Liberate My Curriculum – Reading List Audit
Introduction
Reading lists are extremely important. They highlight the most renowned and respected texts within a field.
They are essential reading on courses, and provide the ideas and language upon which arguments in seminars
or essays are made. They shape how discourses are formed, and form our perceptions of the social world
around us.
Reading lists also operate within a discourse themselves. A discourse which is self-perpetuating; which polices
which opinions are given highest value and are seen as most feasible and academic.
Whose ideas are given the most prominence, through their inclusion in reading lists, extends beyond the
abstract, and has material implications for students. Authors who are most often cited as recommended or
essential reading are often white and/or writers who are men.
“What is institutional racism? Systematic and entrenched form of oppression and discrimination against a
certain race. White supremacist structures in today's society propagate the idea that white-ness is the norm
and other races are at best tolerated, at worst derided and/or excluded.”
(LSE Student, 26 January 2016)
Creating hegemonic notions of whose ideas and experiences are most salient and respected within a discipline
is strongly reinforced by the inclusion or exclusion of certain groups from reading lists.
It may place additional barriers to success on students from underrepresented or underprivileged groups,
realised most prominently in the form of the attainment gap, which sees BME students at LSE as 16% less
likely to achieve a first or a 2:1 than their white counterparts.
We recently completed a report into the attainment gap, which can be read in full on the
www.lsesu.com/Liberate-My-Curriculum webpage.
Saul (2013) writes persuasively on two psychological phenomena –implicit bias and stereotype threat – and
how these barriers may disadvantage certain student groups in practice.
Implicit bias is the idea that even people who explicitly hold egalitarian views are still implicitly biased against
underprivileged groups, such as black people, gay people etc. Saul applies this in the academic context
through anonymity in journal submissions:
“Academics are clearly affected by implicit bias, even if (as seems likely) explicit commitments to egalitarianism
are widespread. First, take the case of journal submissions. Anonymous review is apparently only rarely
practiced in ecology and evolution journals. But one such journal, Behavioural Ecology, recently decided to do
it. They found that it led to a 33 percent increase in representation of female authors (Budden et al. 2008)”
Implicit bias means that those students or scholars who do not match the ideal-type of an academic (a white
male) are more likely to experience their ideas being dismissed or regarded as less important.
Saul also describes the phenomenon known as stereotype threat as a contributing factor to disadvantage in
academia. Stereotype threat is the understanding that people who belong to an underprivileged group often
underperform due to fear of confirming societal stereotypes or negative impressions associated with belonging
to that group. Saul writes:
“Stereotype threat is likely to be provoked when one is from a group that is negatively stigmatised in a certain
context, one is in that context, and one’s group membership is made salient. This can happen in many ways.
For example, if you ask five-to-seven-year-old girls to colour in drawings of girls holding dolls before taking a
math test, their performance is significantly reduced (Steele 170)”
Reading lists are never claimed to be ‘learning’ in its totality, and academics often encourage off-list reading;
but they do put in place structural barriers which create a ‘correct’ set of readings around an issue or topic.
What is removed or absent from that ‘correct’ set of readings is just as important as what is included.
This audit hopes to explore the representation of authors in reading lists from underrepresented groups, as a
contribution to the broader discussion around attainment. We want to better understand the diversity of your
readings lists and whether this has (in your view) had an impact on the work that you submit. This toolkit will
give you the tools that you need to complete your own reading list audit for submission to our Policy team.
This audit is an interpretative, qualitative exercise, aimed as surveying the landscape of readings lists to
assess how diverse they appear at LSE. The methodology we are asking you to follow has been simplified to
make the process as easy as possible – you can find a more detailed methodology, which can be read in full on
the www.lsesu.com/Liberate-My-Curriculum webpage.
There are four levels, the first is based on gender, the second on binary race (white versus non-white) and the
third is a mix of both gender & race. It is up to you which you do, or how many of your reading lists you want to
audit.
When researching you will have to make a judgement as to whether someone would define white or non-white,
or woman or man; remember, this is not meant to be an entirely scientific project, it is an interpretative process
evaluating the diversity of the reading lists.
BAME stands for ‘Black Asian Minority Ethnic’. On the whole, the term ‘BAME’ refers to any person who is not
white. However, there are many people who are white who also define as being part of another minority ethnic
group, such as Gypsies or Semites. For the purposes of this project, if you believe that someone defines as
Black, Asian or Minority Ethnic please include them in the ‘non-white’ category.
Your step by step guide to liberating your curriculum
STAGES
Step 1
Download the template spreadsheet found on www.lsesu.com/Liberate-My-Curriculum
Step 2
Find the academic pages for the authors of the content of your reading list
Step 3
Make a judgement as to whether the author is white or non-white, and woman or man.
Step 4
Complete the spreadsheet – make sure to include a link to any pertinent information where possible.
Step 5
Once complete, fill in and attach your results here: bit.ly/LiberateMyCurriculumFeedback
Step 6
Talk to the staff in your Department about your results and the diversity of your reading lists.