Resources
An ongoing collection of links to relevant publications, blogs, events and other resources.
Do you have something that you’d like to share with the network? Submit it here.
Teaching and Learning Race in the English classroom - a NATE resource for teachers
A guide to significant non-fiction texts on race, created by NATE’s Reviewing Literature Working Group
Lesley Nelson-Addy is a DPhil candidate at Oxford University Department of Education and Education Manager at The Runnymede Trust.
Furzeen Ahmed is a Teaching Fellow in English Language and Literature at Aston University.
Harmeet Matharu is Subject Leader for English at The Bishop’s Stortford High School.
Aaishah Rauf is an English teacher at Windsor High School and Sixth Form.
Jessica Tacon is second in English at City of London Academy and leads The Right Writing campaign.
Get free access to the guide here.
At Decolonising the Discipline, we would like to become a platform for sharing resources for teachers and everyone who is interested in learning, disseminating, and sharing research and practices around decolonisation. Follow us on Twitter/X to see the CfP, workshops, and events around decolonising the discipline with our hashtag #DtD.
‘Roundtable: What does it mean to have a diverse curriculum?’
Monday 8th April 2024, 15.30pm - 17.30pm BST (online)
With more than 70 participants, we brought together educators from secondary and higher education to explore what it really means to have a diverse curriculum and what we might mean by decolonisation in that context. Convened by the English Association, and chaired by Victoria Bazin (Northumbria University), we had an enriching discussion about diversifying and decolonising the curriculum across levels.
Bennie Kara opened the discussion talking about how colonisation affects both the macro and the micro level of education: at the macro-level, Western European knowledge is a by-product of the colonial endeavour. She explained that the unconscious bias in our curricula is based on binaries, for instance, masculine/feminine. European knowledges are thus seen as ‘universal’, which determines what is ‘acceptable’. She later explained how these colonial endeavours affect the micro level, that is, the individual knowledge. Bennie explained that we are influenced by the resources, the time, the and the familiarity we have. It is difficult to address diversification in the curriculum when time, resources, and experiences, do not necessarily led to those thinking processes. It is important to so some ‘unlearning’: to think about how these issues affect the English curriculum.
John Perry (University of Nottingham) drew on his experience in schools and tertiary education. John stated that the current English curriculum is unrepresentative of the modern English society. Currently, the educational system we have has damaged the most marginalised groups. The narrow and inadequate curriculum is also reflected in the narrowed knowledge by teachers. For him, we need to start discussing assessment, assessment structure, and what how would a curriculum look like without assessment. Portfolio assessment and collaboration should be encouraged.
During the discussion, participants contributed with questions regarding ‘problematic’ readings. Some readings do not offer characters with agency, or at least a discussion about them. It is then important to be explicit about marginalisation. An alternative might be to use parallel stories and paired stories that allow multiple perspectives to counter traditional narratives.
A second important discussion was about the responsibility as an educator. Diversifying and decolonising is not replacing Shakespeare. Bennie Kara explicitly stated that ´This is an argument for more knowledge, not less.´ Educators should then know better and wider to select our way through knowledge. What we teach is not all there is. This means that curriculum construction is not about replacing knowledge, but about widening it.
A third conversation occurred around the meaning of ‘decolonisation’. Some participants use the term ‘culturally-responsive curriculum’ instead. The speakers tend to avoid the word ‘decolonial’. Bennie Kara prefers to re-position ‘diversifying’: bring the marginalised to the centre, in order to provide agency. Diversifying is then an act of decolonisation. John Perry commented that he avoids the word ‘decolonisation’ too.
Finally, participants and members of the roundtable agreed that we need more conversations and space for conversations between schools and HE. The school structure does not leave time to reflect and to get critical response.
Some comments during the discussion included:
‘yes, community is integral to evolving the curriculum which is based on the histories, identities, and narratives from these very spaces! This is an underrated resource/figures who need to be at the table!’
‘I also think it's so important to be mindful of choices -- we made a move to teaching poets of colour, and Black students complained that we were reading SO much about racism/slavery, etc. It's so important to be SENSITIVE in choices -- and to think about things in a way that doesn't necessarily occur to me as a white woman’
‘Tuck and Yang’s point that decolonisation isn’t a metaphor is important, but Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o’s Decolonising the Mind is also important for identifying the role that culture has and has had in imperialist domination, and is relevant to what we do in education at all levels.’
