Sam Bullington: Decolonizing the classroom, Rehumanizing the Neoliberal University
Dr. Sam Bullington
Center for Teaching & Learning
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Decoloniality & Anti-Racism in Geography Seminar Series
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Meeting ID: 915 7919 2345
Passcode: 998418
Abstract
The contemporary neoliberal university is extremely dehumanizing to students, faculty, and staff alike. It is an environment of increasing standardization and continual evaluation, where people are reduced to numbers and hierarchically ranked, where complex learning journeys are condensed to simplistic metrics, and the needs of the bureaucracy take precedence over human needs. In other words, it is run according to colonial logics, not surprising given that academic research and education have been key tools of colonization.
Although there has been increasing incorporation of Indigenous Studies into academic institutions and some universities have released official statements acknowledging the stolen land that universities occupy and how universities have benefitted from colonialism, the logics and values of colonization inherent in every aspect of the neoliberal administration of universities remain unquestioned and uncontested.
Decolonizing the classroom requires denaturalizing these colonial logics in our pedagogical practices and dislodging dominant ways of knowing in the classroom. In this presentation, Sam shares specific strategies for breaking the colonial habits of identification and disconnection of students and giving them embodied experiences of other ways of being to begin to shift their consciousness and make them more available for deeper interventions into ongoing colonial agendas.
Bio
Dr. Sam Bullington is passionate about the transformative power of inspired teaching. An overarching goal of his pedagogy is to help students make conscious what they’ve been trained to keep unconscious, and watching students come to insights about themselves and their place in the world constitutes the most satisfying aspect of teaching for him. Sam is a social scientist with training in Anthropology, Geography, and Environmental Studies and a Ph.D. in Feminist Studies from University of Minnesota. He did his academic research in South Africa where he worked with LGBT and AIDS activists.
