Helen McCabe, Assistant Professory in Political Theory, Faculty of Social Sciences
1. What curricular changes did you make?
The main change was to diversify the curriculum to combat the damaging stereotype that political philosophy was only done by white men. This involved introducing a greater diversity of viewpoints and perspectives to my teaching modules in the history of political thought.
With the year two module ‘Democracy and its Critics’, we included input on Islamic democracy from a colleague on the UoN Malaysia campus. I ensured also that the mandatory secondary literature for students was written by both male and female scholars, and – where possible – by scholars from different ethnic backgrounds. In addition, I added specific ‘further reading’ recommendations on decolonial themes such as the role of African (particularly Egyptian) thought in Plato’s philosophy, and illustrated the real-world impact of Rousseau’s ideas by discussing the Haitian Revolution.
With my year three module ‘The Politics of Utopia’ students were encouraged to question whether utopia was essentially a European/Christian ideal, and to explore feminist, anti-racist and anti-colonialist critiques of utopias/dystopias.
2. What challenges and issues did you face?
In terms of the year two module ‘Democracy and its Critics’ there were three key challenges, some of which overlap with my experience on ‘The Politics of Utopia’. Firstly, there was no widely-accepted methodology for ‘diversifying’ or ‘decolonising’ the ‘canon’ in the history of political thought. The tension remains between introducing students to new material and thinkers, and ensuring they have a sound understanding of the core material and ‘canonical’ thinkers.
There was little room to include a great variety of thinkers in depth in a 10-week course and I had many discussions with colleagues about what students must ‘cover’ in a module to be said to have achieved basic familiarity with foundational elements of our field. Students come to University to be taught by experts, and have a legitimate expectation that lecturers will teach on the basis of their specialised knowledge. Given the history of our subject, this may not be very diverse. Academics have a relatively short amount of time to prepare new reading lists and lectures, and many were understandably cautious about teaching (and assessing) content which was not part of their expertise.
Thirdly, it was not always easy to get students to think outside the box as many had a tendency to focus their assignments on the works of the conventional, established canons. If topics directly related to decolonial themes are not included overtly in assessment questions, many students will fail to engage with these ideas.
3. What can we learn from your experiences about decolonising the curriculum?
With specific reference to my field, we need to review whether the canon should be taught chronologically/historically or thematically, which offers more chance for bringing in non-canonical voices. We need to understand and agree some baseline definitions for decolonising curricula and be prepared to justify methodologies for decolonising the ‘canon’. More generally, my experience taught me, firstly, it is easier to make bigger and more impactful changes if you have control over the whole module including the choice of topics, assessment, and guest lecturers, and can design a module with diversity, and decolonisation, deliberately in mind.
Secondly, communication and learning from each other are important if lectures and seminars are going to be effective in addressing decolonised mind sets especially where different tutors are teaching a module.
Thirdly, it is important to forefront decolonising ideas or more diverse view-points by grounding ideas, concepts and literature very early on in modules, lectures and seminars, and overtly including feminist, decolonial, queer, and/or anti-racist lines of questioning in assessments. Finally, when decolonising curricula we need to consider what is feasible, what the limitations are, and whether we can plausibly overcome them.