The Applied Practice of Decolonization: a Zine by faculty at CSU Monterey Bay created Fall 2024-Spring 2025

CSU Monterey Bay is built on a decommissioned army base, located on the unceded Indigenous territory of the Ohlone Costanoan Esselen Nation. In this talk I share and reflect on a collaborative project launched in Spring 2024, when my colleague, Dr. Sriya Shrestha, and I facilitated a reading/discussion group titled “Decolonization and the University.” The group is an outgrowth of the CSUMB Abolition and Decolonial Education Collective, which has been collectively visioning and working toward a university rooted in transformative justice, liberatory educational practices, and interconnection since the summer of 2020. In the Spring, a group of 10+ CSUMB educators and librarians read and discussed work by Leanne Simpson (2017), Grace Lee Boggs (1970), and la paperson (2017), to think through the university’s role in settler colonialism, and its potential as a site of decolonial struggle and possibility. We shared our reflections via submissions of “golden lines” to a discussion forum, and verbally in our synchronous meetings. The “Golden Line” (a Reading Apprenticeship practice) is a close reading strategy allowing participants to interact and connect more deeply with texts. It refers to analysis of a line of text that is especially meaningful, surprising, helpful, or thought-provoking. In Fall 2024, the group came together to turn our reflections into a zine centered on the applied practice of decolonization. Contributions include: art (drawing, collage, painting, photography), essays, creative writing/short fiction, poetry, an exquisite corpse collective poem, and more, centered on our reflections on these texts and our own work.

Email ([email protected]) for a printable version of the 'zine that folds into a booklet.