Decolonizing the Curriculum through African Studies
Updated June 14, 2021 for the BU Wheelock Equity and Democracy Summer Institute, and specifically for the panel Subverting Silences, Absences, and Distortions: Decolonizing the Curriculum through African Studies. For any questions, please contact africa@bu.edu
PRINCIPLES
Reflect on your own assumptions about Africa
Prioritize the agency and humanity of people from the continent (eliminate passive, submissive, or being subjected to).
Teach the (his)stories of African individuals and of groups.
Ask: Whose stories are these? Whose stories are missing? Whose ancestors are remembered? Are the stories authentic? Are the stories complex?
Center Black/African Voices through books and guest speakers.
Speak specifically and locally: Resist continent-wide generalizations; one author or one country does not represent Africa.
Represent history in its complexity, multiplicities, and diversities.
Establish deep connections: Make salient your students’ connections to Africa
Co-produce knowledge: what knowledges do your African and African diasporic students bring about Africa?
Link content and practice: learn from your students, engage in collaborative work, dismantle hierarchies of knowledge and power.
Teach about African histories with passion, reverence, and humility in the face of the immensity of knowledge .
Understand that there may be righteous anger at the denial of teaching about Africa.
Affirm humanity and dignity, always.
RESOURCES
This select resource list provides key links and videos on decolonial knowledge.
ENTRY-POINTS
How to Write about Africa, by Binyavanga Wainaina, Granta92 (January 2006): 92-95.
How to Truly Decolonize the Study of Africa by Robtel Neajel Pailey June 10, 2019, Al Jazeera.
Video: George Sefa Dei on The African Approach to Knowledge, Pt 1.
Colonialism made the Modern World: Let’s Remake It by Adom Getachew, July 27, 2020, NYT.
Decolonization is not a metaphor by Eve Tuck. Decolonization, Indigeneity, and Society. 2012.
Africa’s Decolonization Battle Should be about Knowledge by David Mwanbari, September 6, 2019, Al Jazeera
5 Ways to Decolonize your Child’s Education from Home by Karen Walsh
Teaching African History and Culture Across the Curriculum by Elsa Wiehe, Edutopia.
BU African Studies Center Online Curriculum.
LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE
The Danger of a Single Story, (2013), Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, TED Talk.
How not to discuss African fiction by Aneihi Edoro, Brittle Paper.
Criteria for evaluating materials on Africa. Africa Access
Decolonising the Mind by Ngugi Wa Thiongo (1986)
What Does Decolonize the Mind mean today by Mukoma Wa Ngugi, March 23, 2018
Select list of novels to teach about decolonization, Boston University.
AFRICAN STUDIES
Decolonise African Studies? By Christopher Clapham, Journal of Modern African Studies, March 2020.
Decolonize, decoloniality and the future of African Studies: A Conversation with Dr. Sabelo Ndlovu-Gatcheni by Duncan Omanga, January 14, 2020.
Video: Jean Alman’s 2018 African Studies Association (ASA) Presidential Lecture “Herskovitz must fall”
Race and the Politics of Knowledge Production in African Studies by Marius Kothor, Black Perspectives. April 8, 2019.
Video: Ruptures: African Studies and the Racial Politics of Knowledge Production, 1968 to 1998: ASA Board Sponsored Panel.
HISTORY
Decolonization Resource Collection (National History Center)
Healy-Clancy, M. (2018). Nomzamo: Teaching Complexity through the Life of Winnie Madikizela-Mandela, Bridgewater Review 37, no. 2 (November 2018): 4-9.
African Activist Archive Michigan State University
Video: Barbarians at the Gate: Early Black Historiographical Attempts to Redefine Nubia’s Place in History, by Debora Heard, April 2, 2021.
Video: New Perspectives on Ancient Nubia, Nile Valley Collective Round Table
Video: New Perspectives on Ancient Nubia lecture series
Video: Black Pharaohs? Egyptological Bias, Racism, and Egypt and Nubia as African Civilizations by Stuart Tyson Smith, Sept. 22, 2020
Video: W.E.B. Du Bois, Education, and Archaeology in Egypt: An Overlooked Chapter in the History of Egyptology by Vanessa Davies, March 28, 2017
Videos: Christopher Ehret Hutchins Center – Huggins Lectures:
Ancient Africa: Crops, Commerce, and the Export of Innovation
The Africanity of Ancient Egypt
A SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY
Ampofo, A. (2019). “Mɛ san aba: The Africa We Want and an African-centered Approach to Knowledge Production” In Markus Schulz (Ed.) Global Sociology and the Struggles for a Better World, edited by Markus Schulz London: Sage.
Ampofo, A. (2016). “Re-viewing Studies on Africa, #Black Lives Matter, and Envisioning the Future of African Studies” African Studies Review (59)2: 7-27.
Appiah, A. (1992). In My Father’s House: Africa in the Philosophy of Culture.
Dei, G. S. (2010). Fanon and the Counterinsurgency of Education. In Series: Transgressions: Cultural Studies and Education. Sense Publishers.
Dei, G. S. & Emeagwali, G. (2014). African Indigenous Knowledge and the Disciplines. In Series: Anti-Colonial Educational Perspectives for Transformative Change. Sense Publishers.
Dei, G. S. & Lordan, M. (2016). Anti-Colonial Theory and Decolonial Praxis. Peter Lang.
Dei, G. S. (2011). Indigenous Philosophies and Critical Education: A Reader. Peter Lang.
Dei, G. S. (2009). Teaching Africa: Towards a Transgressive Pedagogy (Explorations of Educational Purpose. Springer.
Dei, G. S. (2010). Fanon and Education: Thinking Through Pedagogical Possibilities. Peter Lang.
Dei, G. S., Odozor, E. et al. Cartographies of Blackness and Black Indigeneities
Fanon, F. (1994). Black Skin, White Masks. Grove Press.
Fanon, F. (2005). The Wretched of the Earth. Grove Press.
Gilbert, E. and Reynolds, J. (2012). Africa in World History: From Prehistory to the Present, 3rd Ed. (Pearson, 2012).
Gilroy, Paul. (1993) The Black Atlantic: Modernity and Double Consciousness. Cambridge: Harvard UP.
Giroux, Henry A., and Peter McLaren, eds. (1992)/ Between Borders: Pedagogy and the Politics of Cultural Studies. London: Routledge.
Keim, C. and Somerville, C. (2018). Mistaking Africa: Curiosities and Inventions of the American Mind, 4th Ed. Routledge.
Mudimbe, V. Y. The Invention of Africa: Gnosis, Philosophy, and the Order of Knowledge
Soyinka, Wole. Myth, Literature and the African World. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1990.
Trouillot, Michel-Rolph. Silencing the Past: Power and the Production of History. Boston: Beacon Press, 1995, 2015.