(Re)membering: Storying Through the Weaponization of Curriculum and Memory

• In Event: AERA Roundtable Session Saturday 7:45 am
  In Roundtable Session: Curriculum as Ceremony: Storying Memory, Resistance, and Liberatory Futures

Abstract

This study explores (re)membering as counter-curriculum in an era marked by anti-CRT/DEI policies and widespread curricular repression. Grounded in Toliver’s (2022) Endarkened Storywork and Givens’ (2021) fugitive pedagogy, we examine how the Memphis 13 Curriculum Project mobilizes storying as collective resistance. Drawing from stories shared during interviews with community educators, professional development sessions and community forums, we illustrate how (re)membering becomes a tool for reclaiming erased histories and imagining liberatory futures. In refusing curricular erasure, participants enact a pedagogy rooted in recovery, resistance, and reparative healing. (Re)membering, we argue, offers a critical curricular intervention that refuses silence and centers Black educational memory as a site of political clarity and collective possibility.

Authors

• Gina English Tillis, The University of Memphis

• Anna Falkner, University of Memphis

• Crystal Cook, University of Memphis