ACCUTE is excited to announce our upcoming webinar, entitled “Decolonizing Pedagogies and Curriculum.” This event will feature six distinguished colleagues from the fields of education and literary studies in conversation about the important work of decentering colonial models of learning in higher education. Our invited experts will discuss concrete strategies that work towards decolonizing the classroom and curriculum, and this will be followed by a wider discussion with ACCUTE members in attendance.

Register HERE

April 10, 2025 at 3:00 p.m. EST

Featuring

Dr. Erin Akerman, Brock University
Dr. Gaurav Desai, University of Michigan
Dr. Chinelo Ezenwa, Memorial University
Dr. Susan Spearey, Brock University
Dr. Brenda Vellino, Carleton University
Alia Wazzan, Brock University

Our Panelists

Dr. Erin Akerman, Brock University

Erin Akerman is a member of the Georgian Bay Métis Community. She works as an assistant professor at Brock University where she teaches Indigenous, Canadian, and nineteenth-century British literatures.

Dr. Gaurav Desai, University of Michigan

Gaurav Desai is Frederick G. L. Huetwell Professor of English and Chair of the department at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. He is the author of Subject to Colonialism: African Self-fashioning and the Colonial Library (Duke University Press, 2001) and editor of a number of books and special issues of journals. His monograph on narratives of Indian Ocean connections between Africa and India, Commerce with the Universe: Africa, India and the Afrasian Imagination (Columbia University Press, 2013) received the 2014 Rene Wellek Prize from the American Comparative Literature Association.

Dr. Chinelo Ezenwa, Memorial University

Dr. Chinelo Ezenwa is of Igbo, Nigerian origin. Her work centres on decolonial and postcolonial studies, language teaching, and community engagement. Her conviction in the importance of intersecting academia and community is reflected in her present role as Assistant Professor in Black Atlantic Decolonial Literatures at Memorial University. 

Dr. Susan Spearey, Brock University

Sue Spearey (Department of English; Affiliated Faculty, MA in Social Justice and Equity Studies and PhD in Interdisciplinary Humanities, Brock University) works at the intersection of anticolonial studies, trauma studies, social justice and equity studies, literary and cultural studies, and critical pedagogy.

Alia Wazzan, Brock University

Alia Wazzan (she/her) is a PhD candidate in her fourth year of the Interdisciplinary Humanities program at Brock University. She holds a BA in English and an MA in Cultural Studies, both from Syria. Her research focuses on racialized-gendered discourses that construct Arab/Muslim women from a postcolonial feminist perspective. Alia has worked as a Teaching Assistant in Women’s and Gender Studies and English departments.