‘I have found it the same for literature set in the Holocaust - as a Jew, I found it very difficult teaching such texts, and being a sole 'spokesperson' - I myself didn't even have the vocabulary to express how I felt about it.’
‘I’ve been rummaging through my files to find this reference since Bennie’s brilliant opening thoughts. “the whole construct of canon formation was developed ‘in the establishment of curriculum for imperial dominations. For ‘English Literature’ was born, as a school and college subject, not in England but in the mission schools and training colleges of Africa and India” (Batsleer et al.23)’
‘Thank you Bennie and John for your insights - such discussions can help to build that awareness of how these approaches are URGENTLY needed to make the changes to continue to inspire students through the subject!’
Check the recording of our session here.
Resources shared during the discussion:
Lit in colour: Resources to support inclusive reading in school.
The Black Curriculum: Re-imagining the future of education through Black British History.
EA hubs: Examples of conversations between schools and academic partners.
Decolonising the Mind: The Politics of Language in African Literature
We thank you everyone who connected and followed our discussion in Twitter/X with the hashtag #DtD. Do not forget to follow us in Instagram and Twitter as @decoldiscipline. See you soon!
This is the Canon: Decolonise Your Bookshelves in 50 Books
‘Joan Anim-Addo, Deirdre Osborne and Kadija Sesay have curated a decolonised reading list that celebrates the wide and diverse experiences of people from around the world, of all backgrounds and all races. It disrupts the all-too-often white-dominated 'required reading' collections that have become the accepted norm and highlights powerful voices and cultural perspectives that demand a place on our shelves.
From literary giants such as Toni Morrison and Chinua Achebe to less well known (but equally vital) writers such as Caribbean novelist Earl Lovelace or Indigenous Australian author Tony Birch, the novels recommended here are in turn haunting and lyrical; innovative and inspiring; edgy and poignant.’
Retrieved from: Black Cultural Archives Webpage
About the authors Professor Deirdre Osborne
Dr Deirdre Osborne’s research embraces the Victorian era through to contemporary culture in fiction, drama, life-writing and poetry to focus upon the marginalised voices of disenfranchised and dispossessed groups within this wide spectrum of genres and periods. Her particular emphasis is on women’s writing. This extends into exploring the consequentialist aesthetics, of adoption, mixedness and decolonial narratives through dramatic-poetics and three conceptual models she has developed, “Landmark Poetics”, “Mothertext” and “Didactic Poetics”.
B.Ed (Hons), MA, PhD. Appointed Goldsmiths, Director of the then Centre for Caribbean Studies, 1994. Professor Anim-Addo’s recent research activities include: Caribbean Literature and diaspora, women’s writing, Feminist perspectives, Black presence in Europe, Caribbean-Scottish Interconnections, Creolisation, Interculturality and humanism.
Previous research includes African-Caribbean women’s fiction, the Black Presence in Britain (sixteenth century to present day), Networking women, Memory and History and Creolistics.
Kadija (George) Sesay supports Inscribe writers through mentoring and coaching, and is the series editor for the Inscribe imprint.
A graduate of Birmingham University (Maj. West African Studies), she is the founder/publisher of SABLE LitMag, and SABLE LitFest. She is the editor of several anthologies of work by writers of African and Asian descent, including Dreams Miracles and Jazz: New Adventures in African Fiction (Picador Africa 2008) edited with Helon Habila, Dance the Guns to Silence: 100 Poems for Ken Saro-Wiwa (with Nii Ayikwei Parkes), IC3: The Penguin Book of New Black Writing in Britain (with Courttia Newland) and Write Black, and Write British: From Post Colonial to Black British Literature. She has published her own poetry, short stories, essays and articles in magazines, journals, anthologies and encyclopaedias in the UK, USA and Africa and been broadcast on BBC World Service.
Read more about this book here.
As Decolonising the Discipline, we are happy to be a platform to share resources. Remember that more news and events are always posted in our Twitter (X) and Instagram account: @Decoldiscipline.
