Meeting Facilitators: Dr. Ryuko Kubota and Ashley Moore
This term, we will use antiracist and decolonial perspectives to deconstruct and reimagine the concept of “excellence” within (i) scholarship, (ii) teaching and (iii) service.
In the first of these three meetings of the Caucus, we will focus on the construct of “excellence” in scholarship. Below you’ll find three short texts (that we hope you’ll read before the meeting) and the questions we’ll be using to stimulate our discussions.
Stimulus Texts
- An excerpt from Dr. Cash Ahenakew’s (EDST) poem, Academic Indian Job Description: Have to Know*
- This short (4-minute) blog post by Ryuko for Oxford University Press on racial biases in academic knowledge.
- Another short (5-minute) blog post, “Rethinking university scholarships to improve equity, diversity and inclusion among winners,” by Mirjam Fines-Neuschild & Bibiana Pulido for University Affairs**
- This longer, optional, Presidential Address for the Literacy Research Association by Dr. Marcelle M. Haddix, in which she considers the past, present and future of the literacy research community from a Black feminist perspective (you can also watch a video of the actual 50-minute address here). She reminds us of the importance of understanding “the genealogies of our research agendas,” and challenges us to rethink the notions of what counts as data, theory, analytical methods and research.
*Our thanks to Dr. Derek Gladwin for suggesting Dr. Ahenakew’s work as a stimulus text.
**Our thanks to Harini Rajagopal for suggesting this timely blog post.
Discussion Questions
- What kind of models and associated images for “scholarly excellence” did you grow up with? How was it measured or appreciated? What kinds of people were understood to be excellent scholars? What did they look like? What languages did they do that scholarship in? Where could that scholarship be found? What textual forms did it take? What styles?
- “Scholarly excellence” is an important construct at various stages in the trajectory of our academic careers (e.g., completing grad school applications, taking required courses, applying for jobs, assessing students’ work, applying for tenure, conducting and publishing research, hiring new faculty, assessing tenure applications, etc.). Using the map below as a guide, how can we use antiracist and decolonizing perspectives to redefine our notions of scholarly excellence within particular scholarly practices? How can these forms of scholarly excellence be recognized and valued through (LLED’s) institutional structures and practices?