About DDGC
Members of the collective Diversity, Decolonization, and the German Curriculum (DDGC) recognize that oppression has permeated European colonial modernity since the 15th century, and that it persists today around the world. Routinely, this oppression expresses itself as intersectional violence against people, based upon
We recognize that even the most meaningful ideals of Diversity and the most potent practices of Decolonization have yielded conflicting purposes, strategies, actions, and outcomes. We retain both of these guiding principles in the title of our Collective, because we believe these two complex traditions contribute important components to our overall work combating oppression in our time.
What We’re Committed To
Members of the DDGC collective take up a commitment to actively combat oppressions, every day, in our daily work as teachers and researchers of German Studies (in its broadest sense). We maintain this commitment in solidarity with those we hope to teach, and with colleagues in other disciplines and places around the world. We take inspiration from Black radical thinkers and their antiracist practices to encourage and inspire change within and beyond our communities. We fight
- Racialization: through racism, anti-Blackness, colorism, ethnicization, settler practices, Indigenous erasure, and white supremacy;
- Regimes of embodiment: through normative sex, gender, sexuality, ableism;
- Elite social distinctions: through class, caste, educational credentialing, deskilling, neoliberal competition, and extreme meritocracy;
- Regimes of expression: through language, accent, native-speakerism, delanguaging, intellectual pedigree;
- Regimes of civic order: through citizenship, nationalism, status vulnerability, ascriptions of permanence and impermanence; anti-Muslim and anti-Jewish fear-mongering;
- Regimes of deprivation: through wealth, debt, impoverishment, structural precarity, involuntary volunteerism, and coercive entrepreneurial individualism.
We recognize that even the most meaningful ideals of Diversity and the most potent practices of Decolonization have yielded conflicting purposes, strategies, actions, and outcomes. We retain both of these guiding principles in the title of our Collective, because we believe these two complex traditions contribute important components to our overall work combating oppression in our time.
What We’re Committed To
Members of the DDGC collective take up a commitment to actively combat oppressions, every day, in our daily work as teachers and researchers of German Studies (in its broadest sense). We maintain this commitment in solidarity with those we hope to teach, and with colleagues in other disciplines and places around the world. We take inspiration from Black radical thinkers and their antiracist practices to encourage and inspire change within and beyond our communities. We fight
- for a liberated curriculum, as the only legitimate and effective response to institutional oppression and white supremacy;
- for the well-being of our fellow teachers, researchers, and learners, as they seek to dismantle the oppressions enumerated above;
- for clear policies that ensure equitable and fair labor practices, policies that will eradicate academic precarity as we know it, rather than mitigate such precarity for a temporary few;
- for just, accountable, free, and vigorous public pre-K-16 education in our time.
