Dr. Selina Mudavanhu talks about her co-edited book: Decolonising Media and Communication Studies Education in Sub-Saharan Africa

Can you tell us a little more about yourself and your research?

I am a Zimbabwean Canadian academic. I was educated in Zimbabwe and in South Africa. Both countries experienced colonialism and currently contend with coloniality. This had an impact on the kinds of “education” that I received. I put education in quotation marks because I often wonder about what I was taught and whether I was educated or miseducated. I reside and work in Canada, a country that had its own encounters with settler colonialism. All this informs the ways I think about teaching and learning.

I am committed to contesting coloniality through my research and in courses I teach. But this has not always been the case. Like many in postsecondary institutions, when I started teaching, I hardly had any formal training in teaching and learning. For me, the default was to teach in the ways I had been taught the majority of the time. This all changed when I was a teaching assistant (TA) of one course in graduate school. The convenor of the course recommended that all TAs read chapters from Teaching to Transgress by bell hooks. I later discovered Paulo Freire’s Pedagogy of the Oppressed. I also began to think back to the ways two of my more “radical” instructors taught us in graduate school at the University of Zimbabwe as they tried to decolonize our minds. All this set me on a journey of thinking about teaching and learning practices that celebrate the pluriversal nature of knowers and knowledges.

At the centre of my research program is thinking about power. My research is critical of discourses that are normalized in legacy and social media spaces as well as in media and communication educational programs that sustain hierarchies and relationships of domination and subordination. I am also interested in understanding expressions of agency and counter hegemonic power on social media spaces and in teaching and learning.

Why did you and your collaborators decide to work on this book? 

My collaborators (Shepherd Mpofu and Kezia Batisai) and I decided to work on this book for two main reasons. First, this book contributes to knowledge production. Extant scholarship on decolonizing media and communication studies in sub-Saharan Africa has been in the context of research. Not much attention has been on decolonizing teaching and learning. The few articles that examine this topic are mostly published by the mainstream media or in academic publications that do not directly focus on teaching and learning.

Second, considering the centrality of education to shaping future media and communication scholars and practitioners on the continent, we thought that it was imperative and urgent for teaching and learning to be decolonized. As instructors, we cannot afford the luxury of teaching in ways that nourish and perpetuate coloniality. In that regard, this book offers colleagues teaching in media and communication studies programs in sub-Saharan Africa practical ideas or starting points on how to do decolonial work in the context of teaching and learning.

What would you like people to know about this book? 

The first thing I would like people to know is that colonial histories and present-day manifestations of coloniality make it vital to embark on the journey of decolonizing teaching and learning in media and communication studies, as well as in any discipline in sub-Saharan Africa and anywhere that had encounters with colonialism. In my view, decolonization is not optional or something that can be deferred.

The second point I would like to highlight is that while decolonizing teaching and learning is important, this work is not always straightforward and easy. Precisely because decolonization happens at different but interlinked levels, it is sometimes complicated, difficult, and downright frustrating. Also, not everyone necessarily supports decolonization. In view of all this, it is important to realize that there are other colleagues on the continent and beyond who are also thinking about decolonizing teaching and learning. Supporting one another through sharing lessons, strategies and resources can be useful.

The third point I would like people to know is that, in the book, decolonization is not synonymous with being against the West or doing away with Western scholarship and thinkers. Drawing on ideas by Lesley Le Grange, a distinguished professor of education based at Stellenbosch University in South Africa, decolonization for us means a decentring of Western scholars and knowledges and a centring of knowers and knowledges that have been marginalized on our course outlines and in our classrooms.

How do you hope this book will change how media studies are taught, or what do you hope this book will accomplish? 

Maybe I can start by stating what I do not think will happen because of the book. I do not necessarily think that the book will result in radical and immediate changes in the ways media studies are taught. It would be great if that happened, but I do not think that is realistic.

I hope the book simultaneously starts and continues discussions about decolonizing teaching and learning in sub-Saharan Africa in media and communication studies in particular. Beyond ideas and strategies shared in the book, I hope to hear other ideas and learn from other colleagues on how they are thinking about and doing decolonization in their classrooms. After presenting two chapters from the book at the International Communication Association in Africa Conference in Cape Town, South Africa in November 2023, I really enjoyed the conversations that ensued afterwards as colleagues shared their thoughts. Ideas around extending this work emerged. One of the co-editors of the book and I are imagining convening workshops on teaching and learning with colleagues teaching in media and communication studies programs on the continent and using the book as a resource that starts conversations. Ultimately, the goal of these discussions is that we all move towards teaching in ways that centre decolonial agendas.

For colleagues who have not considered decolonizing teaching and learning and still teach in ways they were taught, I hope that the book inspires a process of re-thinking the ways they are currently doing their work. I hope the practical steps offered by many contributors in the book will be useful in this process.

Your book focuses on media studies in African contexts. What can readers in North America learn from reading it? 

That is a great question. Debates on decolonizing teaching and learning are not peculiar to sub-Saharan Africa. Questioning the ways teaching and learning happens is on the agendas of many in Canadian postsecondary institutions where I am located. In that regard, I think there are ideas in the book that can be relevant and applicable to contexts such as North America.