The second episode of “Inspired Belonging” on Writing Remix, hosts Dan Dissinger and Stephanie Renée Payne reflect on their personal and pedagogical relationships with the work of the late scholar, poet, speaker, & teacher bell hooks. This is a deeply vulnerable conversation on hooks’ impactful work on engaged pedagogy, love, community, and self-actualization, specifically from her books Teaching to Transgress, All About Love, and The Will To Change. Dan and Stephanie unpack specific passages from hooks’ books and reflect on the transformations that have happened and continue to happen which have transformed their classrooms into spaces of vulnerability, healing, and deep engagement. They also reflect on their personal journeys, the intersections of their identities, and the lessons they draw from hooks’ integration of theory and practice. Stephanie tells the audience how bell hooks’ work helped validate, face, and heal the pain that was impacting her everyday existence. Then Dan opens up about how The Will To Change has “cracked him open” and helped him face the hold patriarchy has had on his inability to love himself, his challenges with BPD (Borderline Personality Disorder), and how this might be the most important book for everyone to read.
This is such a deeply touching episode of “Inspired Belonging” and reflects the type of work Stephanie and Dan do as workshop facilitators. Email to book an Inspired Belonging workshop/event and/or book Inspired Belonging as podcast guests/speakers: writingremixpodcast@gmail.com
Approximate Show Notes
00:00 Welcome and Introductions
00:26 Diving into Bell Hooks’ Influence
01:23 Personal Connections with Bell Hooks
03:52 Teaching to Transgress: A Transformative Experience
09:06 The Classroom as a Space for Healing and Growth
14:09 Engaged Pedagogy and Self-Actualization
18:44 The Impact of Bell Hooks on Writing and Teaching
30:14 Empowering Students Through Choice and Agency
33:54 The Impact of Agency on Learning
34:11 Bell Hooks on Love and Abuse
36:27 Healing in the Classroom
37:04 Embracing Vulnerability and Humanity
42:11 Patriarchy and Social Structures
57:41 The Importance of Ancestry and Identity
01:03:12 The Legacy of bell hooks
Stephanie Renée Payne is an Associate Professor in the Writing Program at the University of Southern California, a Board Certified Coach (BCC), and a mindfulness instructor at Mindful USC. In her over 10 years as a meditation and mindfulness practitioner and teacher, Payne has engaged in numerous trainings, including at the Upaya Zen Center, and The Omega Institute, among others. Payne holds an MFA from Vermont College of Fine Arts and is a doctoral candidate for Sustainable and Equitable Education at the University of Wisconsin. Payne is the author of ESP: Extreme Self-Pampering for the Soul, along with publications in numerous journals, including The Los Angeles Review, Hunger Mountain, and For Harriet, among others.
Daniel Dissinger is an Associate Professor in the Writing Program at the University of Southern California, creator & host of the award-winning podcast Writing Remix, host & creator of The Nostalgia Test Podcast a poet, Kerouac scholar, and writing coach. In 2021, he co-created an international network of academic podcasters called The Humanities Podcast Network, which has hosted workshops at Stanford, UCSB, and Macalester College, published an online handbook on teaching podcasts in the classroom, has a book contracted by Palgrave, and has held an annual international symposium since 2021. He’s helping plan the 5th symposium for 2025.
People, Texts & Podcasts Mentioned in the Episode
- All About Love by bell hooks
- The Will To Change by bell hooks
- Teaching to Transgress by bell hooks
- Cornel West
- Paulo Freire
- Dr. Harry Denny
- Carl Jung
- Border Line Personality Disorder
- Exile and Pride by Eli Clare
- The Road Less Traveled by M. Scott Peck
- Erich Fromm
- Dr. Carmen Kynard
- 44. Practicing Radical Pedagogy w/ Carmen Kynard
- Elaine Richardson
- Wendell Berry
- Tim Z. Hernandez
- Pierre Bourdieu
- Michel Foucault
“[Teaching to Transgress] validated who I wanted to be in the classroom, and it really gave me agency to define love and put love in [the] syllabus and to give it the heft that bell hooks gives it.”
-Stephanie Renée Payne
“I came to theory because I was hurting. The pain within me was so intense that I could not go on living. I came to theory desperate, wanting to comprehend, to grasp what was happening around and within me. Most importantly, I wanted to make the hurt go away.”
-Stephanie Renée Payne
“As a doctoral student, you’re taught to theorize, to think and be in the mind all day long. The thing that bell hooks does so well and is [reintroduce us to] practice [which] brings us back to the body and the spirit.”
-Dan Dissinger
“That book, The Will To Change, really cracked me open as a man […] and there are also ways to learn about myself so that I can […] practice a loving ethic of myself.”
-Dan Dissinger
“One student just said to me, ‘I never thought that the way I thought was important enough to put in a paper.’”
– Stephanie Renée Payne
“bell hooks said in All About Love […] you can’t be abused and be loved. There’s no love in abuse.”
-Dan Dissinger
“I know how they made me feel and they made me feel seen. And they made me feel validated for what I had to say. And, um, I think I’ve always wanted to try my best to be that in the classroom, to validate, to see, to hold the space for someone to be vulnerable enough to speak whatever their truth is.”
-Stephanie Renée Payne
“Talking about the difficult conversations. I like to take difficult out and just say we’re having conversations. And not offering any kind of good or bad or easy or hard, really stripping out all of the conditional pieces and giving people a space for creating the atmosphere of sharing.”
-Stephanie Renée Payne
“I try to give students back language.”
-Stephanie Renée Payne
Transcript: Inspired Belonging: Diving into the Work of bell hooks
Book Inspired Belonging for workshops, corporate events & retreats, or as podcast guests/ speakers: writingremixpodcast@gmail.com
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