Michelle: My name is Michelle Liu Cariger, and I am an Associate Professor of Theater and Performance Studies here at UCLA in the Department of Theater. And right now, I'm actually also the chair of the Theater Department.

Jasmine: Okay, great. Well, thanks so much for being here. So, maybe we can talk a little bit about your general teaching philosophy and where equity, diversity, and inclusion fit with that general approach.

Michelle: Sure, EDI — equity, diversity, inclusion — are sort of run through everything that I teach, and that's largely because of my research areas and the things that I came up writing about, and reading, and wanting to teach about, are already sort of fundamentally about world theater history, about theories of how people perform identity in everyday life.

And so, first in my research, and then in the kinds of teaching that have come out of that, I mainly think about: How do people perform race? What is the meaning of race and ethnicity and nationality in how we present ourselves in everyday life? Same thing with gender and with sexuality and so on. So, because those identity characteristics are things that people usually think of when they think of EDI issues, it turns out just fundamentally most of what I teach and think about are considered EDI issues today.

Jasmine: Okay, interesting. And what are some of the classes that threads through?

Michelle: The main one is probably the fact that I teach a class called Drama of Diversity here for the Theater Department, and it fulfills GE requirements and also the diversity requirement for UCLA. But then I also teach World Theater History, which starts from about 2000 BCE and goes up through about the 18th century. So, by definition, I'm really trying to bring to students things that happen over a really long period of time, but also all around the world. Fundamentally, it turns out I'm trying to balance really wide varieties of people and really wide varieties of experience, and so it's fundamental to the kinds of things that I'm thinking about. 

It also feels like — I mean, one thing that's interesting to me when we think about this in terms of TFT, right? Theater, film, and television — is that it just also feels like good pedagogy. What I want to teach are a really wide variety of approaches and a really wide variety of ideas, to teach students how to look critically at things both that they are familiar with, and also things and experiences and examples that they're maybe not familiar with. Those are all things that also kind of fall under the EDI rubric — it's just good teaching to give a wide variety of examples and to teach people to think sensitively and critically about things that they already thought they knew, and also things that they feel super unfamiliar with, or like they're brand new and don't have expertise in.

Jasmine: Right, right. So what are some things that you've used that's like stuff they're familiar with versus stuff that you're introducing to them for the first time?

Michelle: Sure. Well, the Theater History Class is a really good example of that. [Laughs] I have funny evaluations over my history of teaching this theater history survey, where the first one or two times I taught it, I got a couple students who were really unhappy with the class, and they would say something in the evaluation like, "I was excited about learning theater history because I thought we were going to learn about important things like Shakespeare or the ancient Greeks. But instead, I also had to learn about Sanskrit or West Africa."

And you’re like, well, that's just fundamental to trying to get a global theater history, that you need to have a clear sense of variety. But it did teach me to really keep an eye on the really wide variety of expectations that students might be coming into a class like that with. Some of them are basically expecting to come into that class and learn about things they think they already know — things that they like and that they're familiar with, like Shakespeare, like the ancient Greeks. Although I do try to remind them: Listen, ancient Greece was actually very different than today. You may have been taught a beautiful trajectory from then to now, but actually those guys were different than you, and here are the ways in which they're different. And the same thing with Shakespeare, really. I try to focus on the historiography and focus on how those things that you thought you knew may be way more different, way more complex. They'll surprise you in certain ways that you may not have been prepared for.

And then simultaneously, when we talk about Sanskrit theater or West African griot or other forms that students are less likely to have been familiar with already, I want to give them tools where it's not terrifying — where they can start to identify ways to respectfully and sensitively approach stuff that might feel really outside their comfort zone, and recognize how it can be just as problematic to refuse to engage something unfamiliar, or that you feel you don't have personal experience with, as it is to appropriate it in a terrible way, or think you already know everything you need to know.

Jasmine: Right, right. So some of their hesitation was maybe about just sort of messing it up a little bit?

