Josephine Foucher

Decolonising the Curriculum – Sharing Ideas: The Podcast Series

Image Credit: Design by Joe Arton

Welcome to this podcast series produced by The Race Equality and Anti-Racist Sub-Committee (REAR) at The University of Edinburgh in collaboration with Teaching Matters where we hear from different academics at the University about what Decolonising the Curriculum means for them and how they have put this into practice in their learning and teaching or research. They also share some readings they have found useful.

The hope is that the podcasts will provide ideas, stimulate thinking and dialogues as well as build a network of academics in The University of Edinburgh who are interested and engaged in offering an anti-racist and inclusive curriculum.

If you are interested in contributing a podcast to this series, please get in touch with Emily Sena (emily.sena@ed.ac.uk) or Johanna Holtan (johanna.holtan@ed.ac.uk), co-convenors of the Race Equality and Anti-Racist Sub-Committee.

(Note: Captions for these videos were machine generated and may contain errors)

Gwenetta D. Curry

In this episode, Professor Emerita Rowena Arshad, Chair in Multicultural and Anti-Racist Education talks to Dr Gwenetta D. Curry a Lecturer of Race, Ethnicity, and Health in the Usher Institute at The University of Edinburgh

Dr Gwenetta Curry’s Recommendations: 

  • Fanon, Frantz Black Skin White Masks New York : Grove Press, Inc., (1952, 1967)
  • Fanon, Frantz The Wretched of the Earth New York: Grove Press, (1968)
  • Curry, Tommy J. Decolonizing the Intersection: Black Male Studies as a Critique of Intersectionality’s Indebtedness to Subculture of Violence Theory in Critical Psychology Praxis: Psychosocial Non-Alignment to Modernity/Coloniality (Advances in Theoretical and Philosophical Psychology Series) (pp.132-154) Chapter Eleven, Publisher: Routledge
  • Curry, Tommy J. The Derelictical Crisis of African American Philosophy: How African American Philosophy Fails to Contribute to the Study of African-Descended People. Journal of Black Studies. 2011, 42(3):314-333
  • Ladner, Joyce A. The Death of White Sociology (1973)

Ayanda Ngobeni

In this episode, Professor Emerita Rowena Arshad, Chair in Multicultural and Anti-Racist Education talks to Ayanda Ngobeni a Law Student at The University of Edinburgh, Black and Ethnic Minority Liberation Campaign Officer and Mastercard Foundation Scholar African Leadership Academy Alum (Class of 2016).

Ayanda Ngobeni’s Recommendations: 

  • Angelou, Maya. “Still I Rise.” Making Literature Matter: An Anthology for Readers and Writers, edited by John Schilb and John Clifford, 7th ed., Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2020, pp. 127-131

Silvia Perez-Espona

In this episode, Professor Emerita Rowena Arshad, Chair in Multicultural and Anti-Racist Education talks to Dr Silvia Perez-Espona, a Conservation Science Programme Coordinator at the Royal (Dick) School of Veterinary Studies, The University of Edinburgh.

Dr Perez-Espona’s Recommendations:

  • Saini, Angela. Superior : the Return of Race Science / Angela Saini. London: 4th Estate, 2019.
  • Marshall, Tim. Prisoners of Geography : Ten Maps That Tell You Everything You Need to Know About Global Politics / Tim Marshall ; Foreword by Sir John Scarlett. London: Elliott and Thompson Limited, 2015.
  • Galeano, Eduardo, Cedric Belfrage, and Isabel Allende. Open Veins of Latin America : Five Centuries of the Pillage of a Continent / Eduardo Galeano ; Translated by Cedric Belfrage. 25th anniversary edition / foreword by Isabel Allende. New York: Monthly Review Press, 1997.

Shadaab Rahemtulla

In this episode, Johanna Holtan Co-Convenor of the Race Equality and Anti-Racist Sub-Committee (REAR) and Programme Director of the Mastercard Foundation Scholars Program talks to Dr Shadaab Rahemtulla, a Lecturer in Islam and Christian-Muslim Relations at the School of Divinity, The University of Edinburgh. He is also the Programme Director of the newly launched Masters in Islam and Christian-Muslim Relations.

Dr Shadaab Rahemtulla’s Recommendations:

Radhika Govinda

In this episode, Johanna Holtan Co-Convenor of the Race Equality and Anti-Racist Sub-Committee (REAR) and Programme Director, Mastercard Foundation Scholars Program talks to Dr Radhika Govinda, Senior Lecturer in Sociology at the School of Social and Political Science, University of Edinburgh. Dr Govinda sits on the steering committees for the University’s GenderED and RACE.ED networks. She is Associate Director of CRITIQUE, and an active member of the Centre for South Asian Studies.

