Challenging Complicities: Academic Departments

Four academic departments participated in the initial year of the Challenging Complicities project:

Themes from departmental conversations:

Expanding whose work is taught in courses. Changes in syllabi
Whose work/questions/research is published in major disciplinary journals
The canon: expanding, decentering, ignoring
Methodologies of disciplines
Connecting to decolonization projects rather than tradition
Connecting to other departmental conversations, including separate conversations among white faculty about whiteness and what this means for mentoring newer BIPOC faculty
What defines the discipline? What are the lines? Connections to European thought, philosophies, scientific thinking.
What are the limits on what questions can be asked (no matter the identity of who asks)?
Looking at specific histories of the discipline: whose work became canonical? Who was left out, both in terms of general demographics and specific scholars
Looking at syllabi as part of pedagogical practice, beyond whose works are represented
Some are questioning the nature of the discipline and boundaries around this. Others are not quite ready to talk about the discipline itself. Seeing the bigger questions ahead is head-turning

For the future of the Challenging Complicities Project:

Conversations across departments expand the range of questions and spark energy.
Collaboration between the Annan IGC and the Serie Center: conversation once a month, focused on interrogating disciplines, challenging complicities.
Participating in a named project provides support for those who are raising these issues in their department and helps departments to structure this work (so it doesn’t get lost in other work the department needs to do)