Journal of Academic Development and Education JADE Issue 10 | Page 92

ARTICLE #7 | 93
92 | JADE
MARIA FLOOD THE CHALLENGES OF A DIVERSE CURRICULUM: A CASE STUDY FROM THE HUMANITIES
challenges social exclusions, and the level of policy and practice,
that is, how assessments and teaching styles cater to students from
diverse backgrounds. I focus primarily on the first issue, in order
to address currents gaps in the literature, through a consideration
of practice in the classroom. The methodological approach in
this article departs from a thinking of intersectional diversity.
Intersectional practice recognizes that ability, class, ethnicity, gender,
language, nationality, religion, race, and sexuality are not isolated
aspects of the individual’s experience of the social environment,
but instead interact and intersect in multiple ways. As Patricia Hill
Collins notes, intersectionality is ‘analysis claiming that systems of
race, social class, gender, sexuality, ethnicity, nation, and age form
mutually constructing features of social organization, which shape
[individuals’] experiences and, in turn, are shaped by [individuals]’
(Hill Collins: 2000, p. 299). I will focus on a film and a television series
that treat diversity with reference to race, but our conclusions are
applicable to other categories of diversity and beyond Film Studies. ourselves linked with others we have never directly known, and
to understand that, in some abiding and urgent sense, we share a
world?’ [my italics] (Butler, 2013).
Diverse Curricula and the Humanities
If we return to the definition of diversity as a ‘heritage of humanity’,
and a source of ‘exchange, innovation and creativity’, the Humanities
can be seen as a privileged site for a consideration of diverse
curricula in the university. Humanities subjects involve the study
of people and topics that are often distant from the student’s
lived experience: from different time periods, different countries,
in different languages, treating topics and themes that may be
entirely new to the student. Moreover, as a discipline that is largely
discussion-based in the classroom, the Humanities offers particular
opportunities and challenges when it comes to what is termed the
hidden curriculum: the ‘lessons that are learned but not openly
intended’ (Martin, 1983, p. 122), by transmitting values and norms
through the social environment of the classroom. How the teacher
manages classroom discussions, whose voices are heard, and how
particular opinions are emphasized or challenged participate in the
hidden curriculum, implicitly transmitting particular values. A quote
from queer feminist philosopher Judith Butler (placed in the meeting
area outside the School of Humanities in Keele) sums up succinctly
the role that the Humanities can play in fostering diversity and
inclusion in higher education environments:
‘[The humanities allow us] … to find ways of living, thinking, acting,
and reflecting that belong to times and spaces we have never
known. The humanities give us a chance to read across languages
and cultural differences in order to understand the vast range of
perspectives in and on this world. How else can we imagine living
together without this ability to see beyond where we are, to find
Butler highlights the elements of distance, difference, and novelty
that are promoted by a study of the Humanities; we study texts that
take us beyond ourselves into different worlds, places, spaces, and
time periods, encountering new lives and new people through the
texts we study. Butler adds that ‘we have to shake off what we think
we know’ (Butler, 2013) in order to relate to subjects and individuals
beyond our ken. She also evokes the humanitarian and civic potential
of study in this field. Indeed, the word ‘Humanities’ itself comes
from the Latin humanitas, meaning ‘kindness’, where ‘kind’ evokes
compassion as well as of ‘one’s own kind’. Thus, to echo Butler, the
study of the Humanities allows us to see that others are also ‘of one’s
own kind’ (relatable, not so different after all) as well as evoking
positive feelings of togetherness and kinship – what we might call
kindness towards others. Kevin K. Kumashiro further argues that
‘anti-oppressive’, diverse curricula disrupt the ‘harmful repetitions
of certain privileged knowledge and practices’ but he also admits
that as an educator he has missed opportunities to engage in this
kind of teaching because it can lead students to ‘emotional crisis’
(Kumashiro, 2002, p. 67). This points towards some of the challenges
that delivering a curriculum based on texts by minority artists or
dealing with non-normative subjects can pose. Below, Maria outlines
the approach she adopts in class and some of the key challenges she
has identified in delivering a diverse curriculum.
Diverse Curricula: Definitions and Challenges
A diverse curriculum can broadly be defined texts by or about
non-normative individuals. Within the context of Film Studies,
a diverse curricula can mean: films/texts created by diverse
filmmakers/authors; films/texts starring diverse actors; films/texts
treating themes about minorities and social exclusion; films/texts
with diverse fans/readers; films/texts with ‘diverse’, non-normative
aesthetic practices; re-examining old classics to look for repressed
and hidden elements (e.g. Alfred Hitchcock’s Rope); inclusive
practice, e.g. recognising diversity in assessment protocols. Film
Studies offers great opportunity for the study of other cultures
and diversity, because as a primarily visual rather than a verbal
or written medium, subtitles allow audiences around the world
to enjoy films from different cultural contexts. Indeed, the Quality
Assurance Agency for Higher Education guidelines for Film Studies
as a discipline recognizes that ‘people's lives are shaped in part by a
great variety of communicative, cultural and aesthetic systems and
practices’ (QAA, 2016, p. 6). However, the fact remains that creating