Visual Pedagogies: Decolonizing and Decentering the History of Photography

Abstract

This article discusses strategies to decolonize the classroom through changes in course structure that place postcolonial scholarship into dialogue with emerging scholarship that seeks to unsettle settler colonialism. This pedagogical approach interrogates the very structure of traditional art history to critically explore how systemic Eurocentrism is reproduced in an introductory history of photography course at a public university. As a case study, this article focuses on a history of photography course designed for second-year undergraduate students that provides a broad overview and historicization of one medium. Acknowledging important scholarship in visual culture studies, which has broadened what constitutes important art histories, we contend that more work needs to be done in introducing these complex ideological and methodological innovations in introductory courses. This article proposes methodologies for teaching an undergraduate survey course within the history of art that integrates non-Western and Indigenous knowledge. We argue that a transformed curriculum becomes a catalyst for decolonizing research.