Revising an anthropological course curriculum: A step towards epistemic justice?

Abstract (English)

This presentation will discuss the revision of the curriculum of a course introducing the region East-Africa to undergraduate anthropology students in Germany. The revision took place in the context of a small didactical project on diversifying curricula, and was driven by the acknowledgement that my original literature list from 2021 contained only a few articles by authors from the region. The literature list thus perpetuated what Ndlovu-Gatsheni (2023) has called “the cognitive empire”, by ignoring or devaluing literature that is not from the “centre” (in this case the anthropological centres of the UK, the US and Germany). I realized the literature list did not do justice to the many great scholars from the region, nor did it provide my students with an “emic” understanding from the region. Moreover, the “hidden” course curriculum conveyed the unintended message that non-African scholars are the true “experts” on the region (cf. Leask 2015 on hidden curricula). Thus, when preparing to teach the same course in 2025, I decided to completely revise the course curriculum. I for instance searched for literature in “non-central” but course-relevant places, such as publications from anthropology and history departments from universities in East Africa. The result was a completely revised course curriculum. In this talk, I will discuss the revision process and will reflect on the effects of the revision on the teaching outcomes of the course. Did the revised literature list indeed do more justice to East African scholars, and did it perhaps also connect better to students’ interests? Furthermore, I will interrogate the question whether this approach could be “scaled up” and could be an implementable step towards epistemic justice in anthropological teaching.