Michelle: Yeah, I think these days that's what I see more and more. It was really funny [laughs],  another example from Drama of Diversity, and I now think this was really naive of me.. When I came into making Drama of Diversity, which was a class that already existed but I was asked to take it over and overhaul to make it a general education [GE] requirement class, I was like “Oh, I have to teach students [who think] I'm an actor, so I should be able to do anything– I really need to teach them sensitivity around appropriation, around racially and gender-specific material. And then, when I actually got into the classroom, I realized “Oh, that's not where anybody is anymore.” Now, students are hyper-aware of being sensitive to the specificities of gendered, sexual, and racial experience. They're hypersensitive to the importance of what's typically called "authenticity" in casting, etcetera. 

I realized I was behind — I was like a decade behind in my thinking — and so, I realized after I started teaching that course that I really had to build in actually the opposite. Trying to figure out, okay, we recognize that we need to be sensitive, we need to be recognizing how different specific experiences are really different, and there are things you may not be able to understand in a deep, personally-experienced way, but it's still important to learn about those things. It's still important to find sensitive and confident ways to not be afraid to engage those important and difficult issues. So I really ended up building more units into Drama of Diversity in order to help students feel more comfortable encountering work that they knew they needed to be careful and sensitive about.

Jasmine: Right. So more of the kind of Sanskrit, or whatever it was that they felt really unfamiliar with, you could build that out more, so they'd become more acquainted with it within the classroom.

Michelle: Yeah, yeah. Another concrete example from Drama of Diversity is I realized that students in that class really wanted to just give the answer they already hear on Instagram or social media, right? They wanted to be "right" about how casting should happen, or about the ways in which authenticity in a role is important — but that's not the point of a class, right?

We need to really deeply understand what's going on, and be able to analyze these situations in a more complex way than just having the "right" propaganda answer. So, I found that it was useful for me to build in exercises and discussion posts in which they were required to argue against what they might actually think. I really tried to separate out [that] this is not a class in having the right opinion. You can't get an A by having the “right” opinion about diversity. You get an A by being able to analyze and articulate what's going on in these different situations.

And so, by building in a discussion question which is like, "Don't tell me your opinion, but analyze this GIF or analyze this commercial. What's happening? How is race being used? How is sexuality being used in this?” It helped to sort of separate out the anxiety about students being perceived as cool or "woke" or whatever by their classmates, versus getting to what I really want them to concentrate on. Which is, here, what are the issues?

Jasmine: Right, right. So kind of building out a critical skill set through those exercises. Do you remember what any of the prompts were?

Michelle: A big one for me is "authenticity" in casting. So, you've heard that come up a couple of times already. It's fine that students have the opinion that, for example, if we talk about a movie or something, right? If the role [is] let’s say, a Black jazz musician from a working-class background in Chicago. Students know— they have the opinion—thatthat role should be played by a Black actor. But they don't necessarily have the opinion that that Black actor should be from Chicago, should be working class, should be able to play an instrument, or any of those things. So, I pitch some questions about getting past the "Yes, the race authenticity is important in this casting decision" and think through, “Well, why would that identity characteristic be important, when being from Chicago — which is also an identity characteristic — is not important?”

Jasmine: Sure, right.

Michelle: And so, that sort of takes it off [the question of], “Oh, what are the sort of overall prevailing opinions?” And [instead] trying to think through “What are the mechanics of how these different identity issues work?” Why do we need to think about one of these things and not necessarily worry about the others? Of course, right, the answer is ever-changing, but the answer is, well, we have documented proof that race has been a salient, oppressive factor in government, in politics, in social organization. And so we worry about this thing, but not necessarily about these other categories.

Jasmine: Right, right. So, it sounds like you're developing exercises that meet the students where they're at a little bit, and take into account maybe why they're responding to questions, or conversation topics, or prompts in a particular way, and then kind of engaging or developing prompts that work with maybe the context. 

Michelle: Yeah. We sort of devolve to what's already the conversation, but I'm trying to get past what we've already talked about and get into the nitty-gritty. So, I realized I needed to build more specifics and more concrete examples, and set up situations in which there was not pressure on students to say the "right" opinion, but instead require them to get a little bit further.

