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As much as we don't want to admit it....summer is coming to an end and school is starting back up.
That means that a lot of us are working on our syllabi for this semester. How are you planning to #CiteBlackWomen in your classes this semester? This thread will help a bit...
That means that a lot of us are working on our syllabi for this semester. How are you planning to #CiteBlackWomen in your classes this semester? This thread will help a bit...
The resurgence of #BlackLivesMatter 
protests over the past few months has many people thinking seriously about what we can do to shift the way that we approach knowledge in order to center Black voices.
protests over the past few months has many people thinking seriously about what we can do to shift the way that we approach knowledge in order to center Black voices.
One of the ways that we can do this in our teaching is by centering Black women's voices (that's what we focus on here @citeblackwomen if you just started following us...). But how do you center Black women's voices in the classroom?...
One of the fundamental steps that you need to take in order to center Black women's voices in the classroom is incorporating Black women into the CORE of your syllabus. This means a lot more than just tacking Black authors onto the reading list.
Think critically about the topic of your course and then ask the question: what do Black women have to say about this topic and how can this unique perspective help to reframe our approach to what we are learning here?
One thing that professors often struggle with is how to restructure intro courses that are tasked with teaching young students the disciplinary canon. This is particularly difficult when (which is the case for most disciplines) the canon is mostly white men.
Here we have two choices: 1) we can move away from the notion of the "canon" completely and instead reframe the discipline using diverse scholars (especially Black women)...
another choice (which is more conservative but also has its merits) is 2) putting the "canon" (usually traditional European white male thought) into conversation with its critics--those whose theorizations and lives stand in contraposition to the canon's inherent assumptions...
One way to do this is to engage with the Black women authors who have critiqued the "canonical" authors the discipline often requires that we teach. I.e. pairing Foucault with one of the plethora of Black women who have critiqued Foucault.
The problem here often becomes the natural reification of the canon by situating Black women as always the auxiliary to more established thought...still a major problem.
Another option is to dig up the work of lesser known Black women who are contemporaries of the so-called-disciplinary canon (those Black women thinking similarly at the same time) and then putting them together with the "traditional" thought in order to disrupt the assumption...
...that the only people critically theorizing on a specific topic at a specific time were white men. This option often takes a bit more work but is extremely important when shifting students assumptions about who can and cannot theorize in the discipline.
One of the critical tasks that we all must grapple with as educators is disrupting the aforementioned assumption. We often assume that Black women are not theorizing in the discipline. And when we (rarely) do engage with Black women's as disciplinary theorists, we often...
lean on a limited list of a few select names as the Black women in the field....neglecting to diversify our engagement with the totality of Black women's scholarship in our traditions.
Another thing that we see often in our work @citeblackwomen is another alarming trend: engaging a few well-known Black women authors but ignoring the work that Black women do IN OUR FIELD....
So, for example, people teach intro courses in anthropology that include someone like Toni Morrison (who's awesome and should always be revered 
) but not any of the MANY Black women anthropologists who write and contribute to the discipline...this is a problem.
) but not any of the MANY Black women anthropologists who write and contribute to the discipline...this is a problem.
Be mindful as you build your bibliographies. Take the time to not only diversify but also learn about the history of your discipline and discover the Black women that have been doing the work in your area over the years. Read their work. Respect their work. Cite their work.
And before you decide to ride the wave and make your syllabus "anti-racist"; ask yourself what this truly means? Refuse to only engage what is easy and familiar (i.e. the top X bestsellers on list X) and take the time to figure out who has been doing this work over the long haul
We're pretty sure that you will find a list of Black women who said these things a long time ago but never got her due...ask why and then make the political decision to engage in a critical conversation with your students about the genealogy of thought...
And we will end for now with this: Be sure to teach our students how to properly cite!! We teach by example. Your citational practice also defines how students will approach their own politics of citation. How are you engaging with people's ideas? How are you acknowledging them?
Teach your students to do the hard work of actually reading texts, not just citing them. Teach them to acknowledge when they borrow a classmates idea in a conversation. Encourage them to say "as X stated earlier in the discussion..." etc.
Teach them how to read and acknowledge ideas. Teach them what paraphrasing is and why it is also plagiarism when the author is not accurately acknowledged.
And take a minute to look back at our 5 @CiteBlackWomen Principles. They are always helpful this time of year! Good luck with the semester! #CiteBlackWomen #CiteBlackWomenSunday https://www.citeblackwomencollective.org/our-praxis.html
