Teaching Black Canada(s) Across Borders: Insights from the Caribbean and United States

Abstract

This article offers two unique and overlapping perspectives that explore the challenges and practices faced when teaching and researching Canada from the Caribbean and the United States. Acknowledging that curriculum, which ontologically and epistemologically influences the norms and values of the learning environment, is not a neutral document (Ross 2001, 1) the authors focus on how they enact curricula outside of Canada to discuss issues of rights and diversity as well as to challenge hegemonic narratives of white Canadian nation-building and historiography and ideas of Canada as a benevolent nation-state. Specifically, the authors examine (1) the ways in which assumptions about power and privilege play out in the classroom by either reinforcing or challenging established North/South relations; (2) how the black Canadian experience can be used to disrupt the U.S. black nationalist discourse and allow for an elaboration of the black or African Diaspora; (3) how dominant notions of gender, race and sexuality are articulated differently outside a Canadian landscape; and (4) Canadian-Caribbean relations when it comes to teaching and learning across borders through student exchange programmes.