Dr Radhika Govinda’s Recommendations

  • Mohanty, Chandra Talpade. “‘Under Western Eyes’ Revisited: Feminist Solidarity through Anticapitalist Struggles.” Signs, vol. 28, no. 2, 2003, pp. 499–535.
  • Hooks, Bell.  (1994).  Teaching to transgress : education as the practice of freedom. New York:  Routledge
  • Crenshaw, Kimberle. “Mapping the Margins: Intersectionality, Identity Politics, and Violence against Women of Color.” Stanford Law Review, vol. 43, no. 6, 1991, pp. 1241–1299.

Julie Cupples

In this episode, Professor Emerita Rowena Arshad, Chair in Multicultural and Anti-Racist Education talks to Julie Cupples, Professor of Human Geography and Cultural Studies; Head of Geography and the Lived Environment Research Institute at the University of Edinburgh.

Prof. Julie Cupples Recommendations: 

  • Smith, Linda Tuhiwai. Decolonizing Methodologies : Research and Indigenous Peoples / Linda Tuhiwai Smith. New York: Zed Books, 1999
  • Ramón Grosfoguel, and Julie Cupples. Unsettling Eurocentrism in the Westernized University. Taylor and Francis, 2018.
  • Hooker, Juliet et al. Black and Indigenous Resistance in the Americas : from Multiculturalism to Racist Backlash : a Project of the Antiracist Research and Action Network (RAIAR) / Edited by Juliet Hooker ; Translated by Giorleny Altamirano Rayo, Aileen Ford, and Steven Lownes. Lanham: Lexington Books, 2020.
  • Hooker, Juliet. Theorizing Race in the Americas : Douglass, Sarmiento, Du Bois, and Vasconcelos / Juliet Hooker. New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2017.
  • Hooker, Juliet. Race and the Politics of Solidarity / Juliet Hooker. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009
  • Tzul, Gladys Tzul. “Rebuilding Communal Life: Ixil Women and the Desire for Life in Guatemala.” NACLA report on the Americas (1993) 50.4 (2018): 404–407.
  • Tzul, Gladys Tzul. “Communal Strategies for Controlling Microfinance in Chuimeq’ena’ Guatemala.” The South Atlantic quarterly 115.3 (2016): 625–631.
  • Santos, Boaventura de Sousa. The End of the Cognitive Empire : the Coming of Age of Epistemologies of the South / Boaventura de Sousa Santos. Durham: Duke University Press, 2018.
  • Mutu (Ngāti Kahu, Te Rarawa and Ngāti Whātua nations). “‘To Honour the Treaty, We Must First Settle Colonisation’ (Moana Jackson 2015): The Long Road from Colonial Devastation to Balance, Peace and Harmony.” Journal of the Royal Society of New Zealand 49.sup1 (2019): 4–18.

David Kluth

In this episode, Professor Emerita Rowena Arshad, Chair in Multicultural and Anti-Racist Education talks to Professor David Kluth, Chair of Medical Education, Deanery of Clinical Sciences at the University of Edinburgh and a Consultant nephrologist.

Prof. David Kluth Recommendations: 

  • Hannaford, Ivan. Race : the History of an Idea in the West / Ivan Hannaford. Washington, D.C: Woodrow Wilson Center Press, 1996.
  • Givens, Marjory L et al. “Deconstructing Inequities — Transparent Values in Measurement and Analytic Choices.” The New England journal of medicine 384.19 (2021): 1861–1865.
  • Amutah, Christina et al. “Misrepresenting Race — The Role of Medical Schools in Propagating Physician Bias.” The New England journal of medicine 384.9 (2021): 872–878.
  • Oni-Orisan, Akinyemi et al. “Embracing Genetic Diversity to Improve Black Health.” The New England journal of medicine 384.12 (2021): 1163–1167.
  • Mukwende, Malone, Peter Tamony, and Margaret Turner. Mind the Gap : a Handbook of Clinical Signs in Black and Brown Skin / Mukwende, M,  Tamony, P, Turner, M. First edition. London: St George’s, University of London, 2020.

Lauren Hall-Lew

In this episode, Professor Emerita Rowena Arshad, Chair in Multicultural and Anti-Racist Education talks to Dr. Lauren Hall-Lew, a Reader in Linguistics and English Language in the School of Philosophy, Psychology and Language Sciences at the University of Edinburgh.

