This document discusses efforts to decolonize and diversify university curricula. It notes that currently curricula are often dominated by knowledge produced by upper-class European men. Student movements are calling for curricula that are less "white" and address non-Western perspectives and experiences with racism. The document advocates for incorporating works by Black theorists and embracing Black feminist epistemologies to dismantle Eurocentric approaches and better reflect intersectional lived experiences. A decolonized curriculum would disrupt the dominance of Western knowledge and instead value knowledge from a variety of cultural perspectives.

2. Introduction
0 Neoliberal context
0 ‘Inclusive curriculum’ and the sociological cannon
0 Student voice ‘Why is my curriculum white?”
0 Intersectionality and Black Studies in Britain
0 Conclusion

3. The Neoliberal University
0 The neoliberal university defines the context in which
knowledge within universities is produced.
0 Knowledge is instrumental.
0 Teaching practitioners have a legal duty to protect
people from discrimination.
0 We also work within a sector that entrenches forms of
inequality and discrimination by legitimising and
validating the production of certain knowledge.

4. Inclusive Learning and Teaching in
Higher Education (HEA 2010)
What does the inclusive curriculum look like?
0 The report found that there was little or no consistent
definition of inclusive teaching and learning.
0 However four dimensions were needed to be
considered in relation to developing and
implementing inclusive learning and teaching.
1. Institutional commitment and management
2. Curriculum design
3. Curriculum delivery
4. Assessment and feedback

5. NUS Black Students
“Now more than ever, it is time to make a stand and
stop the systematic marginalisation of Black
perspectives in education. We must close the
attainment gap between Black and White students and
tackle racism in the classroom and on campus, all of
which are symptoms of the barriers that restrict gifted
Black students from fulfilling their potential,” (NUS
2011, p.1).

6. Sociological Canon
0 Sociology – A discipline developed primarily by
upper-class, European, presumably heterosexual men.
0 Comte, Durkheim, Marx, Weber
These men developed the foundations of sociological
theory as a response to the problems they perceived in
their own life-times (Ryle 2012).

7. The problems …
0 Industrialisation
0 Urbanisation
0 The spread of capitalism
0 The changing shape of the family
0 The epistemological roots of these problems and their
solutions are rooted in the ‘Western Code’ (Mignolo,
2011)

8. ‘The only game in town’
0 The ‘Western Code’ a system of knowledge that serves a
small proportion of humanity
0 An epistemology positioned as ‘the only game in town.’
(Mignolo 2011, p.xii)
The rules of the game:
1. The World plays by Western epistemological rules
2. European epistemologies are tried, tested and validated,
primarily by Europeans
3. Knowledge + Power = Western European monopoly of
knowledge

9. Race for Equality – (NUS 2011)
0 Many interviewees also highlighted a Eurocentric
curriculum and the lack of Black role models within
their institution as further challenges
0 NUS report barriers and discrimination
0 Black students navigating institutional racism from
before FE and HE
0 17% of respondents felt their teaching and learning
environment isolated them

10. Decolonising the academy
0 #whyismycurriculumwhite?
Student led movements are asking
for more than ‘inclusivity.’ They are
debating and seeking out ways to
dismantle the white curriculum.
Why is my curriculum white?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dscx4h2l-Pk

11. In defence of the ‘white
curriculum’ - spiked
0 ‘Student campaigns for 'inclusive' courses are
undermining academic freedom’ (Joanna Williams
2014)
0 ‘There are very good reasons why a philosophy,
economics or history curriculum might be full of the
works of dead white males.’
0 ‘To leave out such knowledge in favour of inclusive
alternatives leaves students without a good grounding
in the major intellectual developments that have
occurred within their discipline.’

12. 0 ‘Affording a privileged place in the curriculum for
ideas based on the cultural identity of their originator,
or respecting all ideas as equally valid, is antithetical
to the principles of academic freedom, which demand
ideas are rigorously critiqued on their intellectual
merit, and that, on this basis alone, some win out over
others.’
0 ‘More than ever, we need a university curriculum that
is academically elitist, but which all can be free to
aspire towards’ (Williams 2014).

13. Black Studies and
Black Struggles
0 Black studies – disrupting the Eurocentric canon
0 Black theorists are overlooked in the development of
sociology
0 A global wave of social justice movements have recently
emerged.
0 Movements are linked to academic spaces
0 Black experiences remain under researched
0 Black British experiences – the threat of
disappearance/erasure
0 Black people as producers of knowledge

14. The Combahee River
Collective
0 “The major source of difficulty in our political work is
that we are not just trying to fight oppression on one
front or even two, but instead to address a whole
range of oppressions. We do not have racial, sexual,
heterosexual, or class privilege to rely upon, nor do
we have even the minimal access to resources and
power that groups who possess anyone of these types
of privilege have” (The Combahee River Collective
1977).

15. Black Studies in Britain
Vanley Burke
0 ‘The Iron Lady’
0 What can this
photograph tell us about
the everyday
experiences of black
women in Britain?
0 Desire | Negation

16. Decolonised spaces
African Liberation Day 1979, Handsworth Park

17. Wasiffa Sound System

18. Resisting racism
The Harriet Tubman Bookshop on Grove Lane, Handsworth

19. Cecile Emeke
0 Jamaican British
Filmmaker addressing
racism, patriarchy,
gentrification, mental
health and much more.
0 Strolling – YouTube series
0 https://www.youtube.co
m/watch?v=YOyKUoflxV8
0 Complexity of Blackness
rarely visualised or heard.

20. Rethinking curriculum design
0 The way we do sociology can reinforce oppressions
0 Philosophical values
0 Re-building epistemological foundations
0 Black feminists have argued for knowledge validation
rooted in the lives of black female experience.
0 Intersectionality reminds us that no one single story
exists (Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie 2009).
0 ‘There are only stories – many stories’ (Emma Perez
1999).

21. Conclusion
0 The inclusion of texts in reading strategies and curriculum
design that disrupt the ‘Western Code’
0 Black Feminist epistemologies and methodologies are
essential to how we shape the development of Black
Studies in Britain and the future of sociology
0 Intersectionality - not only not only essential to widening
but dismantling and decolonising the sociological canon
0 Archival sources
0 Working with communities
0 Ask and encourage students to draw upon their
perspectives in class and assessment