NEWLAMP 2024
Northeast Workshop to Learn About Multicultural Philosophy (NEWLAMP)NEH Institute for Higher Education Faculty on Native American, Indigenous, and Land-Based Social and Political Philosophy
Project Format: Residential/Combined - 1 week - $1,300. (Taxable as income).
This week-long Institute is designed to give philosophy teachers the tools to approach, and successfully integrate in their general undergraduate courses, contemporary issues in Native American, Indigenous and Land-Based social and political philosophy. The curriculum will center on 5 key concepts in Indigenous resistance work: Sovereignty, Land, Decolonization, Indigenous Feminisms, and Cultural Reclamation.
The Idea:
Most undergraduate students in North America only read and discuss “Western,” Anglo-European philosophy in their philosophy courses. The problem is not that philosophy professors are generally unwilling to teach traditionally underrepresented areas such as African, Latin American, Indigenous, East Asian, South Asian, and Islamic philosophy. Rather, the problem is that most lack the familiarity needed to competently teach work in these areas. The Northeast Workshop to Learn About Multicultural Philosophy (NEWLAMP) project is a yearly week-long summer workshop aimed towards remedying this problem, by teaching philosophy teachers about a given underrepresented area, so that they can then teach it in their general undergraduate courses. Each year, NEWLAMP focuses on a different area. In June 24-28, 2024, NEWLAMP is an NEH Institute for Higher Education Faculty hosted at Northeastern University and focused on Native American, Indigenous and Land-Based Social and Political Philosophy.
2024 NEWLAMP Workshop NEH Institute for Higher Education
Native American, Indigenous and land-based social and political philosophy.
Four Experts will Lead the Workshop
Shelbi Nawhilet Meissner
University of Maryland
Joseph Len Miller
West Chester University
Yann Allard-Tremblay
McGill University
Kyle Powys Whyte
University of Michigan
The Potential Impact:
The potential impact that the NEWLAMP project could have on the inclusiveness and diversity of our field is substantial. 20 philosophy faculty, coming from a wide range of institutions, will teach a very large and diverse collection of undergraduate students about an area of philosophy that has traditionally been marginalized. Hundreds, and soon thousands, of undergraduate students will read not just about liberalism and libertarianism in their social and political philosophy courses, but also about, say, the African ethic of Ubuntu and pan-Africanism—topics that their philosophy teachers would likely not have tried to teach on their own. Professors will thus contribute to building a better curriculum and a broader canon in social and political philosophy. This is likely to have many positive downstream effects on the field, as more undergraduate students, especially those from underrepresented backgrounds, will be more likely to have an interest in a philosophy major, to then join the field of academia, and to further transform it.