Teaching Against Empire Part 1: Skill Share

Session Submission Type: Skills- and Resource-Sharing Session

Abstract

Amidst the ongoing catastrophe of our contemporary moment, this Educators Alliance Caucus sponsored skill share panel explores practices, resources, and tactics that teachers and scholars use to teach against empire. Centering the knowledge of teachers from across the United States and Puerto Rico, this session interrogates what it means to teach in a moment of accelerated devolution. As a panel, we ask “What pedagogical practices support resistance? What tactics, inside the classroom and out, help to forge the possibility of a future that dismantles, evades, and subverts the imperialist, colonial structures of our contemporary moment? What methods make it possible to forge solidarity between disparate communities? And finally, how might teaching against empire allow us to begin imagining and enacting a future otherwise? From K-12 teachers to university professors, the session includes presenter-participants from a variety of backgrounds who will offer classroom strategies, community building exercises, teaching resources and other tangible tactics for teaching amidst and against empire.

Sub Unit

• Annual Meeting of the American Studies Association

Chairs

• Sarah Buckner, University of Missouri

• Sandra Soto

Panelists

• Jeffrey P. Melnick, University of Massachusetts Boston

• Marcia Watson-Vandiver, Towson University

• Jessica Lee Stovall, University of Wisconsin-Madison

• Tatiana M Taylor Cruz

• Paola Olivencia Valle

• Kevin Villanueva Gonzalez, UPR Mayagüez

Biographical Information

Tatiana M. Taylor Cruz has a BA in English with a focus on linguistics, a teaching certificate and an MA in English Education with an emphasis on bilingual education from the University of Puerto Rico at Mayagüez. Her research interests focus on understanding the language choices of neurodivergent students and how differentiated instruction affects the learning process of each individual in the classroom. She currently teaches English as a Second Language to students from various grade levels in a k-6 public school in Mayagüez, Puerto Rico, working in a student-centered environment where everyone can learn from diverse techniques in a safe and welcoming classroom setting.

Paola Olivencia Valle has a BA in English, focusing on linguistics with a minor in Writing and Communications and a teaching certification in English education from the University of Puerto Rico at Mayagüez (UPRM). She is currently pursuing an MA in English Education and a TESOL certification at UPRM and is also an instructor in the English department. Her research interests focus on educational justice and she is currently developing a thesis project employing oral history methodologies to collect and analyze personal narratives of students from public schools in Puerto Rico to uncover factors pertaining to educational equity and their educational pathways.

Kevin Villanueva González is an MA in English Education candidate and instructor in the Department of English at the University of Puerto Rico at Mayagüez (UPRM). He is also completing a TESOL certification at UPRM. He has a BA in Secondary English Education with a minor in Multimedia Technology at the University of Puerto Rico at Aguadilla. His current research project focuses on understanding how students learn best; aiming to enhance students' learning environment and experience in class. His thesis is titled “Student Engagement and Collaborative Language Learning Activities in a Grammar and Composition Course at UPRM”

Dr. Soto-Santiago is a Professor in the Department of English at the University of Puerto Rico at Mayagüez (UPRM). She completed her PhD in Language, Reading and Culture at the University of Arizona in Tucson. Dr. Soto-Santiago teaches ESL courses and graduate and undergraduate courses in Applied Linguistics, Education and Research Methods. She is the Co-coordinator of the Center for University Access (CUA) and Co-director of the Center for Research on Bilingualism and Learning (CeIBA), both at UPRM. Her research focuses on Social and Educational Justice, Linguistic Anthropology, Puerto Rican Transnationalism, Second Language Acquisition, and Translanguaging.

Dr. Jessica Lee Stovall is an Assistant Professor of African American Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison with affiliations with the Curriculum and Instruction and Education Policy Studies departments in the School of Education. Her research sits at the intersection of Black Studies and education, and her work is in loving partnership with Black community organizations. Her most recent research was in collaboration with the Black Teacher Project out of Oakland, CA, to explore how Black teachers create fugitive spaces to navigate and combat antiblackness at their respective school sites. She holds a B.S. in Secondary Education from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, a M.S. in Literature from Northwestern University, and a Ph.D. in Race, Inequality, and Language in Education (RILE) at Stanford University. Jessica is published in English Journal, Equity & Excellence in Education, Phi Delta Kappan, Journal of Negro Education, Philosophy of Education, and Race Ethnicity and Education, among others. Before beginning her doctoral studies, Jessica taught high school English for 11 years in the Chicagoland area.

Dr. Marcia (Marci) Watson-Vandiver is an Associate Professor of Education at Towson University in Baltimore County, Maryland. She received her B.S. in Middle Grades Education from Mercer University in Macon, Georgia. After her undergraduate studies, she worked for Atlanta Public Schools as an alternative middle school teacher and received her M.Ed. in Educational Policy and Leadership from Georgia State University. She later received her Ph.D. in Curriculum and Instruction (Urban Education) from the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. Marcia’s research interests explore various intersections of Black education, including: resistance pedagogy, decolonial studies, and emancipatory learning.

Jeff Melnick teaches American Studies at UMass Boston where, in recent years, he has also been vice president and communications director of the Faculty Staff Union. In addition to teaching classes on hip hop, popular music, and cultural history more generally, Melnick has also published two books on Black-Jewish relations, one on 9/11 and one on the Manson family. His current project is a study of Boston's various music scenes from the mid-1970s to the late 1990s