[Commlist] Cfc: Towards Decolonising Media, Communication and Film Studies in Africa: Critical Pedagogical Approaches

*Call for Papers: *

*Towards Decolonising Media, Communication and Film Studies in Africa: 
Critical Pedagogical Approaches*

The year 2015 will forever be etched in the history of universities in 
the globe - particularly those in South Africa and the UK - as a turning 
point when exasperated university students agitated for curriculum, 
institutional and faculty reforms. South Africa saw the Rhodes Must Fall 
(RMF) and Fees Must Fall (FMF) movements emerging while in the UK, 
Rhodes Must Fall Oxford (RMFO), Why is My Curriculum So White? and 
#LiberateMyDegree movements were born. These movements specifically 
called for the decolonisation of institutions and education. In South 
Africa, the RMF student protests were initially sparked and 
characterised by calls for the removal of the statue of infamous British 
imperialist, Cecil John Rhodes which was perched on the university’s 
middle campus. Later, in their mission statement, the RMF activists 
contended that their struggle was against “the dehumanisation of black 
people at UCT” (UCT: RMF Facebook page, 2015). At the core of the 
demands, besides the RMF argument that the statue of Rhodes had to be 
removed, was curriculum reforms centering the hitherto sidelined 
subaltern, black and African thought in university curricula. Before the 
birth of the abovementioned movements, students at the University of the 
Witwatersrand had already started agitating for a decolonised curriculum.

While student movements like the RMF movement bring into sharp focus the 
“myth of a ‘postcolonial’ world” (Grosfoguel, 2007: 219) in contemporary 
South African higher education, the exposition of this fallacy is not 
new on the continent. Conversations about colonialism, coloniality and 
decoloniality foregrounded by some South African University students 
have been happening for a long time in Africa (Ndlovu-Gatsheni 2013, 
2015; Mbembe, 2001; Achebe 1958; Ngugi 1986). Post the RMF and later FMF 
‘protest moments,’ these discussions gained momentum in the academy 
leading to conferences, research articles and books being written on the 
subject of decolonisation. In media, communication and film studies, 
there is burgeoning scholarship whose overarching preoccupations are 
that of disentangling and liberating the discipline from existing 
asymmetries in global knowledge production (Mano and milton, 2021; 
Rodny-Gumede and Chasi, 2021; Chiumbu and Iqani, 2020; Moyo, 2020; 
Karam, 2018; Mutsvairo, 2018). These asymmetries have relegated to the 
margins “African modes of knowing, social meaning-making, imagining, 
seeing and knowledge production” (Ndlovu-Gatsheni, 2013: 8).

Given that the curriculum and the classroom are central to processes of 
shaping next generation media, communication and film scholars and 
practitioners on the continent, the proposed edited volume adds to the 
abovementioned scholarship by exploring pedagogical approaches to 
decolonising Media, Communication and Film Studies in Africa. Chapters 
addressing the themes and sub-themes listed below or on content that 
contributors may deem pertinent to the main theme of the book are 
welcome. These are:

  * Disrupting coloniality in curricula, teaching and classrooms in Africa
  * The history and decolonisation of media, communication and film
    studies curricula in Africa.
  * Who needs to decolonise: Are all curricula the same?
  * Historical transformations in teaching media, communication and film
    studies in Africa
  * Media, communication and film studies and manifestations of
    coloniality in ‘postcolonial’ Africa
  * How were/are lecturers constituted in colonial and contemporary
    media, communication and film studies education in Africa?
  * Who//should teach media, communication and film studies in Africa?
  * Identities and positionalities in decolonising the curriculum
  * Stakeholder perceptions on decolonising the curriculum
  * Decolonising research methods and theory in media, communication and
    film studies
  * Centering Africa, African knowledges, experiences and thinkers in
    the curriculum as part of decolonisation
  * Canonical thinkers and canonical texts: What do we do with the White
    (mostly) male Western thinkers that have been the backbone of many
    modules?
  * What do decolonised media, communication and film studies look like?
  * How were/are students constituted in colonial and contemporary
    media, communication and film studies education in Africa?
  * What knowledges, histories, and experiences do students bring to the
    classrooms?
  * Decolonising the ways we see students (being sensitive to students’
    struggles): Re-thinking of students as whole people who are
    sometimes contending with trauma that can be triggered by some
    course materials (the importance of providing trigger warnings for
    students for certain readings and videos screened in the course)
  * Centering student engagement and decentering the idea of an
    all-powerful and all-knowing university/academics
  * Engendering critical thinking skills: Equipping students to be
    African citizens
  * Case studies of decolonised curricula and teaching practice in
    media, communication and film studies
  * State, institutional, departmental autonomy: When does decolonizing
    the curriculum begin
  * Covid-19, distance learning and decolonisation of the curriculum

Papers submitted for consideration should be original work and must not 
be under consideration by other publications. All papers will be 
subjected to a blind peer reviewing process. Final acceptance of 
chapters is subject to successful peer review. If interested, please 
send an abstract (250 words maximum) together with a short biography. 
Please email abstracts to (decolonisingmedia /at/ gmail.com) 
<mailto:(decolonisingmedia /at/ gmail.com)>by 30 June 2021. The deadline for 
full articles is 1 November 2021. Final papers should not exceed 6,000 
words.

*Co-editors*:

*Selina Mudavanhu *is Assistant professor in the Communication Studies 
and Media Arts department at McMaster University in Canada

*Shepherd Mpofu*is Associate professor of Media and Communication at the 
University of Limpopo in South Africa

*Kezia Batisai *is Associate professor in the Sociology department at 
the University of Johannesburg in South Africa

---------------
The COMMLIST
---------------
This mailing list is a free service offered by Nico Carpentier. Please use it responsibly and wisely.
--
To subscribe or unsubscribe, please visit http://commlist.org/
--
Before sending a posting request, please always read the guidelines at http://commlist.org/
--
To contact the mailing list manager:
Email: (nico.carpentier /at/ vub.ac.be)
URL: http://nicocarpentier.net
---------------