Decolonizing the Body, Pedagogies, and Anti-Asian Hate

Abstract

Decolonizing the Body, Pedagogies, and Anti-Asian Hate Najeeba Syeed (bio) A student emails me, telling me she is in tears, grappling with what it means to let go of definitions of her identity that had held her hostage to the claims of colonized religion. She asks, "What is left?" I've had many students send me these types of emails. They struggle with the process of coming into their own agency and defining their heritage, articulating their experiences of marginalization, and also speaking openly about their strengths and dreams. Here are four pedagogical approaches I've adopted as a professor to respond to student needs and experiences like those named above: 1. Sequence the syllabus in ways that center decolonial framing before teaching religion itself. For example, I assign Linda Tuhiwai Smith's book Decolonizing Methodologies before other texts, before teaching texts on religion and spirituality.1 This framing allowed for colonial constructs we studied later to be interrogated and examined as students were learning them. It changed the method of ending a course with critique and centered the course in this constant questioning of how religions are studied and how religion is constructed in the overall academic framework and institutional settings. 2. Teach more women. I cannot emphasize this enough. So often decolonial critique is taught only from the perspectives of authors who identify as men; adding the voices of female-identified authors may mean stretching the boundaries of what is decolonial. I've used traditional religious writers who do not name [End Page 123] the decolonial method but execute it nonetheless. They may be writing in forms that are not readily accessible as academic texts. For my Indigenous students, for instance, this meant reading firsthand narratives that were not always scholarly works, but the embodied experience of decolonizing was evident, a roadmap in the text. 3. Pay attention to what I am modeling as professor. My body is the first text in the classroom interreligious encounter that a student reads. This is especially the case when students have not encountered religious diversity in their prior experiences. Especially as a woman—a Muslim woman, a Brown woman, and an Asian woman—it is important to name when encounters are complex, complicated, or problematic. This has been very hard. So often my age, my qualifications are asked about, personal revelations sought. Familiarity and comfort with me pursued, I had to insist on being "Professor Syeed" while my colleagues could be addressed by their first names with impunity. More deeply, I have begun to talk about and name when my own body was experiencing violations by what we read, by what we watched, and by what was said in the moment of interaction in the classroom. This has taken practice and deliberation over time. It is done with strength and honesty and clarity; and the methods of how I handled these conflicts were greatly appreciated by my students. 4. Teach with trauma-informed methods and practice skills and gifts of spiritual ethics. Decolonizing Trauma Work by Renee Linklater is one example.2 Colorizing Restorative Justice is another text that includes methods of developing social justice engagement with healing, not hurting methods.3 This is the hardest topic to explore: how pursuing justice for some communities was in and of itself traumatic. I have had to unpack this so often with students, and this edited volume has some excellent essays that expose the violations of social-justice pedagogies and processes in institutions and classrooms. The many authors who contribute recommend real-life pedagogies and assessments that can assist in new ways to engage when violated bodies and histories enter the room. [End Page 124] I utilize centering techniques, somatic work, and breath work at the beginning of every class. And I pepper it with methods of openness in my language. I do centering work in the first ten minutes of class. I begin with somatic work before every class on my own to check in with my physical and emotional state before I even teach. Some questions I ask myself and others when developing trauma-informed teaching methods are: What in your culture, community, neighborhood induces embodied learning and reflection? Maybe...