You are here
Assign Readings from Diverse Perspectives
Module 2: Getting DEI into Your Curriculum*
From Ways to Incorporate DEI into Your Courses By David Luke, Chief Diversity Officer, University of Michigan, Flint
Assign Readings from Diverse Perspectives
Whatever the discipline, it’s likely that some scholarship has been elevated while other scholarship has been overlooked. Academia does not operate within a vacuum, so when we see systemic racism, sexism, heteronormativity, etc., this is reflected in our institutions and our disciplines as well. I’ll use sociology, my discipline, as an example. Classical sociological theory courses at the graduate and undergraduate levels typically cover Karl Marx, Max Weber, and Emile Durkheim extensively, as well as others with similar demographic characteristics (e.g., Georg Simmel, George Herbert Mead). In other disciplines, it’s quite common for the “canon” to predominantly include “old white guys.” The contributions of women to sociology’s development as a discipline have been well-researched. Additionally, there has been great work on the exclusion of people of color. Aldon Morris’s scholarship on the history of sociology in America sheds some light on this, using W.E.B. DuBois as an example.
For sociology, it’s convenient that there is research on this because these patterns of exclusion connect with other areas of sociological inquiry. In other disciplines, these patterns may not have undergone the same type of systematic interrogation, so instructors will likely need to work harder to expose disciplinary biases in order to be deliberately inclusive. This is, however, the nature of the work; infusing DEI in your curriculum takes concerted, deliberate effort, because without that effort, our curricula will reflect the patterns of oppression in broader society.
*Published 07/22. © 2022 Sage Publishing. All rights reserved. All other brand and product names are the property of their respective owners.