Learn from public syllabi.
Happy Sunday! Today is Ida's third publication of a three-part series on how to diversify our education. I really appreciate this one; this newsletter has acted as my own public syllabi, in a way. I get to dive deep into diverse topics and constantly get introduced to new sources and inspiring people. But the sources that mean most are the *actual* syllabi that educators share online. I'd love to hear where else you're learning from and what this email inspires.
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Nicole
TAKE ACTION
Explore curriculum guides & public syllabi curated by academics, such as the #StandingRockSyllabus, #ImmigrationSyllabus and #IslamophobiaIsRacism syllabus, among many others.
Read or view at least one of the syllabus items that intrigue you.
Create a regular reading group with friends or colleagues to go through some of the syllabus items and have collective discussions about the texts.
GET EDUCATED
By Ida Yalzadeh (she/her)
As an educator who teaches courses on histories of race in the United States, I am all too aware of the deep need to address how current events impact the things we talk about in the classroom. A week before the quarter began this year, for instance, I emailed my students in order to address the January 6 insurrection. I touched on how it would likely impact the way in which we engaged with our course, as well as why learning about histories of racial formation and activism were so critical to moving forward. As writer and professor Rebecca Schuman puts it, “college, with its structured reading environment and safe discussion spaces, can give an entire generation the tools not just to begin to understand our violent, incomprehensible world—but to make it a little bit less violent, and a lot more comprehensible” (Slate). I see my courses as giving students those tools to take with them as they move beyond the university.
Unfortunately, most do not have access to these kinds of spaces that allow us to collectively process and work through the historical underpinnings of what’s going on right now. Most don’t know where to turn in order to figure out, “What got us to where we are today?”
In previous issues, I’ve written about the importance of new media & zine culture as two different yet converging mediums that allow for information and knowledge to be more easily distributed among those advocating for structural change. Today, I wanted to talk about online & crowd-sourced syllabi as a source that puts a new spin on the traditional college course. By using current events as framing sites for deep dives into histories of the United States, scholars, researchers and activists are curating online syllabi to distribute foundational texts and accessible content that help others process what’s going on and how we got to these moments.
The first real instance of an online syllabus going viral was in 2014, with the instigation and organization of the #FergusonSyllabus on Twitter by Marcia Chatelain, an African American Studies and history professor at Georgetown University. The Ferguson unrest was prompted in the wake of the shooting of Michael Brown, and had many, including Chatelain, wondering what they could do. She began the hashtag as a way of crowd-sourcing texts that could speak to the reasons for the unrest and its historical context (The Atlantic). While Chatelain curated a list of books, essays, images and videos that lives on The Atlantic, searching the twitter hashtag yields thousands of results.
Since then, many other historians and scholars of the United States have collectively developed syllabi in order to help other communities make sense of the historical and political underpinnings that frame our current circumstances. Syllabi have been written to further contextualize the horrific Charleston church shooting, anti-Muslim racism, immigration, Standing Rock and the rise of Trump. These syllabi have the common goal of serving as a tool for those interested in social justice to educate themselves on the deeper contexts that underlie our most pressing issues of the current day.
One point I’d like to emphasize, though, has less to do with the content itself and more with those who are organizing it. Most all of the syllabi I listed here are curated by scholars of color. Back in November, I wrote about the importance of creating a more diverse professoriate in academia, as with their research comes asking a “more diverse set of questions—questions that are critical of using whiteness and capitalism as the norm by which all other subjects and ideas are measured.” That scholars of color are leading the way in these initiatives to digitally distribute knowledge across communities should come as no surprise. Community-based projects are central to the practice of collective liberation as we work to move our research beyond the Ivory Tower.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
By using current events as framing sites for deep dives into histories of the United States, scholars, researchers and activists are using online syllabi to distribute foundational texts and accessible content that help others process what’s going on and how we got to these moments.
The first real instance of an online syllabus going viral was in 2014, with the instigation and organization of the #FergusonSyllabus by Marcia Chatelain, an African American Studies and history professor at Georgetown University.
Syllabi written to contextualize the Charleston church shooting, anti-Muslim racism, immigration, Standing Rock and the rise of Trump have the common goal of serving as a tool for those interested in social justice to educate themselves on the deeper contexts that underlie our most pressing issues of the current day.
RELATED ISSUES
2/10/2021 | Celebrate zines.
1/21/2021 | Invest in new media.
11/8/2020 | Rethink what a professor looks like.
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