Co-constructing Reading Lists: breaking down the barriers to political agency.

Having inherited some reading lists for Global Perspectives modules that were problematically white and not very global, the first thought was to simply diversify the reading list in a bid for decolonisation. However, drawing on the work of Lauren Smith (2013), we decided to centre the voice and agency of the students and work with them to problematise and co-construct the reading lists. This entails moving away from the assumptions that texts are neutral and static. We argue that texts are one part of the wider discourse, they can disrupt power relations or, indeed, embed them. As part of this process we have afforded students the opportunity to develop political agency as they work with, and develop course reading lists. However, as we rolled out this process we have found that students have sometimes struggled and report the task as “too hard”. In this “Talk about” session we will introduce our work and nascent research project and explore, with attendees, what barriers there might be to such co-construction and political agency. This is intended to be a round table discussion which we hope will inform practice and further thinking. Smith, L. (2013). Towards a model of critical information literacy instruction for the development of political agency. Journal of Information Literacy, 7(2), 15–32