School of History: Diversifying the reading list
Dr Sarah Frank reflects on working conjunctively with students to diversify Honours’ modules’ reading lists within the School of History.
In each of my Honours modules, I have been working with the students to diversify our reading lists. It is important to recognize that it is much easier to find work by White male academics and we need to engage with why that is. In the first week, and with the handbook, we talk about the kind of scholars who ‘get’ to write history, and the kind of history that we learn. The students generally already have an interest in colonial/post-colonial history which means they are generally motivated to engage with these ideas. This is directly connected to a conversation about postcolonial theory and ‘decentering’ the west.
Each week students are asked to find an article, book chapter or monograph, related to the subjects, and written by a scholar from a traditionally excluded group: women, minoritised academics and scholars from the global south. Students are then called upon to using the information they found in the literature, present their finding to the class. In some modules, each student is required to submit the aggregated research, as an assessed annotated bibliography. In MO3523, we made a group annotated bibliography hosted on Microsoft Teams.
Student feedback about the process of developing a group annotated bibliography has been very positive. Since embedding these exercises, the resultant impact has been mixed. Some students continue to put White male academics on our reading lists. Others are very good at engaging with material from more inclusive sources in the reading list, but do not apply that to their essays. However, students generally speak very positively about contributing to the reading list and having the space to follow their own intellectual interests. I find this helps ground discussions on postcolonial theory (which can be challenging) in more concrete examples that the students feel connected to.
This student-led approach is complemented by my own work to ensure we are reading and learning about and from a diverse group of scholars. Here is where I have seen the biggest impact. In my third-year teaching, I have added a new book to each honours module to be read in week 2. These two books, by historians Robin Mitchell and Annette Joseph-Gabriel, two brilliant Black scholars working in the US, centered the experiences and importance of Black women in 19th century French imperialism, and in mid-20th century decolonisation. Beginning the course by demonstrating the centrality of Black women to the colonial and postcolonial eras has changed how the students engage with the material. They have been far more critical of other scholars, and primary sources, which do not engage with gender.