The Course

In the Fall of 2019, a small group of students and a member of faculty gathered in a course called Decolonizing the Curriculum, which was sponsored by the Center for the Humanities. The course was inspired by a growing interest in the topic among the student body. Together, this group read and discussed different perspectives about what it means to decolonize a syllabus, a classroom, and a curriculum—all the while keeping the reality of colonized land at the center of discussion. Grinnell College, like every institution of higher education in the country, sits on land stolen from Indigenous communities.

Our discussions were difficult. They were respectful. In the end, we produced a modest toolkit to help further discussion at our small institution. We hope that it is a living document, growing and changing as we, together, center anti-racist work at the heart of what it means to live and study at Grinnell College.

Participants in the Decolonizing the Curriculum course included Sara Castro, Jake Conran, Sophie Doddimeade, Hazel Murray, Luca Nelson, Farah Omer, Bailey VandeKamp, and Gracee Wallach, who also co-designed the course with faculty convener Caleb Elfenbein.

 

The Site

We created this site to share our toolkit, which we hope will provide a good resource for discussion about decolonizing syllabi, classrooms, curriculums, and our campus. This is ongoing work that might mean different things to different people—even grappling with what it means to decolonize the curriculum, one syllabus at a time, is an essential part of the process.

We invite you to share comments with us about anything you find on this site.