Decolonizing

What does it mean to “decolonize” teaching and scholarship? Why would we want to do that? And how? We take on these questions and more in a panel discussion with social scientists and established scholars of race Lance Gravlee, John L. Jackson Jr., Stephanie McClure, and Yolanda Moses. 

Some Resources:

• Blum, Susan D., and Alfie Kohn, eds.  (2020). Ungrading: Why rating students undermines learning (and what to do instead). West Virginia University Press. https://www.powells.com/book/ungrading-9781949199826
• Harrison, Faye V., ed. (1991). Decolonizing anthropology: Moving further toward an anthropology for liberation. American Anthropological Association. https://www.powells.com/book/decolonizing-anthropology-2nd-edition-9780913167830
• hooks, bell. (2014). Teaching to transgress. Routledge. https://www.powells.com/book/teaching-to-transgress-education-as-the-practice-of-freedom-9780415908085
• Trouillot, Michel-Rolph. (2003). "Anthropology and the savage slot: The poetics and politics of otherness." In Global transformations. Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 7-28.
• Wendland, Claire L. (2010). A heart for the work: Journeys through an African medical school. University of Chicago Press. https://www.powells.com/book/a-heart-for-the-work-9780226893273
• The Boise State diversity course controversy: https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2021/03/18/boise-state-suspends-diversity-course-1300-students

Select works our guests wanted to share with podcast listeners: 

• Gravlee, Clarence C. (2009). “How race becomes biology: Embodiment of social inequality.” American Journal of Physical Anthropology 138: 47–57.
• Gravlee, Lance. (2021) “How whiteness works: JAMA and the refusals of white supremacy.” Somatosphere. http://somatosphere.net/2021/how-whiteness-works.html/
• Jackson Jr, John L. (2013).  Thin description: Ethnography and the African Hebrew Israelites of Jerusalem. Harvard University Press. https://www.powells.com/book/thin-description-9780674049666
• McClure, SM (2017). Symbolic body capital of an “other” kind: African American females as a bracketed subunit in female body valuation. In Anderson-Fye, EP and Brewis, A (eds.) Fat Planet: Obesity, Culture and Symbolic Body Capital. University of New Mexico Press.
• McClure, SM. (2020) Living Unembodiment: Physicality and body/self discontinuity among African American Adolescent Girls. Ethos, 48(1): 3-28.
• Mukhopadhyay, Carol C., Rosemary Henze, and Yolanda T. Moses. (2013). How real is race? A sourcebook on race, culture, and biology, 2nd edition. Rowman & Littlefield. https://www.powells.com/book/how-real-is-race-9780759122734
• Rouse, Carolyn Moxley, John L. Jackson Jr, and Marla F. Frederick. (2016). Televised redemption: Black religious media and racial empowerment. NYU Press. https://www.powells.com/book/televised-redemption-9781479818174

A few additional resources on decolonizing:

• Harrison, Ira E., and Faye V. Harrison, eds. (1999). African-American pioneers in anthropology. University of Illinois Press. https://www.powells.com/book/african-american-pioneers-in-anthropology-9780252067365
• Harrison, Ira E., Deborah Johnson-Simon, and Erica Lorraine Williams, eds. (2018). The second generation of African American pioneers in anthropology. University of Illinois Press. https://www.press.uillinois.edu/wordpress/the-second-generation-of-african-american-pioneers-in-anthropology-first-recipient-of-university-of-illinois-press-fund-for-anthropology-grant/
• Roy, Sumana (2021). “The problem with the postcolonial syllabus.” https://www.chronicle.com/article/the-problem-with-the-postcolonial-syllabus
• Stimson, Blake (2021). “Deneocolonize your syllabus”. https://nonsite.org/deneocolonize-your-syllabus/
• Decolonizing anthropology series from Savage Minds: https://savageminds.org/2016/04/19/decolonizing-anthropology/