Teaching Transnational Afro-Asia Through Dialogue

Paper Abstract: This presentation shares the instructor's experience with experimental approaches to teaching Transnational Afro-Asia, an undergraduate survey course on Afro-Asian relations with a focus on U.S. and South Africa cases. A central feature of the course is a small group dialogue which included training from both U.S., Indonesian, and South African partners combining Inter-Group dialogue and other techniques drawn from intercultural communication and anti-racist and inclusive pedagogy.Through a range of themes, and across many contexts, the course explores Afro-Asian communities and identities to fulfill a unique core curriculum component at Colgate University, a small liberal arts college in upstate New York. The presentation also covers how the institutional curricular design and context enabled unique guest partnerships for the course including a Cape Malay cooking workshop, Bandung Residency artists, and a multimedia exhibition final project for students. The course also served as a central first-year seminar where students in the course also lived in the same dormitories and the course was also designed to introduce students to the university experience and academic standards. As a result the instructor is also their advisor until the student determines their major course of study. The presentation also discusses how anchoring a students first university academic experience in an anti-racist and decolonial centered course on Afro-Asian relations has potentiality for modeling early integration of these pedagogical approaches into tertiary education curriculum and training.