Imagining Beyond the Epistemes, Structures, and Practices of Schooling: Black Intergenerational and Interdisciplinary Abolitionist Perspectives

Session Type: Symposium

Abstract

This symposium brings together an intergenerational cadre of Black researchers to explore the tensions and possibilities inherent in educational abolitionist praxis—or the merging of theory and practice. To do this, the authors bring together methods and perspectives from the fields of Black Studies, Linguistics, and Political Science, among others. The symposium will open with a theoretical presentation of Black abolition theory within radical abolition studies, a framework that seeks to interrogate the epistemes of domination that undergird the practices of school suffering abolition seeks to abolish. The following presentations conceptually and empirically explore how Black students and their teachers are making sense of the abolitionist work toward dismantling epistemes, structures, and practices of domination as they exist in schools.

Sub Unit

• Division G - Social Context of Education / Division G - Section 5: Inquiry, Transformation, and Communities

Chair

• Gene F. McAdoo, University of California - Los Angeles

Papers

• Black Abolition Theory Within Radical Abolition Studies: An Introduction - Kia Turner, Stanford University; Darion A. Wallace, Stanford University

• “Holding ___ Accountable” : Laying the Groundwork for Accountability Culture in Secondary Education - Mikaela Belle Martin, University of Pennsylvania; Zoria Thomas, Florida A&M University

• Bounded Liberation: Black Educators’ Strategic Deference and Defiance in the White Institutional Space - Ana Vasan, University of Chicago

• We Can’t Talk About Abolition Without Talking About Adultism - Maliatu Jalloh, Poly Prep High School; Kadijatu Barry; Johnathan Evelyn; Maya Park, Graduate Center - CUNY

Discussant

• Justin A. Coles, University of Massachusetts - Amherst