Leaning into her own lived experiences as a woman, immigrant, and racialised early-career instructor, teaching in a U.S. university, the first author used self-study methods to develop understanding of an under-theorised area in higher education: decolonising international teacher selves, pedagogy, and a gen-ed curriculum. She critically engaged with her pedagogic assumptions, practices, biases, and behaviours, as well as the theoretical underpinnings and conceptual frameworks that shaped her thinking, being, and teaching, to probe the possibilities of disrupting white-centring and neoliberal literacies in her classrooms. She also harnessed critical friendship through a decolonial mentorship model with a senior professor and teacher educator, who serves as the second author. Self-study emerged as a valuable methodology to trace the disciplinary boundaries of whiteness, interrogate power, and undo self-colonisation. This article contributes to the literature and understanding about the tensions, complexities, paradoxes, and possibilities of designing decolonial, anti-racist futures in higher education, with a focus on decolonising English literacy studies in the United States.