Short description:

Assata Zerai reflects on three decades of scholarship and examines ways in which scholars and professors have begun to move their disciplines from a focus on traditional canons of the modernist era to embrace decolonial sensibilities in research, teaching, and institutional transformation, bringing about change within higher education.

Long description:

Decoloniality has been the outgrowth of theorists and philosophers largely writing within the humanities. Reflecting on three decades of scholarship, Assata Zerai?s Black Feminist Interventions to Decolonize the Westernized University: Epistemology, Research Methodology, and Pedagogy provides methods for adapting principles of decolonial theory to research, teaching, and praxis in the social sciences transnationally. She argues for intentionally centering students who have been racially and culturally excluded to affirm them and create learning environments in which they thrive. She also suggests that ethical commitments to minoritized students must mirror commitments to their communities, reflected in humanizing research practices. This book discusses intersectional microaggressions in transnational contexts, providing evidence of Black students experiencing gendered, ableist, disablist, and queerphobic anti-Blackness within the United States and South Africa. Zerai reviews ways in which scholars and professors have begun to move their disciplines from a focus on traditional canons of the modernist era to embrace decolonial sensibilities in research, teaching, and institutional transformation. This examination highlights these new approaches within the social sciences, to promote justice, equity, accessibility, diversity, and inclusion, and to bring about change within higher education.

This groundbreaking work breathes new life into decolonial theory, applying its principles to reshape research, teaching, and praxis across the social sciences. Drawing from her decades of scholarship, Zerai skillfully bridges academic rigor and lived experience, offering a powerful call to action for educators and scholars to embrace a more inclusive, culturally responsive approach. A must-read for anyone committed to reimagining the future of education and social justice, this book is both timely and transformative.

Table of Contents:

List of Figures and Tables

Preface

Acknowledgments

List of Acronyms

Introduction

Chapter 1: Locating this Feminist Decolonial Project and Acting on Calls to Decolonize the Westernized University

Chapter 2: A Special Period: Persisting in Higher Education during Retrenchment in the United States

Chapter 3: Intersectional Microaggressions in Transnational Contexts: Black Students Experiencing Gendered, Ableist, and Queer-phobic Anti-Blackness in the U.S. and South Africa

Chapter 4: Everyday Practices of Decolonizing Research in the Social Sciences: Epistemology, Methodology, Citational Justice, and Praxis

Chapter 5: Beyond Acknowledgement: Does Moving from Recognizing Legacies of Harm in Higher Education Institutions to Dismantling Racism Give Us Actual Hope for Decolonizing the Westernized University?

Chapter 6: Truth and Reconciliation and Other Investigative Commissions: Addressing Racism in South African Higher Education Institutions (HEIs)

Conclusion: Black Feminist Inflections in Justice, Equity, Accessibility, Diversity, and Inclusion (JEADI): Decolonizing the Westernized University

Appendix 1: Examples of Good Faith Efforts Quoted from the Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs

Appendix 2: Examples of Implicit Associations Tests, Quoted from Project Implicit

Bibliography

About the Author