Dr. Hall-Lew’s Recommendations

  • Rosa, Jonathan, and Nelson Flores. “Unsettling race and language: Toward a raciolinguistic perspective.” Language in society 46, no. 5 (2017): 621-647.
  • Hudley, Anne H. Charity, Christine Mallinson, and Mary Bucholtz. “Toward racial justice in linguistics: Interdisciplinary insights into theorizing race in the discipline and diversifying the profession.” Language 96.4 (2020): e200-e235.
  • García, Ofelia, Nelson Flores, Kate Seltzer, Li Wei, Ricardo Otheguy, and Jonathan Rosa. “Rejecting abyssal thinking in the language and education of racialized bilinguals: A manifesto.” Critical Inquiry in Language Studies (2021): 1-26.
  • Webinars on “Racial Justice, Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion in the Linguistics Curriculum” https://www.linguisticsociety.org/resource/lsa-webinar-series-racial-justice-equity-diversity-and-in…

Srinjoy Mitra

In this episode, Professor Emerita Rowena Arshad, Chair in Multicultural and Anti-Racist Education talks to Dr Srinjoy Mitra a Senior Lecturer in Integrated Sensor Technology at the Institute for Integrated Micro and Nano Systems at the University of Edinburgh.

Dr Mitra’s Recommendations

  • Raj, K. Relocating Modern Science: Circulation and the Construction of Knowledge in South Asia and Europe, 1650-1900. London: Palgrave Macmillan UK, 2007.
  • “James Delbourgo and Nicholas Dew, editors. Science and Empire in the Atlantic World: Science and Empire in the Atlantic World.” The American historical review 113.2 (2008): 621–621.
  • Andrews, Kehinde. The New Age of Empire: How Racism and Colonialism Still Rule the World. Allen Lane, 2021.
  • Liboiron, Max. Pollution Is Colonialism. Durham: Duke University Press, 2021.
  • Kolbert, Elizabeth. Under a White Sky : the Nature of the Future / Elizabeth Kolbert. First edition. New York: Crown, 2021.

Rashné Limki

In this episode, Professor Emerita Rowena Arshad, Chair in Multicultural and Anti-Racist Education talks to Dr. Rashné Limki a Lecturer in Work and Organisation Studies at The University of Edinburgh Business School.

Authors Note: This podcast is about 28 mins. Rashné Limki speaks of decolonisation as the abolition of coloniality, or the end of the world as we know it. Outlining coloniality as a logic that has provided us an impoverished description of what it is to be human in this world, Rashné challenges us to understand this and to act on it. For her, to be in a state of coloniality is a profoundly wounding condition, so that to decolonise means to learn from the grief of the wound and to repair the world that has inflicted it.

Dr Limki’s Recommendations

  • Césaire, Aimé. ‘Poetry and Knowledge’ in Lyric and Dramatic Poetry, 1946-82. Trans. A. James Arnold. (1990).
  • Fanon, Frantz. ‘On National Culture’ in Wretched of the Earth. (1961)
  • “Robin Wall Kimmerer, The Intelligence of Plants.” On Being with Krista Tippett, 25 February 2016, https://onbeing.org/programs/robin-wall-kimmerer-the-intelligence-of-plants/
  • Audre Lorde, “Poetry is not a luxury” in Lorde, Audre. Sister Outsider : Essays and Speeches / by Audre Lorde ; [with a New Foreword by Cheryl Clarke]. Berkeley: Crossing Press, c2007.
  • McKittrick, Katherine. “Mathematics Black Life.” The Black scholar 44.2 (2014): 16–28.
  • Murphy, Michelle. “Against Population, Towards Alterlife” in Making Kin, Not Population, editors Adele Clarke and Donna Haraway. (Prickly Paradigm Press, 2018)
  • da Silva, D.F., 2016, ‘On Difference Without Separability’. 32nd Bienal De São Paulo Art Biennial: Incerteza viva, pp.57-65.
  • Wynter, Sylvia. “Unsettling the Coloniality of Being/Power/Truth/Freedom: Towards the Human, After Man, Its Overrepresentation—An Argument.” CR (East Lansing, Mich.) 3.3 (2003): 257–337.

Series Produced and Edited By

photograph of the authorJoséphine Foucher

Joséphine is doing a PhD in Sociology at The University of Edinburgh. Her research looks at the intersection between art and politics in contemporary Cuba. She supports Jenny Scoles as the Teaching Matters Co-Editor and Student Engagement Officer through the PhD Intern scheme at the Institute for Academic Development.

Photo of the authorJoseph Arton

Dr. Joe Arton is an Academic Developer at the Institute for Academic Development at the University of Edinburgh, he is a member of the University’s Curriculum Transformation Programme Team and curated The Edinburgh Hybrid Teaching Exchange, the University of Edinburgh’s internal site for Hybrid Teaching and Learning resources and best practice. He has a PhD in Film and Media and specialises in digital media for academic development.

2 comments

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *