In our workshop, we situate the practice of service learning in higher education within what Anibal Quijano calls “the coloniality of power.” The coloniality of power refers to social and economic structures of power and control constitutive of modern, liberal societies. What then shifts in how we might understand and craft experiential learning when actively troubling existing service narratives? How can this positively alter our praxis? Service learning must be investigated through its various power structures: the structure of professor and student, academic institutions and the communities in which they are located, urban and suburban, and the binary of the intellectual and “native”. 

Rather than abandon community-based learning and service learning, we envision possibilities for decolonizing service learning and reflect on our own experiences building the Immersion East Side Program at Canisius College over the last 10 years.  

Register Here: https://bit.ly/2YoVteT

Dr. Devonya Havis, is Associate Professor of Philosophy at Canisius College in Buffalo, NY. She earned her PhD in Philosophy from Boston College and her BA in Religion from Williams College. She co-leads the Immersion East Side Program, designed to expose Canisius students to the diverse, unfamiliar religious, cultural, political, economic environments of the largely low-income African-American neighborhoods of Buffalo's East Side. Her scholarly engagements utilize insights from Michel Foucault as a means of exploring issues in critical philosophy of race, critical disability studies, and phenomenology.  

Dr. Melissa Mosko is an Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Canisius College in Buffalo, NY. She earned her PhD in Philosophy from Marquette University and her BA in Philosophy, Political Science, and Peace Studies, from Xavier University. She also co-leads the Immersion East Side Program. Her teaching focuses on the intersections of feminist theory and political theory.

Dr. Havis and Dr. Mosko are 2019 Buffalo Commons and PPG Public Research Fellows. This fellowship is open to faculty members, adjuncts, and post-docs at Western New York universities and colleges, as well as Cornell University in which the fellow(s) will  Research and write an original work, aimed at a general audience, on a topic related to an issue or in building civic capacity (this may or may not be a popular version of a more academic work).