Contributors
Jane Bean-Folkes
Jane
Bean-Folkes is a researcher and
practitioner in the department of Language, Literacy & Special
Education at
Rowan University. She spends her days working in K-8 classrooms with
students,
teachers, and administrators from diverse backgrounds in high-poverty
areas of
New York City and across the United States. Her work is based on a deep
knowledge of reading, writing, listening, speaking, and language study
standards in order to plan instruction that meets the needs of all
learners.
Her other publications include “The Why Behind Teacher Research”
(Childhood Education, 2011) and “Culturally Diverse Children’s
Books for Your Classroom Library” (NCTE, School Talk, 2011).
Shanesha R. F. Brooks-Tatum (Co-Editor)
Shanesha
R. F. Brooks-Tatum is postdoctoral
research and instruction fellow at the Atlanta University
Center
Robert W. Woodruff Library. The Holy Hip-Hop Movement: Negotiating
Religious
and Secular Politics in Atlanta and Detroit, her book-in-progress,
examines
sacred-secular tensions and artistic techniques in Christian hip-hop
and
spoken-word performance poetry. Her teaching and research interests
include
Black popular culture, women’s and gender studies, U.S. and Black
literature, Black religion and spirituality, and performance studies.
She has
published works on Christian hip-hop, spoken-word poetry, and Black
popular
culture, and is an alumna of the University of California, Berkeley and
the
University of Michigan, Ann Arbor.
Jamal R. Burke
Jamal R. Burke was born in
Southfield,
Michigan and raised in Detroit. He is a recent graduate of Wayne State
University, earning a bachelor’s degree in criminal justice. A recent
transplant to Washington, D.C., his post-graduation plans include
joining the
military and writing a screenplay.
Gregory L. Caldwell
Gregory L. Caldwell is a Ph.D.
candidate in
the History of Consciousness Program at University of California, Santa
Cruz.
His research is focused on how processes of subject formation among
African
Americans—for both the social and political subject–have been
influenced by enslavement, shifts in geography, and the emergence of
the
prison-industrial complex. He is particularly interested in the African
American–Black radical tradition and how that tradition takes form in
the
post–civil rights era.
Shawn Anthony Christian
Shawn
Anthony Christian is
associate professor of
English, African American studies, and American studies at
Wheaton
College in Norton, Massachusetts, where he also directs the Summer
Institute
for Literary and Cultural Studies (SILCS). In addition to publications
on the
Harlem Renaissance and James Baldwin, his current research focuses on
the
artistic collaborations of African American writers.
Alfred W. DeFreece, Jr.
Alfred
W. DeFreece, Jr. is
assistant professor of
sociology at Roosevelt Chicago. University in Chicago. He holds a B.A.
from
Hunter College, City University of New York, and earned his Ph.D. in
sociology
from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor in spring 2011. Specializing
in
race, youth cultural production, and urban education, he teaches
courses on
race and ethnicity, research methods, sociology of education, and urban
sociology. His research interests include youth development,
qualitative
methods, racial ideology, and the philosophy and practice of
place-based
education. He is on the advisory board for the Mansfield Institute for
Social
Justice and Transformation at Roosevelt, and serves as a co-founding
member of
the Boggs Educational Center in Detroit, Michigan.
Keisha L. Green
Keisha L. Green
earned her Ph.D. in educational
studies at
Emory University, where she specialized in literacy,
language, and culture. Currently, she is Presidential Postdoctoral
Fellow at
Rutgers University in the Graduate School of Education. Her most recent
study
focused on the intersection of youth radio, literacy, and civic
engagement.
Drawing on her interest in arts and activism, youth culture, and the
school-to-prison pipeline, Keisha is the author of “Our Lyrics Will Not
Be on Lockdown: An Arts Collective’s Response to an Incarceration
Nation,” which documents the work of Blackout Arts Collective. She is
currently writing an autoethnographic essay about her concept of
double-dutch
methodology to describe shifting researcher positionalities for a
volume on
humanizing qualitative research.
