Teaching transnational literacies for antiracist solidarities via virtual exchanges between learners in Cape Town, Fortaleza and Champaign/Chicago
Ken Salo (University of Illinois), Ricardo Nasciemento (UNILAB, Brazil), Greg Ruiters (University of Western Cape)
Our presentation will reflect on how virtual exchanges shape the transnational literacies of learners in dialog on socially just responses to urban injustices in Cape Town, Fortaleza and Chicago/Champaign. Invoking the work of decolonial educators like bell hooks and Gayatri Spivak that frame transnational literacies as the dominant ideas that privileged learners need to unlearn, I offer a reflection on the challenges of virtual education from the perspective of an educator who has led in person study abroad social justice tours and taught at both historically privileged and underprivileged universities in Cape Town and Champaign. More specifically, the aim is to assess how virtual exchanges offer different opportunities for students in both the global North and South to unlearn dominant ideas through dialog with their transnational others. The aim is to strengthen transnational literacies against racially exclusionary urban zoning policies and practices, across local and trans-local scales.