I have one other example. Because I realized this authenticity thing was going to happen over and over again, at the beginning I let them sort of get all those out in the first week's discussion board. Most people just say, "Yeah, if the role is disabled, then a disabled actor should play it. And if the role is of a certain race, then an actor of that race should play it." But then, as we get toward the end of the term, we have some queer representational things, and we have drag— for example, we watch Paris Is Burning, the documentary— and in Paris Is Burning, those are queer and trans people from a certain time period, who are largely not white, who spend a lot of time dressing up and doing balls as ostensibly not the gender, race, or class position that they "actually" inhabit. And another example would be Split Britches, a really important lesbian-focused avant-garde performance troupe, who actually have a line in their show Belle Reprieve that says, "We agreed realism works against us."

That's the moment where I then put out the question, “Okay, so before we all said that authenticity and being truthful is really important. But here are two examples where actually being truthful to what your ‘real’ identity is is not liberating, and does not feel like freedom.”

Jasmine: Right.

Michelle: So, how can we rethink and be more specific about our interest in authenticity? If our interest in authentic casting is actually about liberation, fairness, equity, freedom. What are other ways that we might think of that than just saying the casting has to be "correct"? [Laughs]

Jasmine: Right, right. So that's really interesting. You begin with this kind of baseline, close to what maybe their instinctive answers are around authenticity and casting, and then things become more complex as you go through the quarter.

Michelle: Yeah, yeah. And I really came to that idea just by trial and error, right? Because I've gotten to teach this class over and over again, I've seen the places where it consistently would happen again and again, and I'd think, “Man, I really want to get them past this. It doesn't feel like I got across the nuances of what I think they could be able to do.” And so over time, observing these same places and experimenting with new prompts, new activities, some new assignments, has really helped me bring those examples to a place where I'm much happier with them. And I feel like I see more of the kind of breakthroughs, of deep thinking, that I was hoping for. But it takes a long time, and it takes experimentation. And, a couple of times they haven't gone that well. [Laughs] Or, I try an exercise and it's like, “Oh, nobody really gets that, I think that did not work.”

Jasmine: Right. Right. Yeah. I mean this is sort of related, maybe, but I also wanted to ask you about some of the challenges you've encountered in weaving EDI approaches into your teaching.

Michelle: I mean, some of that is challenges, right? Where I felt like I wasn't getting students as far as I wanted them to. There are others… I kind of want to pivot and also talk about accessibility in classes.

Jasmine: Okay, yeah.

Michelle: A big challenge for me over time is the proliferating numbers of accommodation letters and requests that I've gotten from more and more students. I think that is an EDI issue in the sense of like, I want my course to be equitable and inclusive to everyone, right? And that includes not just the content, like we were talking about with varieties of different approaches and different examples, but also how a really wide, super diverse, very different group of students can participate in a way that may not be exactly the same, but is equitable.

Jasmine: Right.

Michelle: And so, a challenge that I have really struggled with over time is, “Well, what do I do [or] how can it feel equitable when I've got up to 30, 40% of the class coming to me and saying, well "My experience of the class has to be double time on tests," “My experience of the class  has to be like, I have adjusted attendance, so I don't necessarily show up all the time.” That is a thing that I found myself really struggling with, and trying to come up with ways that I could accommodate those students, right? I want them to have their chance, and learning disabilities and other reasons [and] needs for accommodation are real. Of course. But it was also incredibly onerous to have [to schedule] a different time and send some students to a different place to take a test, or whatever.

Jasmine: And how big was the class?

Michelle: I'm thinking really of my big lecture classes… we go from about 65 at the smallest to maybe 130 or so? That's what I’ve mainly taught. And I have TAs in that case, but I'm also highly cognizant that we need to be respectful of the TAs' time.

Jasmine: Right.

Michelle: These things that were taking up so much time, and that some students were getting a lot more personal attention or they’re getting other things, really pushed me toward [using universal design]. And I didn’t even know the name for this until several years into doing it. I kind of did it, I guess, instinctually at first. It pushed me toward using more and more universal design for my courses. 

