Decolonizing the Syllabus Bibliography

From the blog post: “This does not give us/you a pass to not attempt to decolonize academia, but rather start planning the ways in which to do it and putting into place plans (hiring indigenous faculty on permanent positions, provide scholarships to indigenous students, accommodate teaching/learning structures to different knowledge production sites and ways, etc.) starting now. But at this exact moment, when enjoying the privileges afforded by academia on indigenous land, and when we are actively working or are unable to work towards decolonizing work, we need to acknowledge that reality.”

From the publisher's description: “On Being Included offers a critique of what happens when diversity is offered as a solution. It also shows how diversity workers

From the abstract: “This paper aims to do two things: It discusses decolonization; it also invites the following question—how do we write about decolonization in a decolonized manner? How might writing engage the personal, relational, and revolutionary sense of decolonization?”

From the abstract: “The article grapples with scholarship on cognitive justice and builds a case for transformative resistance that is simultaneously anti-colonial and anti-neoliberal, within, against and beyond the Westernised university. The discussion concentrates specifically on epistemic hegemonies and internationalisation, and argues that substantive decolonisation as a counterhegemonic project must entail an intellectual element that is aimed at transforming the knowledge structures that facilitate dehumanisation.”

From the abstract: "By exploring the works of Ta-Nehisi Coates this article seeks to set forth applicable pedagogical practices designed to help students better understand historical patterns of oppression. Based on observations and direct instruction, this article also adds to the discussion of how teacher practice directly shapes and influences student experiences."

From the article: “Yet another example: universities today are large systems of authoritative control, standardization, gradation, accountancy, classification, credits and penalties. We need to decolonize the systems of access and management insofar as they have turned higher education into a marketable product, rated, bought and sold by standard units, measured, counted and reduced to staple equivalence by impersonal, mechanical tests and therefore readily subject to statistical consistency, with numerical standards and units.”

From the Abstract: "In this article, I consider the formulation for a truly decolonized curriculum by first assessing what constitutes a 'colonial' education, especially one that is deserving of decolonization. I then discuss the parameters of educational decolonization, by thinking with decolonial and anti-colonial thinkers, to assess the tenability of a decolonized curriculum. Ultimately, I suggest what forms a decolonized curriculum might take by drawing on diaspora theory and by describing broader programmatic requirements within the framework of the Black Radical Tradition that offers decolonial epistemologies as a broad praxis for education."

Note: “Civic Laboratory for Environmental Action Research (CLEAR) is a feminist, anti-colonial lab specializing in monitoring plastic pollution.”

From the abstract: "The article discusses the proposals to decolonize the curriculum in U.S. higher education and the pursuit of social justice. Also cited are the proponents' use of the postmodernist conceptions of power, knowledge, and culture in their plan, the influence of French philosophers Michel Foucault and Jacques Derrida on the postcolonial scholars advancing curriculum decolonization, and the hidden curriculum concept.

Presents student perspectives on decolonization specifically in South Africa, but content appears applicable.

From the Description " Speakers, including: Malinda Smith, Shanne McCaffrey, Kiera Ladner, Dwayne Donald, D'Arcy Vermette, Andrea Bear Nicholas, addressed the ways in which the academy itself continued to play a part in colonization as well as the ways in which 'indigenizing the academy' may not, in fact, be beneficial for aboriginal peoples and preserving aboriginal cultures."Although this is not about American colonization, the same principles and concepts apply.

This provides an overview of how search engines perpetuate racial bias. While not directly related to syllabus decolonization, it does address how our searching can deliver biased results.

From the Abstract: " In this article, we analyze multiple settler moves towards innocence in order to forward “an ethic of incommensurability” that recognizes what is distinct and what is sovereign for project(s) of decolonization in relation to human and civil rights based social justice projects."
This article is referenced in multiple other articles and has been cited nearly 3000 times, so it is an important text.