Marcelle M. Haddix
Marcelle M. Haddix is assistant professor
of English education
in the Language Arts Center at Syracuse
University. Her
scholarly interests center on the study of literacy, language, and
culture in
the context of K–12 and teacher education. Her work has been featured
in
Research in the Teaching of English, Language and Education, and the
Journal of
Adolescent and Adult Literacy. She was awarded the 2010 Promising
Researcher
Award by the National Council of Teachers of English, as well as the
2011 AERA
Language and Social Processes SIG Early Career Award.
Marc Lamont Hill
Marc Lamont
Hill is one of the leading hip-hop
generation
intellectuals in the country. Dr. Hill has lectured widely and
provides
regular commentary for media outlets such as NPR, Washington Post,
Essence
magazine, and the New York Times. He is the host of the nationally
syndicated
television show Our World With Black Enterprise. He also provides
regular
commentary for CNN, MSNBC, and Fox News Channel, where he was a
political
contributor and regular guest on The O’Reilly Factor. An award-winning
writer, Dr. Hill is a columnist and editor-at-large for the
Philadelphia Daily
News. Since 2009, Dr. Hill has been on the faculty of Columbia
University as
associate professor of education at Teachers College. He also holds an
affiliated faculty appointment in African American Studies at the
Institute for
Research in African American Studies at the same institution.
Zandra L. Jordan
Zandra
L. Jordan is assistant professor of rhetoric and composition at
Spelman College. A recipient of the National Council of Teachers of
English’s Early Career Educator of Color Leadership Award, she
coordinates First-Year Composition, co-directs Spelman’s electronic
portfolio initiative (SpEl.Folio), and co-convenes the Ida B.
Wells-Barnett
Collaborative, a group of faculty across the disciplines who promote
interdisciplinary teaching and learning. Dr. Jordan regularly teaches
courses
in composition, argumentation, critical studies in English, and
ethnographic
writing (an original course cross-listed in the Departments of
Sociology and
Anthropology). Her research focuses on African American language,
literacies
and rhetoric in college writing, and the Black church. She presents
annually at
writing conferences, conducts faculty workshops on e-portfolios and, as
an
ordained minister, preaches for worship services and special occasions.
Karen Keaton Jackson
Karen
Keaton Jackson is
associate professor of
English at North Carolina Central University in Durham, North
Carolina, where she teaches a variety of undergraduate and graduate
composition
courses and directs the Writing Studio and University Writing Program.
She
received her B.S. in English secondary education from Hampton
University in
Virginia and her M.A. and Ph.D. in English composition and rhetoric
from Wayne
State University in Detroit, Michigan. Her research interests include
literacy,
race, and identity and how they intertwine in the urban writing
classroom. From
2007 to 2008 she served on the executive board of the International
Writing
Center Association, and from 2006 to 2010 she served on the executive
board for
the Southeastern Writing Center Association. Her publications include a
co-edited collection entitled Closing the Gap: English Educators
Address the
Tensions Between Teacher Preparation and Teaching Writing in Secondary
Schools.
Kafi Damali Kumasi
Kafi Damali
Kumasi is
assistant professor at Wayne
State University’s School of Library and Information
Science. As a former urban school teacher and librarian, Kumasi’s
scholarly interests are broadly situated around issues of adolescent
literacy,
school librarianship, and urban studies. Most recently, Kumasi has been
instrumental in bringing the school’s Certificate in Urban Libraries to
fruition, and developed a class on social and cultural competencies for
library
and information professionals.
Zeus Leonardo
Zeus
Leonardo is associate professor in social and cultural
studies in affiliated education and affiliated faculty of the Critical
Theory
Designated Emphasis at the University of California, Berkeley. Leonardo
has
published several dozen articles and book chapters on race and social
theory.
He is the author of Ideology, Discourse, and School Reform, editor of
Critical
Pedagogy and Race, and co-editor of Charting New Terrains of
Chicano(a)/Latino(a) Education. His articles have appeared in
Educational
Researcher; Race Ethnicity & Education and Critical Sociology,
engaging
debates around racial contestation and education within late
capitalism. His
recent books are Race, Whiteness, and Education and the Handbook of
Cultural
Politics and Education, and the forthcoming books, Critical Frameworks
on Race
and Education and Racism. Leonardo’s current research interests involve
the study of ideologies and discourses in education.
Kya Mangrum
Kya
Mangrum is a doctoral candidate at the University of
Michigan, Ann Arbor. Her research explores the relationship
between
media, memory, and narrative in representations of the slave past.
