"Decolonizing the Literary Curriculum: Means and Meanings" - Ato Quayson

Context specificity must be taken as a very important consideration for decolonizing the literary curriculum, such that to decolonize in New Zealand and Australia, both white settler colonies, is quite different from decolonizing in the United Kingdom, in Ghana, in Singapore, or in India. In this workshop, I will discuss calls for reforming the curriculum (not just the literary one) that have come from equity-seeking groups, a category that includes at least the following: Indigenous peoples (pertaining specifically to the settler communities of Australia, Canada, and the United States), people of color and racial minorities, persons with disabilities, persons with non-heteronormative sexual orientations, formerly colonized people, women, Jews, and Muslims, among various others. These all fall under the rubric of decolonizing but from different and often incompatible perspectives.