Decolonizing the English Literary Curriculum
‘The point is not just to detail the gaps int he curriculum but in using the curriculum as a way of changing society itself.’ (p.6) This collection offers an important discussion on decolonisation at both the literary and academic level. The book ranges from different geographical contexts to its application in through and across disciplines. Some topics include decolonising the university, expanding on decolonising methodologies, and how the tradition should continue, drawing on postcolonial and decolonial studies. This is a very complete collection we encourage our members to have a look at, whether you are a teacher, lecturer, academic, or student. We believe more than one chapter might be interesting for you.
About the editors Professor Ankhi Mukherjee
Ankhi Mukherjee is Professor of English and World Literatures at the University of Oxford and a Fellow of Wadham College. Her most recent book, Unseen City: The Psychic Lives of the Urban Poor (Cambridge University Press, 2021), has won Columbia University's Robert S. Liebert Award for "outstanding scholarship in the field of applied psychoanalysis." Mukherjee's second monograph, What Is a Classic? Postcolonial Rewriting and Invention of the Canon (Stanford UP, 2014), was awarded the British Academy Prize in English Literature. Her other publications include Aesthetic Hysteria: The Great Neurosis in Victorian Melodrama and Contemporary Fiction (Routledge, 2007), and the collections of essays she has edited, namely A Concise Companion to Psychoanalysis, Literature, and Culture (with Laura Marcus, Wiley-Blackwell, 2015) and After Lacan (Cambridge University Press, 2018). She has recently co-edited (with Ato Quayson) a collaborative volume titled Decolonizing the English Literary Curriculum (Cambridge UP, 2023).
Professor Ato Quayson
Ato Quayson is the Jean G. and Morris M. Doyle Professor in Interdisciplinary Studies and Professor of English. He studied for his undergraduate degree at the University of Ghana and took his Ph.D. from the University of Cambridge, after which he held a Junior Research Fellowship at Wolfson College, Oxford before returning to Cambridge to become Reader in Commonwealth and Postcolonial Literature in the Faculty of English from 1995-2005. He was also Director of the Centre for African Studies (1998-2005) and a Fellow of Pembroke College while at Cambridge (1995-2005). Prior to Stanford he was Professor of African and Postcolonial Literature at New York University (2017-2019) and Professor of English and inaugural Director of the Centre for Diaspora and Transnational Studies at the University of Toronto (2005-2017). In 2016 he was appointed University Professor at the University of Toronto, the highest distinction that the university can bestow.
Get access to the book here (Open Access).
As Decolonising the Discipline, we are happy to be a platform to share resources. Remember that more news and events are always posted in our Twitter (X) and Instagram account: @Decoldiscipline.
Decolonising Lancaster University: Resources on decolonisation
The Decolonising Lancaster University team has put together a wonderful list of general (academic) introduction readings to decolonisation. If you don’t know where to start, this is a good place for it. Check the list here.
They have also put together different decolonising Universities’ websites. Have a look here.
Check their upcoming events here.
As Decolonising the Discipline, we are happy to be a platform to share resources. Remember that more news and events are always posted in our Twitter (X) and Instagram account: @Decoldiscipline.
Decolonising Libraries Event Reading List
On 18th December 2023, we had a thrilling discussion about decolonising the library in schools, FE, and HE. Speakers included Ella Taylor (Harris Westminster Sixth Form), Jo Lapham (Truro and Penwith College), Grant Young (UEA), Siddharth Soni (Jesus College, Cambridge), Farzana Qureshi (SOAS, London) and Devika Mehra (Newcastle), convened by University English. We followed the discussion in twitter with the hashtag #DtD.
Reading List
We are glad to be a platform to share resources on Decolonising the Discipline. Here you can find a list of the resources shared during our event:
Listen to This Story! An exhibition about children's books and Black Britain.
The Windrush Learning Resources: A resource pack for young people with a focus on Caribbean heritage.
Moore Newsum, J. (2023), ‘Dismantling the Myths: Evidence-Based Antiracist School Librarianship’, in Black, K. and Mehra, B., Antiracist Library and Information Science. (Bingley: Emerald Publishing)
Abdul Mohamud and Robin Whitburn's work on diversifying and decolonising History curricula in UK schools - their textbook series is called Justice2History. Follow their Twitter account here.
