Decolonizing the Curriculum

Fall 2019 Faculty Week Decolonize Your Syllabus Workshop

Transcript

3. Shylah Pacheco Hamilton, Chair, Diversity Studies Juan Carlos Rodriguez Rivera, Assistant Professor, First Year Core Studios DECOLONIZING THE CURRICULUM
5. Chochenyo - Oakland Horse Tuuxi (HOR-shay TOO-hee) Ramaytush - San Francisco Hersha Tuhe (HER-Sha TOO-hee)
7. Clip from The West Wing
8. NAME THINGS FOR WHAT THEY ARE
9. 16th Century christianize or I kill you 19th Century civilize or I kill you 20th Century develop or I kill you (militarized introductions in Africa, Latin America and Asia) 21st Century democratize or I kill you Thanks to Ramon Grosfoguel
10. Flávio Cerqueira. Amnésia, 2015 DIVERSITY INCLUSIVITY DECOLONIALITY
11. DECOLONIZING ACADEMIA IS A PROCESS
12. DECOLONIZING CURRICULUM IS A PROCESS
13. STEP 1 A personal commitment to personal change. To deny the racial nature of politics (and power) --both inside of and surrounding the classroom/studio--is to perpetuate the inequities created by colonization
14. Questions to ask yourself
15. ◦ What principles, norms, values and worldviews inform your selection of knowledge for your curriculum? ◦ Do you articulate your own social and intellectual position when you teach? ◦ Who are you designing the curriculum for? Who is your ideal, imagined student and what assumptions are you making about their backgrounds, cultures, languages, and education?
16. ◦ Does your curriculum reflect its location here in the Bay Area (Oakland or SF and to what extent does it draw on marginalized histories, voices and languages? ◦ How does your teaching recognize and affirm the agency of Indigenous and marginalized and first-generation students? ◦ How far do your teaching and assessment methods allow students to feel included without assuming assimilation?
17. Specific Strategies.
18. Co-Create Community standards with your student This helps set the tone for critique and how they will relate to each other. This helps to build a close community which can result in higher accountability and a richer experience for students and faculty alike
19. Diversify your syllabus and curriculum DO NOT SPRINKLE, MAKE THESE VOICES DOMINANT Bring in guest speakers in your field from indigenous and marginalized communities, CITE these people in your own work
20. Digress from the canon Decenter knowledge and knowledge production Devalue hierarchies
21. Disinvest from citational power structures Diminish some voices and opinions during meetings/discussions, while magnifying others
22. WHAT ELSE CAN I DO?
23. Become an accomplice, not an ally or spectator Hire faculty from Indigenous and marginalized communities in permanent positions. Hire the faculty that challenge you and then listen to them Be inter/multi/anti -disciplinary look and think beyond your canon
24. Design classes that have a “?” at the end of the title. Make physical and intellectual space for Indigenous and marginalized students. Take the extra time with those students to help them learn to read, write, create and design like “Power”. Teach them ways to operate in this oppressive world.
25. Take the extra time to learn how these students think, read, write and create. Learn from them the ways they see and seek to change this oppressive world. Respect their refusal to write and create like you, even after you train them well to write and create like you
26. Take time to figure out with the students the best arrangement for the classroom space. Language can be violent. Start rethinking the terminologies that we use and are considered formal art/design vocabulary
27. RESOURCES: START HERE Join the Decolonial School during FA19-SP20 Decolonial School Google Site Decolonization is not a metaphor The Plan to Decolonize Design Why Can’t the US Decolonize its Design Education? Decolonizing Native American Design Decolonizing Academia: Poverty, Oppression, and Pain - Clelia O. Rodriguez 100 ways to Indigenize and decolonize academic programs and courses Honor Native Land: A Guide And Call To Acknowledgment
28. MORE RESOURCES Articles & Essays The Work of Design in the Age of Cultural Simulation, or, Decoloniality as Empty Signifier in Design No More White Saviors Decolonizing & Intersectionality Specific Authors Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s TED talk Gloria Anzaldúa’s Borderlands/La Frontera: the New Mestiza James Baldwin’s “A Talk to Teachers” Joshua Block’s “Educate to Liberate: Build an Anti-Racist Classroom” Lisa Delpit’s “No Kinda Sense” (from The Skin that We Speak) and Other People’s Children bell hooks’ Teaching to Transgress Kyoko Kishimoto’s “Decolonizing Teaching” written with Darlene St. Clair Amy Tan’s “Mother Tongue” Paolo Freire Audre Lorde Wayne Ross Noam Chomsky Ruthie Gilmore - Racial Capitalism Nelson Maldonado Torres - Coloniality of Being & The Decolonial Turn
29. MORE RESOURCES Books Design for the Pluriverse - Arturo Escobar The Design Politics of the Passport: Materiality, Immobility, and Dissent - Mahmoud Keshavarz The Politics of Design: A (Not So) Global Design Manual for Visual Communication - Ruben Pater A Mind Spread Out on the Ground - Alicia Elliot Before I Was a Critic I Was a Human Being - Amy Fung Movies/Documentaries/Videos Life & Debt Documentary Decolonizing the University - Ramon Grosfoguel Pedagogy of the Decolonizing Open Resources & Groups Native Land Map Decolonizing Reader - Ramon Tejada (Open document to share resources) Decolonize This Place
30. Decolonial School: sites.google.com/cca.edu/decolonial
31. WHY DO WE NEED TO DECOLONIZE.
32. WHO AM I?
33. workshop 1. Create a Google Doc with your team 2. Focus on land relationships, modernity, capitalism and whiteness 3. Based of those four categories, collectively come with strategies that could be implemented in your syllabi 4. Be vulnerable