Culture Wars in the Black Educational Landscape: An Exploration of Afrofuturism and Freedom Dreaming through a Social Justice Lens

Session Submission Type: Panel

Abstract

In this collaborative panel session, presenters will explore the experiences of Black students and educators past, present, and future as they co-create(d) strategies to thrive despite Black dispossession in schooling spaces through a social justice lens. The goal of this panel is to (re)member experiences of the past and present while (re)imagining the futures of Black people in education. Each presenter’s work contends with the multifocal culture wars at play in Black educational spaces, including but not limited to intergenerational dialects, political efforts to criminalize Black studies in the classroom, and the ways that teachers and students navigate anti-blackness in educational spaces. Moreover, this session will grapple with notions of Afrofuturism and freedom dreaming as methodologies for co-creating the teaching and learning spaces we desire. Finally, the presenters offer an array of Black womanist research methodologies in their papers, such as intergroup dialogue, arts-based research, kitchen table conversations, and Black memory work.

Sub Unit

• Social & Behavioral Science Research

Chair

• Shannon Laribo, The University of Massachusetts at Amherst

Discussant

• Justin Coles, University of Massachusetts, Amherst

Individual Presentations

• Sankofa: The Reclamation and Reconstruction of Black Memory Work Methods for Black Teachers in the South - Olivia McNeill, University of Massachusetts Amherst

• Distant Relatives: A Generational Examination of Black Girls' Experiences in Providence Public Schools - Princess E. Garrett, University of Massachusetts, Amherst

• Dreaming in COLOR and in RHYME: Poetry as Artistic Activism and Liberatory Praxis - Imani Wallace, The University of Massachusetts at Amherst