Thank you to everyone who participated.
Decolonising the English Curriculum Toolkit
The Decolonising SOAS Working Group has developed a Decolonising Toolkit for Programme and Module Convenors.
Exploring definitions on Decolonisation, Curricula and Pedagogies, the toolkit informs case studies on how to approach decolonisation in English and literature departments.
As Decolonising the Discipline, we are happy to be a platform to share resources. Remember that more news and events are always posted in our Twitter (X) and Instagram account: @Decoldiscipline.
‘Decolonizing Literature’ (2023) by Dr Anna Bernard
Recent efforts to diversify and decentre the literary canon taught at universities have been moderately successful. Yet this expansion of our reading lists is only the start of a broader decolonization of literary studies as a discipline; there is much left to be done. How can students and educators best participate in this urgent intellectual and political project?
Anna Bernard argues that the decolonization of literary studies requires a change to not only what, but how, we read. In lively prose, she explores work that has already been done, both within and beyond the academy, and challenges readers to think about where we go from here. She suggests ways to recognize and respond to the political work that texts do, considering questions of language and translation, comparative reading, ideological argument, and genre in relation to the history of anticolonial struggle. Above all, Bernard shows that although we still have far to go, the work of decolonizing literary studies is already under way.
At Decolonising the Discipline, we had the pleasure to attend her lecture ‘Discussing Decolonisation’ hosted by the Teaching and Learning Enhancement Team at York St John University on 6th February 2024. Check their upcoming events on decolonisation here.
About the author Dr Anna Bernard is Reader in Comparative Literature and English at King’s College London.
A new resource on decolonising the curriculum
This book explores pedagogical approaches to decolonising the literature curriculum through a range of practical and theoretically-informed case studies. The book provides sustained examinations of pedagogies involved in decolonising the literature at university level in English, presenting current and critically engaged pedagogical scholarship on decolonising the literature curriculum. Offering a broad spectrum of chapters authored by national and international academics, the book is structured into two parts, Texts and Contexts, presenting case studies on decolonising the literature curriculum which range from the undergraduate classroom, university writing centres, through to the literary doctorate.
About the author Dr Charlotte Beyer is Senior Lecturer in English Studies at the University of Gloucestershire. A contemporary literature specialist, with a background in gender and women’s studies, she has published widely on crime fiction, including Murder in a Few Words: Gender, Genre and Location in the Crime Short Story (McFarland, 2020) and Intersectionality and Decolonisation in Contemporary British Crime Fiction (Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2023). She is the Editor-in-Chief of Teaching the New English, the Palgrave book series on Higher Education pedagogy.
Two new resources on Gothic children’s fiction
Gothic Children’s Fiction in the Classroom: Decolonising Britishness
This short article explores how the promotion of ‘British Values’ in schools works in concert with history and literature curricula that elide aspects of Britain’s imperial history and can operate to reinforce the idea of Britishness as whiteness. In 2011 the UK government outlined what it described as “fundamental British values”, making it a requirement for U.K. schools to promote these values against a wider backdrop of cultural nostalgia and a forgetting, or even a whitewash, of the violence of the past. What might be done in the classroom to challenge these trends? This article proposes gothic fiction as a resource for countering dominant historical narratives and ideas about British identity and provides a suite of educational resources to accompany the teaching of two gothic novels in the Secondary School classroom, Coram Boy by Jamila Gavin, and City of Ghosts by Bali Rai.
Reading ‘Fundamental British Values’ Through Children’s Gothic: Imperialism, History, Pedagogy
This longer academic paper, available Open Access, reads the UK Government’s “fundamental British values” (FBV) project alongside two children’s Gothic novels, Coram Boy (2000) by Jamila Gavin and City of Ghosts (2009) by Bali Rai. The article examines claims that the root of FBV lies in Islamophobia and that the promotion of “British” values in school will exclude minority groups already under siege from racist elements in contemporary Britain. Other critics argue that the promotion of FBV reduces opportunities to explore issues of belonging, belief, and nationhood in the classroom. This article builds on such criticisms and argues that the Gothic fictions of Jamila Gavin and Bali Rai offer a space in which to critically examine British history (and so, its values) in a way that is acutely relevant to these education contexts.
