Decolonizing concepts and methodologies have been very unevenly assimilated and advanced in the disciplines of the humanities; the status of the United States as an ongoing project in settler colonialism and the epistemological and ontological implications of this project are all-too-infrequently addressed in humanities curriculum, syllabi, and teaching. In 2017-18, supported by a grant from the CLRT Inclusive Teaching Initiative, we organized a faculty learning community entitled “Decolonizing Pedagogies: Teaching and Learning the Standing Rock Syllabus.” This workshop aims to extend the discussions that emerged from this project in the context of a larger community.
The Decolonizing Pedagogies Workshop is a platform for discussions of ways in which to incorporate decolonizing discourse and action into the courses we teach, the histories we write, and the ways in which we utilize these histories in the classroom.
Furthermore, we are also interested in facilitating discussions outside the bounded spaces of the university in order to facilitate public teaching and learning around issues of decolonization.
In the contemporary university, diversity, equity, and inclusivity are often understood and acted on in terms of the demographics of students and faculty—understandings that arguably preclude systemic and institutional change. Within the university, then, we believe that these efforts can be productively augmented and amplified via an engagement with issues around the decolonization of pedagogy—a project that aims at making our curriculum and teaching more inclusive of peoples, cultures, and histories that have been and continue to be erased in dominant forms and fora of knowledge production.