HD Impuls: Diversifying Syllabi

In this contribution, two members of the Working Group Antidiscrimination of the Institute for Social and Cultural Anthropology, Universty of Cologne, will provide insights into their experiences with implementing anti-discriminatory measures in teaching. After a general introduction to the working group and its activities, we will focus on a concrete example, namely the diversification of syllabi. Instead of selecting literature of the „usual suspects“, in this approach a conscious effort is made to include a variety of voices and a diverse body of literature in a course syllabus.

Based on literature from, for instance, the field of Library and Information Studies, we will introduce several strategies for diversifying and decolonizing syllabi. After a discussion of the advantages of these strategies and also of some of the difficulties with their implementation, the workshop participants will be invited to reflect on possibilities to apply these strategies in their own course preparations, in ways that are appropriate for their discipline and for the themes of the courses they are teaching.