I didn’t know that word “universal design” until I was already sort of doing this work. Basically, universal design is designing a course or a class so that its fundamental setup — the basic syllabus that you use for everyone — already encounters and accommodates for the typical accommodations that come to us from CAE, the Center for Accessible Education.

So, for example, I used to have timed quizzes, because it's a very standard way to make it easier labor for the TA. Multiple choice and timed quizzes were in my Drama of Diversity class. But we started getting somany letters that said, "I get double time on a quiz," or "I get time-and-a-half on tests," etcetera. And I thought, “Well, this is such a waste of time for the TA, who has to then individually program in tons and tons of these things.” And so, I thought, “Well, if the quizzes weren't timed, then we wouldn't have to deal with any of those letters.” I actually changed my syllabus over time to have zero timed quizzes. I got rid of all multiple choice. Because… it was starting to take a lot more work instead of less work, because we had to do these individual accommodations. I've changed the kinds of writing that are required, and I even changed the grading.

So, like the first thing is: universal design. I didn't want to have a bunch of these tiny checkoff items that me or the TA had to deal with. I wanted to control for those. Over time, I've changed– each time I teach the class, right, I change it a little bit to try to reduce differences in the way the students work their way through the course. And then the second thing that I ended up doing because that's a lot more writing. It's a lot more. It can become a lot more work for the TA if they have to do that kind of grading. 

Jasmine: I was gonna ask you about that, yeah.

Michelle: I also switched my grading eventually to a system called “specs” grading, which is “specifications grading.” And that is a method that I was using to try to reduce the labor and the intensiveness of grading, but still maintain the kinds of teaching and the kinds of assignments that I wanted. 

We can share a link for specs grading. There are books about it. There are articles about it. But the basic premise is that all work that's turned in by a student is pass/fail. Like either, it's good enough, it shows sufficient engagement, or it doesn't show sufficient engagement. And so, that speeds things up for whoever is grading because you can just look at the thing, go through it, and be like, “Yeah, this is good enough,” right? You don't have to get into the weeds of like, “is this an A or is this a B? Is this a B minus?” level of engagement. And instead, in order to accommodate for the fact that it might take a little time to get up to speed to get things up to spec, I just have a lot more chances to earn points. The students in Drama of Diversity, they basically have way more things that they could do than they actually need to do in order to get an A. 

Jasmine: Right.

Michelle: And so that way, if a student comes into it and this is like already in their wheelhouse and they really love this stuff and they're ready to nail it — then they nail it from the beginning, they rack up enough points, and they can actually not do some of the activities. Once they have the number of points that they want for the grade that they're shooting for, they've done enough. They can just stop working. And if it's a student who needed more time to ramp up and to get the hang of this kind of discussion, and this kind of detailed work, right, that I was already talking about. Then, there are more points than they actually needed. So they can miss out a few times, and it just means that they needed more practice.

Jasmine: Right.

Michelle: You know, like anything that requires practice, right? I'm bad at yo-yo, so I'll have to practice yo-yo longer [both laugh] than a person who just really has that feel for the rhythm or whatever.

Jasmine: Right, right.

Michelle: And so I try to build that in so that everyone can succeed on the basis of what comes easily and harder to them.

Jasmine: So, do the TAs give them feedback, then?

Michelle: This was another strategic choice we made. We found that extensive individual feedback was often ignored by a lot of our students. Any student who asks for feedback can get it from a TA or from me. But instead, for those big classes, we started doing a weekly newsletter. 

So basically, the TA grades everybody's quizzes and discussion boards quickly as pass/fail, and then chooses one or two really good examples from students, gets their permission to publish them, and then sends out a single message to all the students in their section that says “These are examples of full credit answers that really get the job done.” And they also can give out pointers in a general sense, that’s like, “Hey, we saw a lot of people had problems with this thing.” So, instead of having to give that feedback over and over and over again privately, it sort of spreads it out, and everybody can kind of learn from the same situations. 

And then, of course, if individual students…want additional feedback or need it, then they can just ask for it, and that enables us to sort of save our time and really focus on the students who are looking for that kind of feedback.

Jasmine: Right, right. I'm curious about the students that ask for feedback. How often that happened? You know, because…that's easier for some students than others, you know? And so, I'm curious about that.

