There exists a power asymmetry between instructors and students in the physical classroom and other learning spaces which symbolizes the distribution of power in social spaces. Because of the structured power asymmetry in most learning spaces, promoting effective classroom teaching sometimes requires instructors to replace existing hierarchical power relations and with fluid, organic, and transgressive classroom dynamics in their relationships with their students. This approach has the potential to empower students to become their own agency for interrogating the assumptions and ideologies that they bring to the classroom. This paper outlines the instructional strategies that I incorporate in my "nonwestern" course that aims to introduce students in my university to the sub-Saharan African region. The course uses the interdisciplinary approach to explore the complicated ways history and social changes (including globalization) intersect to shape education reforms, and economic and social development in sub-Saharan Africa. Students bring a plethora of assumptions about sub-Saharan "Africa" to this course and my goal as an instructor is to help students interrogate their own assumptions and deconstruct the myths and distortions about the "Africa" in a broader term. The paper outlines the way I deliberately select course materials, and sequence course contents and themes to scaffold and promote incremental knowledge about the region for students during the semester. Furthermore, the paper outlines the strategies that help nudge students' critical thinking and restructure the power relations in the classroom. While these strategies may not automatically change students' assumptions about sub-Saharan "Africa", they nonetheless become opportunities for my students and I to reposition for effective discussions about the region with the goal to interrogating students' prior assumptions and views about the region. [For the complete Volume 21 proceedings, see ED629259.]