Building a #COVIDSyllabus: Lessons for the Future of Collaborative Pedagogy

Author(s): Jenks, Angela C. | Abstract: In early March 2020, Teaching and Learning Anthropology (TLA) initiated a crowdsourced document entitled “Teaching COVID-19: An Anthropology Syllabus Project.” This essay reflects on TLA’s #COVIDSyllabus in the context of a broader shift toward the use of crowdsourced hashtag syllabi – or #syllabi – in social justice movements. I argue that the #COVIDSyllabus holds important lessons for anthropological teaching and learning. As a collaborative, open-access pedagogical project, the syllabus points to new possibilities for 1) expanding public anthropological engagement with contemporary social issues; 2) democratizing knowledge practices and centering the contributions of often marginalized scholars and activists; and 3) building shared communities of praxis within the discipline and among scholar-activists. The full syllabus can be downloaded from this essay’s supplemental materials; the live document is available at https://bit.ly/TeachCOVID19.nn