This course draws inspiration from a co-taught seminar entitled, “The African Archive Beyond Colonization” co-created by Dr. Sarah Derbew (Assistant Professor of Classics, Stanford University) and Dr. Denise L. Lim (Assistant Professor of Black Material and Visual Cultures, The New School’s Parsons School of Design) in the fall 2021 quarter at Stanford University.

Between May 2021 to August 2022, Dr. Lim was a BIPOC curatorial postdoctoral fellow with the Stanford University Archaeology Collections (SUAC), and was commissioned to research, curate, and teach from SUAC’s African collections, which included over 856 cultural objects from over 10 different African countries. Dr. Lim collaborated with Dr. Derbew to create a course that offered students practical cultural heritage training in research, exhibition design and planning, and curatorship. Co-instruction was a key strength of this course that encompassed a wide range of geographic regions, time periods, and cultures. As no single scholar can be an expert in all these subjects, students benefited from a transdisciplinary, collaborative pedagogy. 

The spring 2025 semester was the inaugural year that this course was offered to M.A. students in the History of Design and Curatorial Studies (HDCS) program at The New School. Dr. Lim established a partnership with The Brooklyn Museum’s Associate Curator of the Arts of Africa, Dr. Annissa Malvoisin. In spring 2026, Dr. Lim formed a new partnership with New York University’s (NYU) Africa House to research and curate from their African collections.