Are we better teachers because we’re teaching from home? Maybe. At the very least, we’re willing to say that we’re more comfortable and more able to focus on our content and our students because some of the worry about our corporeal representations and restrictions in a classroom have been lessened. In this piece, we explore the possibilities and opportunities afforded by remote teaching at the university level due to the covid-19 pandemic. While much has--and will be--said about the difficulties posed by this pedagogical shift, we argue that for some, there are important aspects of the lived and embodied practice of teaching that have been and may continue to be improved in digital and off-campus teaching spaces. We write from our shared perspectives as fat, cis-gender, queer women living with chronic illnesses and embodiments that have highlighted the restrictive and performative nature of in-person teaching pre-covid. Based on our discussions of these lived and embodied experiences both before and during the pandemic, we offer a conversation that refuses the romanticization of the “before times” and poses questions about how our lived experiences of teaching in the age of covid might inform richer understandings of the pandemic on the complex intersections of marginalized bodies and pedagogy
