‘Hunting’ for a Black Feminist Decolonial ‘Archive’ at a Predominantly White University

Abstract

Based on classroom learnings from a course lesson on de/coloniality of African and Black diasporas in higher education at a small private historically, predominantly white university in the rural United States, this chapter is an invitation to critically and meaningfully engage with our own higher education institutions (HEIs) as ideal laboratories for individual, community, and institutional transformation. Engaging in a university scavenger hunt, co-designed by faculty and students, various meanings, and implications of ‘decoloniality’ and ‘decolonisation’ within contexts of higher education are interrogated and reimagined through individual and collective counternarratives in the shape of a Black feminist decolonial ‘archive’. This archive challenges and reimagines narratives in/visibilised in the university’s current archival records, which are characterised by anti-Blackness, anti-Indigeneity, colonial innocence, and white supremacy. This chapter focuses on un/learning varying (de)colonial and decolonising worldviews of HEIs and academia through participatory narrative and archival reproduction.

Citation

Sattarzadeh, S.D. (2024), "‘Hunting’ for a Black Feminist Decolonial ‘Archive’ at a Predominantly White University", Moncrieffe, M.L., Fakunle, O., Kustatscher, M. and Rost, A.O. (Ed.) The BERA Guide to Decolonising the Curriculum: Equity and Inclusion in Educational Research and Practice (The BERA Guides), Emerald Publishing Limited, Leeds, pp. 197-210. https://doi.org/10.1108/978-1-83549-144-720241018