Fellows Feature: Ijeoma Njaka on ancestry and creative practice
The Fellows program is an opportunity to bring together Georgetown faculty from across the University—as well as visiting scholars—for community building, curricular development, and pedagogical experimentation. At these gatherings (also known as “salons” or “jam sessions”), the expanded Ethics Lab team comes together to share ideas and research, discuss best practices, and identify areas where their work overlaps through engaging and playful facilitation.
Ijeoma Njaka (she/her/hers) serves as the Senior Project Associate for Equity-Centered Design at the Red House and the Inclusive Pedagogy Specialist for the Laboratory for Global Performance and Politics at Georgetown University. In this joint position, she specializes in arts-based approaches to inclusive and anti-racist teaching, curricula, and faculty development. A co-recipient of the 2021 Provost’s Innovation in Teaching Award for her work the performance-based dialogue program In Your Shoes, she also teaches courses on critical speculative design for anti-racism in higher education as well as arts and enduring meaning. Ijeoma holds an MA in Learning, Design, and Technology from Georgetown University as well as an AB from Brown University. Learn more at www.ijeomanjaka.com.
In this interview, Njaka discusses her Fellows salon on ancestry and creative practice, as well as related work.
Ijeoma Njaka
Senior Program Associate for Equity-Centered Design / Inclusive Pedagogy Specialist
What drew you to Ethics Lab?
A friend of mine who was a graduate associate introduced me to Ethics Lab in 2019–2020, and I was later invited to a conversation about design justice in the winter of 2020. It was a really exciting discussion, and I was eager to stay involved afterward. As someone who is not a philosopher, I was quite pleased about the opportunity to be able to hangout with other folks who are really interested in ethics, with a more inclusive environment of those who haven’t studied ethics. I think that the more perspectives we have, the better, because it means that we’re creating more justice focused and equitable classrooms, spaces, etc.
What did the planning process look like?
Julie and Joel were essential in the planning process. We met three times before the salon, and the first two meetings I was blabbing out all my ideas to them, then we began to knit together something that was interesting. It was useful that I have attended a few salons, so I could figure out what questions to ask that are related to the projects I’m working on.
The questions were around the ways my family and ancestors—particularly my grandfather who was a professor—impact my work, and also about my personal connections to the anti-racism, equity, and inclusive teaching work I do at Georgetown—which I have personally been invested in and advocated for, as a student myself here.
We planned it with storytelling segments interspersed within, so that folks could get emotionally invested and interested, then follow along my journey and thought process.
You asked participants to share who their ‘Prince’ is. Why Prince for you?
I’m from Minnesota, but my parents are not: My mother is a Black woman from Alabama, and my father immigrated from Nigeria. So, I’ve grappled a lot with my identity, about what these things mean.
When I went to Nigeria for the first time in my late 20s, it was really weird meeting people speaking a language that my dad and family have been speaking for all time, and not being able to speak it myself. Somebody asked me if I only spoke English, but the word she used was “white.” I found that crazy — What does it mean to “speak white”? How does that shape my ideas and the way I think about the world? I had lived through this “white lens” and not the language that my ancestors spoke.
When I started listening to Prince as a college student, I was really excited that he was a Black man from Minnesota. I was able to make new memories about being a Black Minnesotan and claim an identity around something that felt tangible.
What about your familial and ancestral connections?
The second story was inspired by Sidney Clifton, who is a daughter of Lucille Clifton, who is a very prolific and well-regarded poet. Sidney was talking about her family legacy and the things that she wants to do with it, so I wondered what I could do with mine.
I’ve been very curious about my grandfather Elechukwu Njaka, who is my dad’s dad and a scholar. I never met him, but the stories about him in my family have been about him as a great academic man among other things. He helped start the Africana Studies department at the University of Maryland Baltimore. Here was somebody who tried to change the institution and to leave an impact on higher education; he had a vision for it and tried to manifest it. I feel like that’s what I’m trying to do as part of my work at Georgetown, so I inherited that interest.
I’m thinking about a project engaging with this family history, and the salon’s conversations were designed around how other people think about their family or background. How does that shape what they do at the institution?
This is a particularly interesting question because there’s a really clear connection to my work in anti-racism and diversity in education.
How did your time in higher education influence the salon?
When I was a graduate student at Georgetown—I started my masters program in 2017—I was frustrated by the lack of diversity. I was trying to do advocacy work, but it sort of fell short and came up against a wall. Then, I wondered if I could plant ideas in people’s heads because I’m really obsessed with the movie Inception. I wanted to see what kind of ripple effects could come out of the seeds I planted.
For example, I had a desk space at my graduate student job, so I started putting up art on the wall, including Frederick Douglass, the Obamas, and a magazine cover from the Vision and Justice Project.
I asked the Ethics Lab folks to think about the repercussions of how the seeds might grow into plants, and how we could nurture them.
What were some takeaways from the salon?
A question I had was about what happens after I plant these ideas in people’s minds. The salon affirmed my thoughts about teaching: The classroom is not a neutral space, and I definitely have goals for the course, but I can’t control how people engage with my ideas. It was nice to see engagement from other people about things that have been rattling around in my head. Lastly, I realized that storytelling can be a way in which I can communicate. It was rewarding to discuss how this could translate into a course or activity that is interesting for students.
What comes next for this work?
The predominant question for me is what my grandfather was like as a teacher in the classroom. I’m trying to figure out a way to capture that in a way that is interesting and shareable in a variety of forms. My next step is to think about what elements of my grandfather’s story I can learn from in concrete ways, especially as an educator. I also want to bring my own storytelling into the classroom as an exercise where people share their stories and ground their identities. I hope they find connections that they want to utilize in their own academic lives.
What’s something that’s inspiring you right now?
Something that’s inspiring me right now is the book Citizen by Claudia Rankine. I’m reading it now, and what I’m excited about as somebody who’s terrified of writing something long form is that it is a compilation of various things. She’s a poet and essayist, and she’s also doing some curating in the book. As someone who’s been muddling through how to say what I think I want to say, it is a really encouraging model for me.