Diversifying the Curriculum

1. Diversifying the Curriculum This powerpoint will be posted on itself.blog

2. Why diversify the curriculum?

3. What different approaches to diversifying the curriculum might these different motivations encourage? • Representation • Marketability • Rescuing the credibility of theology • Making theology more inclusive • Making theology less racist/heterosexist/classist/ableistetc • Making our students less racist/heterosexist/classist/ableistetc • Understanding why theology/the world we live in is racist/heterosexist/classist/ableistetc • So we can be/feel like good people

4. “A Matter of Comprehension” “There was the sense that something of a more profound nature than the obsession with property was askew in a civilization that could organize and celebrate – on a scale beyond previous human experience – the brutal degradations of life and the most acute violations of human destiny … It was not simply a question of outrage or concern for Black survival. It was a matter of comprehension.” Cedric Robinson, Black Marxism “Thus in effect, on matters related to race, the Racial Contract prescribes for its signatories an inverted epistemology, an epistemology of ignorance, a particular pattern of localized and global cognitive dysfunctions (which are psychologically and socially functional), producing the ironic outcome that whites will in general be unable to understand the world they themselves have made.” Charles Mills, The Racial Contract

5. “Sharp elbows and shouting matches” I suppose what I keep leaning toward is expanding the “Western tradition” in a way that highlights conflict, rivalry, and appropriation within the “canon” itself — a “great conversation” with more sharp elbows and shouting matches, if you will. Ultimately I want to teach the “Western tradition” as a way of highlighting the contingency and artificiality of the “Western tradition” as a construct.  Adam Kotsko, ‘Constructing a tradition’

6. “Multiculturalism is a fantasy” I would argue that multiculturalism is a fantasy which conceals forms of racism, violence and inequality as if the organisation/nation can now say: how can you experience racism when we are committed to diversity? The desire to be seen as anti-racist is taken up as an expression of a prohibition, which is what allows racism to be articulated as a minority position, a refusal of orthodoxy. In this perverse logic, racism can then be embraced as a form of free speech. So rather than saying racism is prohibited by the liberal multicultural consensus, under the banner of respect for difference, I would argue that racism is what is protected under the banner of free speech through the appearance of being prohibited. Sara Ahmed, “Liberal Multiculturalism is the Hegemony – It’s an Empirical Fact”

7. “‘Multi-Racial White Supremacist Patriarchy’” As Jared Sexton argues, contemporary multiculturalism/multiracialism is a “protest less against the genocidal objectives of Anglo white supremacy than the inefficiency of unrestrained violence as the meansof its accomplishment” (Amalgamation Schemes, 200). You can extend this argument to patriarchy and other institutionalized forms of identity-based oppression. It is more cost-effective to include someformerly excluded/abjected groups in racial/gender/sexual supremacy, because this inclusion further reinforces both the supremacy of the hyperelites and the precarity of the most unruly groups(those who pose the greatest threat to MRWaSP hegemony). Robin James, “Notes on a theory of multi racial white supremacist patriarchy aka MRWaSP”

8. “Teaching is social reproduction” Teaching is social reproduction, and carries with it the profound ambivalence of all reproductive labour: to form our students into good citizens and useful workers for a society built on violence and exploitation. Often this involves training them (sometimes despite our best efforts) in the fundamentally conservative moral relativism so essential for workers in an economy which prizes flexibility above all else; ultimately our task is to teach them how to survive in a world which ought not to exist…To teach critical thinking must be to teach our students to think critically about what they are being taught and why, about the inescapable antagonism between the desire to be transformed by learning and the need to meet certain criteria in order to get a degree. Marika Rose and Anthony Paul Smith, “Hexing the Discipline: Against the Reproduction of the Continental Philosophy of Religion”

9. What makes it difficult to diversify our curricula?

10. What does diversifying our curricula involve?

11. Critical traditioning: some examples WEEK 1. Introduction to Political Philosophy (race, class, gender) WEEK 2. The social contract: Thomas Hobbes WEEK 3. The sexual contract: Carol Pateman WEEK 4. The racial contract: Charles Mills WEEK 5. Private Property: John Locke WEEK 6. Communism: Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels WEEK 7. ENRICHMENT WEEK WEEK 8. Freedom: John Stuart Mill WEEK 9. Resistance: Frantz Fanon WEEK 10. Liberty: Robert Nozick WEEK 11: Control: Michel Foucault, Gilles Deleuze and Paul B Preciado WEEK 12: Topic selected by the class WEEK 1: What Matters Most WEEK 2: The Matter of Suffering WEEK 3: Introducing Augustine WEEK 4: Suffering and the Ethics of Sacrifice (gender) WEEK 5: The Fall WEEK 6: The Devil WEEK 7: Political Suffering: A Tale of Two Cities WEEK 8: ENRICHMENT WEEK WEEK 9: Political Suffering: War WEEK 10: Free to Suffer (free will & slavery)? WEEK 11: Suffering Desire, Desiring Suffering (queer theory) WEEK 12: What Matters Most?

12. Teaching the controversy Week 1. Introducing Christianity, Race and Colonialism Week 2. Christianity, Whiteness and Innocence Week 3. ‘Neither Jew nor Greek, Slave nor free’: Beginnings Week 4. The Formation of a Persecuting Society Week 5. The Invention of ‘Man’ Week 6. Canaanites, Cowboys and Indians Week 7. Enrichment Week Week 8. The Curse of Ham Week 9. The Bible and the Flag Week 10. Black and Womanist Theology Week 11. Christianity, White Supremacy and the West Week 12. Oral exams WEEK 1: Introducing the Bible, Gender and Sexuality WEEK 2: Creating Gender: Eve and Her Daughters WEEK 3: Reproducing Gender: Abraham and His Sons WEEK 4: Troubling Gender: Bodily Fluids WEEK 5: Questioning Binary Gender WEEK 6: Homosexuality? Sodom and Leviticus WEEK 7: ENRICHMENT WEEK WEEK 8: Homosexuality? Sinners and Lovers WEEK 9: Marriage WEEK 10: The Bible and Sexual Violence WEEK 11: Sex Work and the Bible WEEK 12: Oral exams

13. What has worked well?

14. How can we help one another?

15. Sara Ahmed, “‘Liberal Multiculturalism is the Hegemony – Its an Empirical Fact’ – A response to Slavoj Žižek” in darkmatter 0 (2008) Robin James, “Notes on a theory of multi-racial white supremacist patriarchy aka MRWaSP” Adam Kotsko, “Constructing a Tradition” Charles Mills, The Racial Contract (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1997) Cedric Robinson, Black Marxism: The Making of the Black Radical Tradition (Chapel Hill, UNC Press, 1983) Marika Rose and Anthony Paul Smith, “Hexing the discipline: against the reproduction of continental philosophy of religion” in Palgrave Communications 5.2 (2019)Marika Rose, syllabus collection