Decolonising the film curriculum through South–North collaborative online international learning (COIL) initiatives

Abstract

Collaborative online international learning (COIL), also known as ‘telecollaboration’ or ‘virtual exchange’ among other terms, has been employed as a strategy for internationalisation of the curriculum in various disciplines for several years, but the COVID-19 pandemic has provided renewed impetus. This article argues that it can offer an effective means to decolonise approaches to teaching film studies through South–North collaborations. In brief, COIL is a pedagogical approach that holds that ‘learning takes place through a distributed network of connections to other people and their resources, and formal and informal educational assets in the public domain’ (Reo and Russell, 2015: 64). In this article, we argue that a COIL approach with a South–North focus, partnering with a higher education institution in Latin America, would provide unique opportunities to decolonise the film curriculum, given the features of COIL. In 2020, two universities in Mexico, one in Brazil and one in Colombia founded the Latin American Network for COIL. To date, it comprises 135 institutional members, some of which have students from Indigenous backgrounds and are already actively engaged in decolonising the curriculum. Our article proposes ways to take this forward.