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Devonya Havis, PhD and Melissa Mosko, PhD, of the Philosophy Department are hosting a workshop on “Decolonizing Service Learning” as part of their Open Buffalo & Partnership for the Public Good Public Research Fellowship.

The workshop situates service learning and immersion experiences in higher education within what Anibal Quijano calls the “coloniality of power.” The coloniality of power refers to social and economic structures of power and control constitutive of modern, liberal societies. What then shifts in how we might understand and craft experiential learning when actively troubling existing service narratives? How can this positively alter our praxis? Service learning must be investigated through its various power structures: the structure of professor and student, academic institutions and the communities in which they are located, urban and suburban and the binary of the intellectual and “native.”

Rather than abandon community-based learning and service learning, they envision possibilities for decolonizing service learning and reflect on experiences building the Immersion East Side Program at Canisius College over the last 10 years.

The workshop will be held via Zoom on Tuesday, July 21 from 12:30 – 2:00 p.m. Click here for more information.

Submitted by: Melissa Mosko, associate professor, Philosophy