Black Boys Dream of Love and Justice

Session Type: Symposium

Abstract

Research continues to highlight the need for critical care and love in education to ameliorate the consequences of the education debt. Yet ample room remains for deeper examinations of how Black boys (re)imagine, articulate, and navigate notions of love. This session brings together theoretical and empirical work that excavates and highlights Black male youth’s experiences with love and critical caring. The papers in this session will focus on the enmeshed layers of personhood and pedagogy that constitute love of, for, and by Black boys. By critically elucidating love-based conceptions and experiences of marginalized boyhood, this session contributes to the urgent work of illuminating possibilities for equitable educational experiences at the intersection of gender, sexuality, spatiality, and racial justice.

Sub Unit

• Division G - Social Context of Education / Division G - Section 2: Differences and Intersectionalities

Chair

• Tadashi Dozono, California State University - Channel Islands

Papers

• For the Love of Black Boys: A Framework for (Re)imaginative and Liberatory Schools for Children - Joseph Derrick Nelson, Swarthmore College

• They, Too, Love: Black Boyhood Love-Work as Liberatory Learning and Praxis in Schools - Aukeem A. Ballard, University of California - Berkeley

• “No Sense of Love”: Hook-Up Apps and the Search for Black Queer Male Intimacy - Ed Brockenbrough, University of Pennsylvania

• Black Queer Male Students and Educational Desire in Community Programs - Lance Trevor McCready, University of Toronto - OISE

Discussant

• Justin A. Coles, University of Massachusetts - Amherst