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14 August 2017

Syllabi resources for challenging systemic racism, colonization, and more

In the wake of the horrific, racist violence in Charlottesville, Virginia this past weekend, it is important for anthropologists to think about our voice in university classrooms as a way of speaking to wide-ranging systemic inequalities in our lives, and the lives of our students. For many of us, challenging these systems of oppression by understanding the social processes and forms that underlie them is part and parcel of what contemporary anthropology offers as a holistic, empirically-grounded, critical way of seeing the world.

With this in mind, we want to remind instructors of some of the inspiring resources that anthropologists, other scholars, and social justice activists have created to help educators bring contemporary issues into our classrooms collected on anthro everywhere!'s Reading Lists, Syllabi, & Teaching Resources.

In addition to resources already documented here (e.g. Anthropoliteia's #BlackLivesMatter Syllabus projectEthnographic approaches to understanding Trump/Brexit/new rise of conservativism, Decolonizing Anthropology, or the Islamophobia is Racism Syllabus) We've also recently updated the page with the Anthropoliteia's list of course syllabi on Policing and the timely Charlottesville Syllabus:
a resource created by the Graduate Student Coalition for Liberation to be used to educate readers about the long history of white supremacy in Charlottesville, Virginia. With resources selected and summaries written by UVa graduate students, this abridged version of the Syllabus is organized into six sections that offer contemporary and archival primary and secondary sources (articles, books, responses, a documentary, databases) and a list of important terms for discussing white supremacy. Only “additional resources” are not available online (but can be found either through JSTOR, at the library, or for purchase).
We have also added a few great resources from Somatosphere on teaching medical anthropology and illness that might be of interest to instructors for this upcoming academic year.