Radical collaboration:

Co-creating feminist online graduate courses through a university and museum partnership

Abstract

Increasingly, universities are recognizing the need for more dynamic approaches to designing multi-purpose higher education syllabi, to respond to changing student expectations and to foster a more diverse, inclusive and equitable society. We propose here a new model of curriculum development designed to meet this need, specifically in relation to gender justice. Termed ‘radical collaboration’, we speak of an approach in which museum and university professionals work together, with intersectional feminism integral to the methodology and pedagogy. The specific example provided here, of the co-creation of an online graduate module on American Women’s History by the University of Glasgow, UK, in partnership with the Smithsonian Institution, Washington D.C., is explored in some depth. The article concludes by asserting the potential of the model to be applied to other institutional contexts, offering a powerful way for museums and universities to work collaboratively to teach history through a feminist lens.