Disrupting Colonial Narratives of Development Work and Service-Learning: Possibilities in Pedagogical and Research Methods

Session Type: Symposium

Abstract

Colonial logics, Cartesian epistemologies, and university missions continue to animate international development and service-learning narratives. Simultaneously, social media makes visible the growing resistance and refusal to tolerate or engage in the white colonial logics of this work. This session presents research methods and pedagogical approaches that re-imagine the north-south and server-served relationship—which is often integral to service-learning and development work—by interrogating the roots of these hierarchical logics, and looking toward a future that actively questions epistemologies rooted in modernity and colonization. Presenters ask: What would service-learning look like disjoined from its rootedness in modern notions of citizenship and university obligation? What pedagogical potential does mass media have to both re-inscribe and interrupt power?

Sub Unit

• SIG-Critical Issues in Curriculum and Cultural Studies

Chair

• Gabriel Stephen Huddleston, Texas Christian University

Papers

• Onto-Epistemic Reimaginings for Service-Learning - Megan Snider Bailey, The University of Alabama

• Critical Service-Learning and Disparate Citizenship - Colleen Rost-Banik, Windward Community College

• Media Pedagogies: Limits of Performativity and Potentials for Disruption - Nisha Toomey, University of Toronto

Discussant

• Eve Tuck, University of Toronto