigenous people of Botswana. Students looked for political and regional causes and the impact of these along with climate change on people, whether it be loss of cultural ways, forced migration, or lack of resources to adapt. Students then proposed courses of action to address these specific causes and consequences.

Thanks to my experiences with the Global Education FLC, I was able to raise students’ awareness of these global issues and their perhaps unexpected impacts on the United States. Best of all, my students became true scholar-citizens as many of them attended the Peace and Conflict Studies Center’s symposium on Climate Science/Climate Justice.

As one of my students said: “When we covered climate change in depth, I would be lying if I said I did not go down a rabbit hole or two while learning about the many different facets of how it is affecting the world. This course afforded me the opportunity to sit in on a panel discussion about inequalities created by climate change right in our backyard, and how we are treating those most susceptible. I feel this course has shifted my views from Why should I care? to How can I help?”