Michelle: Yeah, I mean, I think it varies, right? Like a student who struggles and is working on it, right, will typically know to ask. We also tried to lower the bar to entry for some kinds of feedback. So, in the weekly quiz, which is private between the student and the TA, and then I sort of spot check them and keep an eye on everything. I did this during COVID actually. During COVID, I introduced a final question on the quiz, which is a check-in question. It's not graded. It's just “Everything okay? Do you have any outstanding questions? Is there anything going on that you want to tell us about?” And then it says, you know, “This question is optional and will not be graded.” 

Jasmine: Mmm.

Michelle: That meant every week, it was just right there in front of you because you were already doing the quiz, that you could share a question that you had or a concern that you had. And I think that helped to lower the bar. And even students who didn't really use it, like most, the vast majority of students, don't put anything there, or some of them are like, “Everything's good.” And a few are like, “No, but I'm really glad you asked.”

Jasmine: Right.

Michelle: That's one way, I think, to sort of help to balance that out.

Jasmine: Yeah, no, that's a great idea.

Michelle: I was really proud of it…I was like, "Wait, this is working!” [Laughs]

Jasmine: Nice, nice. So, maybe we can talk about some of the reasons for including EDI in your teaching and why it might be important?

Michelle: Reasons for including EDI. One of them is, I think that in general, at least for the types of topics I teach, it's just good practice.

Jasmine: Yeah.

Michelle: If it's a survey class, it should survey really broadly, and that's the goal, right? Your goal is to have had a taste of lots of different things. And, like I mentioned, to impart to students strategies, effective strategies, both for rethinking things you thought you knew, and for encountering stuff that's unfamiliar and maybe you know sort of makes you feel anxious or you're not really sure what you should do. 

Jasmine: Right. 

Michelle: So that's to me just good pedagogy in general. And it is specifically an EDI thing. We don't have to call it EDI. That's just good pedagogy.

Jasmine: Yeah.

Michelle: Secondly, kind of like my interest in universal design, is I'm actually trying to make my own life easier. [laughs]

Jasmine: Right.

Michelle: I want my TA's life and my life to be like fewer of these blow-ups…the less often that students are having sort of an emotional sort of upset on the basis of my course, or like freaking out about this thing or that thing. Honestly, the better my life is anyway. I want the course to be already accessible. I want the course to already sort of address those issues that I know they're already coming into class with, and that in the long run makes my life easier. 

Now on the flip side, right, there are things that are difficult or complicated. One is, it just takes more work. I do have to address my syllabus in a kind of maintenance way, right? Each time.

Jasmine: Right.

Michelle: And so, that can be hard when you're like, “Man, it was so much work to get this done the first time.” At the end of the quarter, I'm so exhausted. I really don't want to do a postmortem on this stuff and implement some changes. So, I recognize that it's hard, but I do think the payoff for doing minor maintenance all the time is better than the amount of work it takes, both to deal with a blow up when I wasn't sort of prepared for something, and to do a major overhaul if I kind of let it, you know, ride. It's just like any good maintenance on your car or your, you know, kitchen or whatever.

Jasmine: Yeah, for sure. So, maintenance in terms of the content, but also maintenance in terms of how that content is sort of folded into a class structure. 

Michelle: Yeah, totally. Totally.

And, another thing that I would say is like, especially the longer I've taught certain courses, the more comfortable I am with small fixes. Like, you don't have to fix everything at once. It's been really helpful for me for these courses that I've been able to teach multiple times to just [be] like “Okay, next time, I'm gonna fix this one thing,” right? Like, I don't pressure myself to try to overhaul everything or solve everything every time. Every minor improvement that I make is a thing that I can sort of rely on from there on out. Every small fix is great.

Jasmine: Yeah.

Michelle: And I don't stress about, sort of, you know changing everything or being magic or whatever. Right. Like, there will always just be also a thing that doesn't go well, or a student who's really unhappy, and we have to sort of like make peace with that. 

Jasmine: All right. Well, thanks so much! 

Michelle: Yep. Thank you.