SUMMER PEDAGOGY WORKSHOP SERIES

What relations of power are negotiated in the classroom by virtue of different positionalities interacting within a land-grant university setting? Are decolonial, anticolonial, abolitionist or liberatory pedagogies even possible in a land-grant setting? 

 

This summer, the CHE/DOPE Collab aims to think through these questions, focusing on pedagogy in a land-grant university setting through a layered reading of bell hooks’ claim that “no education is politically neutral” (1994). On the one hand, we investigate and aim to expose the historical and socio-economic parameters of the education, both past and present, offered at our hosting institutions. On the other hand, we think critically about our own practices of teaching and mentoring, and about the ways these reproduce or depart from the “methodological narrative of benevolence” (Lee and Ahtone 2020) of our institutions. The LGU Pedagogy Summer Workshop Series rests on the idea that “education is a practice of freedom” (hooks 1994) only when knowledge is historicized and understood in its broader context.

 

We invite graduate students from land-grant universities in the US to join us over the summer to collaborate on pedagogical practices that take seriously the histories and cultural contingencies of their institutions. 

 

One of the main goals of the CHE/DOPE collaboration is to generate specific ways of moving from discussions about settler colonialism and the land-grab university towards actionable items for grappling with our roles as graduate students in these institutions. Coming out of our initial reading groups, many in attendance realized that it is not just us as graduate students who are interested in these issues – undergraduate students are also hungry to learn more. With that in mind, a key component of our LGU Pedagogy Summer Workshop Series will be a collaborative exercise focusing on the development of land-grant lesson plans that will incorporate key themes and pedagogical considerations we will discuss. 

 

The land-grant lesson plan exercise will aim to attend to both the general and specific histories of our hosting institutions. Participants will be invited to draft institution-specific lesson plans that will then be shared, discussed and (re-)adjusted in ways that do justice to the shared histories, material realities and social complexities of land grant universities across the country.  These lesson plans could include readings, archival visits, community collaborations, research about the Indigenous peoples, histories and lands our institutions occupy today, and tracing the transfer of stolen lands, amongst other topics. 

 

The main goals of the LGU Pedagogy Summer Workshop Series is to start a long overdue discussion about pedagogies in a land grant setting and to develop practical tools participants can use in their classrooms as soon as Fall 2022. Our hope is that this platform will serve to build a community of graduate students across the country who will meet regularly to discuss and exchange pedagogical knowledge and practice in a land grant setting.

 

We’ll be meeting on the first Wednesday of each summer month, namely June 1st, July 6th and August 3rd, at 11 am EST. Join us!