Jamiella Brooks - Anticolonial Pedagogy

Science, Astronomy, Math

'We come from the stars': How Indigenous peoples are taking back astronomy by Nicole Mortillaro

When [Buck] took the position at MFNERC, he wanted to teach First Nations in science. He reached out to the elders who told him he had two ways he could approach it: he could teach it from a Western system and infuse First Nations' culture into the subject areas or he could do it the opposite way. He opted for the latter. "The students have to understand … they've been educated and told and colonized to think that our people were savages in a bush..." (img: Image by Maria Vojtovicova)

Decolonizing Astronomy Reading list by Chanda Prescod-Weinstein & the Kānaka Maoli Protectors of Mau

As a physicist, I was taught that physics began with the Greeks and later Europeans inherited their ideas and expanded on them. In this narrative, people of African descent and others are now relative newcomers to science, and questions of inclusion and diversity in science are related back to “bringing science to underrepresented minority and people of color communities.” The problem with this narrative is that it isn’t true. (Image: Khamkéo Vilaysing)

We need to change the way we talk about space exploration by Nadia Drake

“The language we use automatically frames how we envision the things we talk about… Even if words like “colonization” have a different context off-world, on somewhere like Mars, it’s still not OK to use those narratives, because it erases the history of colonization here on our own planet. There’s this dual effect where it both frames our future and, in some sense, edits the past.” (img: Image by Planet Volumes)

Science's Debt to the Slave Trade by Sam Kean

Most scientists, however, remain unaware of the origins of the collections. “Very few people think about how [specimens] were collected, whether they were collected through slave trade routes or otherwise,” says Stephen Harris, a curator at the Oxford University Herbaria, which houses some of Sloane's goods. “They're simply data points.” (img: Image by Jenni Miska)

How an Ancient Indian Art Utilizes Mathematics, Mythology, and Rice BY ROHINI CHAKI

The word kōlam means beauty. What it also embodies is a perfect symmetry of straight or curved lines built around or through a grid of dots. Nearly always, the grid of dots comes first, requiring spatial precision to achieve symmetry. The dot in Hindu philosophy represents the point at which creation begins—it is a symbol of the cosmos. No tools other than the maker’s deft fingers, and the rice flour, are used.

Women are creating a new culture of Astronomy by Ann Finkbeiner

These women astronomers are scientifically and culturally ambitious, and they shine of their own light; they sparkle. Their world still has restrictions but not as many, and the women react to them more defiantly. “We don’t want to change ourselves to fit the mold,” says Ekta Patel, a Miller postdoctoral fellow at the University of California, Berkeley, who simulates the behavior of satellite galaxies.

Placeholder - STEM

Placeholder - STEM

Blackness & Racism

Blackness & Racism

Revisiting James Baldwin: 'If Black English Isn't A Language, Then Tell Me, What Is?' by plthomasedd

"Grammar, even a garbled understanding of the term, is not just about correctness in English class. Grammar is about values." (img: James Baldwin by Guy Le Querrec, France 1970)

Cult of Pedagogy: Names, Naming Practices, and Why Pronunciation Matters by Jennifer Gonzalez

"Mutilating someone’s name is a tiny act of bigotry..." (img: Jabari Timothy)

Academic Racism: The Repression of Marginalized Voices in Academia by Dr. Miguel A. De La Torre

"Many white scholars fall short of academic rigor because they can succeed, be published, and thus paraded as the fatted calf at the expense of better qualified and more knowledgeable scholars of color." (img: Image by Zacke Feller)

DEI

The problem of Diversity, Equity, Inclusion by Geraldine Cochran

It goes without saying that Diversity, Inclusion, and Equity make for an awful acronym: DIE. More importantly, these three words are strung together so often that some think that these words are synonymous and use them interchangeably, leading to a number of people writing about the differences between these three words.

Colleges need a language shift, away from DEI by Dafina-Lazarus Stewart

By substituting diversity and inclusion rhetoric for transformative efforts to promote equity and justice, HWIs have appeased their constituents and avoided recognizable institutional change. But it is time for historically white institutions in American higher education to pursue real change and abandon the politics of appeasement.

Whether intentionally or not, the labels we choose for our justice-oriented initiatives open them up to a broader universe of associations, branding them with meaning—and, in the case of JEDI, binding them to consumer brands. Through its connections to Star Wars, the name JEDI can inadvertently associate our justice work with stories and stereotypes that are a galaxy far, far away from the values of justice, equity, diversity and inclusion.

Who teaches academics to theorize? by Anthony James Williams

The commonplace theorizing black scholars engage in as racialized people may differ from white Western academic standards, but it is no less valid. (img: Nicolas Hoizey)

Anthropology: Upsetting the Canon by Mariam Durrani

We ask how we can unsettle the simplistic both-sideism of public discourse and the “it’s all relative” approach of multiple perspectives. This contemporary deception of giving “all sides” identical importance operates beyond the pale of history and assumes that we have all arrived to our present location equitably. The project of unsettling colonial logics upends this misleading narrative that inevitably diminishes the ongoing impact of the colonial encounter... (img: Tanya Kukarkina)

The Canon

Anthropology, Theory

The Literary Canon Is Mostly White. Here’s an Alternative Latin American Reading List by: Alejandra

Deciding what books are “in” and which are “out” of a canon, particularly on the basis of historical popularity can be a messy, racist, sexist endeavor, especially that historically, a lot of power (including artistic power) was given to European men. We’ve tried to counteract that here, but know there’s still a lot missing. We’ve also tried to go a little farther than the authors already on your shortlists.