Gloria B. Mills
Gloria B.
Mills is a retired educator who spent over 35 years in the field of
education.
During her extensive career, she taught preschool, elementary, middle,
and high
school, as well as adult and community education and undergraduate
college and
university students. She received a bachelor’s degree in English and
elementary education and a master’s degree in library science from
Wayne
State University. She spent ten years with the State Department of
Education
where she was responsible for teacher professional development and
adult
workplace literacy and volunteer tutor training. She developed
curriculum for
displaced homemakers, teen moms, laid-off auto workers, among many
others. She
also developed curriculum for parenting as well as child development
courses.
Jonnie Perryman-Hamilton
Jonnie
Perryman-Hamilton is a pediatric nurse
practitioner currently employed by St. John Providence
Community
Health in Detroit, Michigan, at K–8 public schools. She has a diploma
in
nursing from Providence Hospital Contributors Reading African American
Experiences in the Obama Era 271 School of Nursing, a bachelor’s of
science in nursing, and a master’s degree in health service
administration from the University of Detroit, and is currently a
candidate for
the doctorate in nursing practice at Oakland University. She is a
member of
Sigma Theta Tau International Honor Society of Nursing in Detroit,
Michigan,
the National Black Nurses Association, Chi Eta Phi Sorority, Inc., and
Delta
Sigma Theta Sorority, Inc. Her awards include Detroit Free Press Nurse
of the
Year, Advanced Practice Nurse of the Year from National Black Nurses
Association, and Hometown Health Hero from the Michigan Department of
Community
Health, among others. She is active in the community, serving on many
non-profit corporation boards.
Dale Rich (Photographer)
Dale Rich has spent over 40 years as a
photojournalist, activist, researcher, and genealogist. He has
researched and
developed 15 television documentaries, including three that won Emmy
awards.
The subjects of these films include Blacks in the military, Blacks and
the
labor movement, Blacks in medicine, entertainment and music, and the
judicial
system. As a photojournalist, he has chronicled Black life in the city
of
Detroit as well as many state and national events. His photographs have
appeared in the New York Times, the Detroit News, the Michigan
Chronicle, the
Michigan Citizen, and Tribe magazine. Dale has a collection of several
thousand
of his photographs available for research at the Walter P. Reuther
Library of
Labor and Urban Affairs at the Wayne State University Archives.
Ebony Elizabeth Thomas (Co-Editor)
Ebony
Elizabeth Thomas is assistant professor of
reading, language, and literature in the division of Teacher
Education at Wayne State University. A former Detroit Public Schools
teacher,
her research and critical interests include the teaching of African
American
literatures in the Obama era, English language arts classroom
interaction,
adolescent literatures and literacies, and classroom discourse
analysis. She
has previously published her work in English Journal, The ALAN Review,
and
Sankofa: A Journal of African Children’s and Young Adult Literature, as
well as the books A Narrative Compass: Stories That Guide Women’s Lives
(University of Illinois Press, 2009) and The Pressures of Teaching
(Kaplan,
2010). She is an alumna of Florida A&M University, Wayne State
University,
and the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. She was selected as one of
seven
2011-2012 Wayne State University Humanities Center Faculty Fellows for
her
current project, “Multimodal "Post-Racial" Discourses of Slavery and
Freedom in Marilyn Nelson's Fortune's Bones: The Manumission Requiem."
Nutrena Watts Tate
Nutrena
Watts Tate is a pediatric nurse practitioner
with bachelor’s and master’s of science degrees from the
University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. Her areas of expertise include
pediatric
nursing and pediatric advanced practice nursing in school-based,
primary and
acute care, sickle cell anemia, and neurology. She is a nursing
doctoral
candidate at Wayne State University whose dissertation research
includes
factors affecting weight control behaviors in African American
adolescents. She
has teaching experience as an assistant professor and lecturer at the
University of Detroit Mercy, University of Michigan, Flint, and Wayne
State
University. Her honors include membership in Sigma Theta Tau
International
Honor Society of Nursing, the Ellen H. Toporek Award for Excellence in
Pediatric Nursing from the University of Michigan, and Nurse Educator
of the
Year from the National Black Nurses Association.