Ben Holland, Associate Professor of International Relations, Faculty of Social Sciences
1. What curricular changes did you make?
I teach the third-year module ‘Theories of the Modern State’ in which we teach about key theories of the modern state by tracing the history of political thought and the works of key thinkers. This element is covered in the first six weeks or so of the module, after which we introduce class, race, gender and other critical perspectives. The latter sessions enable students to critically analyse, deconstruct and then reconstruct the canon that was covered in the first six weeks.
One of the changes that we made was to re-organise the module reading list into six categories: set text, required reading, recommended reading, supplementary reading, reading for the enthusiast and decolonial perspectives.
The other change that we made was to the first-year module ‘Politics at University’ in which students were able to research about the subject of decolonising curricula and present their findings to their peers. This was not an academic session per se about decolonisation but a case-study about an aspect of university political life. We were able to integrate this into a module about study skills and academic practices which was designed to help students prepare to study Politics at university.
2. What challenges and issues did you face?
The teaching strategy for one of my modules ‘Theories of the Modern State’ is built on the premise that a key writer’s work builds on that of their contemporaries and predecessors. The challenge was to grapple with such sequential historical tradition of teaching this subject and to imagine if there were alternatives.
One of the ideas that was mooted was to run the module thematically which would expose students to the works of several writers and critiques in each session. I decided not to attempt this though as I felt that a chronological sequence was still the best route to getting students to make sense of the material.
The other challenge was locating BAME and female canonical writers who had written about the state and to enable students to examine these contributions alongside those of the established Western/European canons. While there are feminist and critical race theories of the state, they are framed mostly as critiques of the canon. It was therefore difficult to highlight issues around gender and race from the outset without covering some basic theoretical considerations.
3. What can we learn from your experiences about decolonising the curriculum?
Decolonising curricula should not be seen as a tick box exercise or a simple matter of changing your reading lists. If we change reading lists we should have a credible intellectual basis for doing so and in any case, the strategy of changing reading lists may not be appropriate for all modules.
Any changes in teaching and learning practices should be introduced through collective dialogue and reasoning. Examining the works of non-Western/European writers towards the end of a module or a degree programme makes it more difficult, intellectually and logistically, to enable students to cross-examine the works of diverse writers, but it is difficult to see how this could be otherwise.
Finally, tutors have greater discretion to diversify their curricula at levels three and four, and student engagement with more diverse streams of thought, ideas and concepts seems to be greater at these levels.