Coram Boy and City of Ghosts use the Gothic to interrogate aspects of British history elided by the FBV project. That is, they point to Britain’s imperial and colonial history and offer a rejoinder to the Government’s insistence that “British Values” equate to democracy, respect for the rule of law and mutual respect and tolerance of those from different faiths and religions. Furthermore, Gavin’s and Rai’s use of the Gothic creates a space in which the ambiguities and contradictions inherent in FBV can be explored. The diversity and interconnectedness of the characters offer an alternative version of identity to the patronising and arrogant FBV project, which is aimed at promoting a national identity based on sameness and assimilation. Rai and Gavin look to Britain’s past through the lens of the Gothic not only to refute nationalism and racism, but also to offer a productive alternative that gestures towards a more cosmopolitan vision of identity.
About the author Dr Chloé Germaine is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of English at Manchester Metropolitan University and member of the Manchester Centre for Youth Studies. Her research in children and young people’s literature and culture focuses on popular genre fiction, the relevance of literature for education and social impact, and the value of reading and writing in supporting young people’s action on and understanding of climate change. Her publications on these topics include the books Twenty-First Century Children’s Gothic (Edinburgh University Press, 2017) and The Dark Matter of Children’s Fantastika (Bloomsbury, 2023) as well as ‘In it together! Cultivating space for intergenerational dialogue, empathy and hope in a climate of uncertainty’ in Children’s Geographies (2022) and ‘Sustaining the old world, or imagining a new one? The transformative literacies of the climate strikes’ in the Australian Journal of Environmental Education (2022).
‘Decolonizing English’ forum in English: The Journal of the English Association
A special forum in English: The Journal of the English Association (vol. 70, issue 270, Autumn 2021), on decolonising English Studies, selected by David Nowell Smith and Nonia Williams (University of East Anglia). The first in a series of fora on decolonising practices and pedagogies, the issue aims to provide space ‘for colleagues from across the discipline to share reflections from their various perspectives, and for colleagues to report back on initiatives they had been involved in: their successes, their frustrations; the momentum they had built, the obstacles they had encountered’. Contributions include:
David Nowell Smith and Nonia Williams, Decolonizing English Studies: Editorial
Jade Munslow Ong, Decolonizing the English Literature GCE A-Level via the South African Ex-Centric (open access)
Alexandra Kingston-Reese and Shazia Jagot, Knowing Outside of English: Decolonizing at York (open access)
Ben Etherington and Jarad Zimbler, Decolonize Practical Criticism?
Demelza Hall, Kate Storey, Laura Benney and Marlee Bourke, Adapting the Australian Canon and Decolonizing the Tertiary Classroom: Settler Students Respond to Leah Purcell’s The Drover’s Wife
Wallace Cleaves, Decolonization is not Convenient
Decolonising the Curriculum Zotero database
A Zotero database of more than 500 titles, in a range of formats, that address the decolonising agenda.
This database was established in February 2019, following a symposium held at UEA the previous October, which addressed the question "Decolonising the Curriculum - How should British universities respond?”. One of the outcomes of this was an initiative to establish a database that could act as a resource for both staff and students within the university, with the aim of eventually making it an open access resource between academic institutions and beyond. In order to action this, staff set up a decolonising “researchathon”, working with academics to crowd-source a bibliography of relevant resources for decolonising the curriculum.
The database currently features on the Decolonise UEA site, or you can access it directly here.
Mia Liyanage, Miseducation: decolonising curricula, culture and pedagogy in UK universities, HEPI (2020)
This report establishes that the decolonisation of UK universities is vital for the improvement of course curricula, pedagogical practice, staff wellbeing and the student experience. Based on over 20 hours of interviews with leading figures in academia, student activism and higher education policy, the report puts forward five key policy recommendations based on the testimony of 16 respondents. Contributors include lecturers, a Vice Chancellor, officers at students’ unions and the NUS, undergraduate activists, and policy advisers to universities.
About the author Mia Liyanage has a Masters in US History from Oxford University and graduated with a BA in History from Balliol, Oxford in 2019. Her research specialism is queer history. She has held a variety of access roles and was previously Co-Chair of Common Ground Oxford, a student movement challenging institutional racism and classism and advocating for decolonisation.