Overview

Decoloniality is a perspective that challenges the colonial foundation and neoliberal operations of the westernized university today. In Black Feminist Interventions to Decolonize the Westernized University: Epistemology, Research Methodology, and Pedagogy Assata Zerai highlights feminist decoloniality as a tool to promote institutional transformation, indirectly through changes in research and teaching in the social sciences, directly by centering social justice within higher education. Reflecting on three decades of scholarship, Zerai adapts principles of decolonial theory to scholarship, pedagogy, and praxis transnationally, focusing on higher education in the USA and South Africa. She intentionally centers students who have been racially and culturally excluded in these contexts and provides evidence of university students experiencing intersectional microaggressions, including gendered, ableist, and queerphobic anti-Blackness. Zerai argues that faculty must appreciate such realities in order to affirm students and create learning environments in which all may thrive. Further, this book argues that ethical commitments to minoritized students and their communities must be reflected in humanizing research practices. Finally, Zerai reviews ways in which scholars have begun to move their disciplines from a focus on traditional canons of the modernist era to embrace decolonial sensibilities in their academic work. This book highlights these new approaches within the social sciences, to promote justice, equity, accessibility, diversity, and inclusion (JEADI) within higher education.

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9781666944518

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Reviews

Adopting a Black transnational decolonial feminism, Assata Zerai adeptly integrates principles of Black feminist thought, African feminism, and decolonial theory to analyze research, teachings, and praxis. In so doing, Black Feminist Interventions to Decolonize the Westernized University: Epistemology, Research Methodology, and Pedagogy draws on reflexive accounts of Zerai's work and from transnational case studies in the social sciences to enable scholarly reflection for decolonial research and institutional transformation. Taking the principles of feminist solidarity, equality, and social justice into account, this book is not only concerned with scholarship for its own sake but also urges scholars in higher education to translate the knowledge they generate to benefit society. Zerai's clarion call for scholar activism in higher education is a much-needed intervention in international higher systems increasingly focused on productivity and profit-making. --Relebohile Moletsane, University of KwaZulu-Natal This groundbreaking work breathes new life into decolonial theory, applying its principles to reshape research, teaching, and praxis across the social sciences. Drawing from her decades of scholarship, Zerai skillfully bridges academic rigor and lived experience, offering a powerful call to action for educators and scholars to embrace a more inclusive, culturally responsive approach. A must-read for anyone committed to reimagining the future of education and social justice, this book is both timely and transformative. --Reitumetse Obakeng Mabokela, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign

Author Information

Assata Zerai is professor of sociology at The University of New Mexico, visiting professor at The University of the Witwatersrand, and professor emerita at The University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

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