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In this chapter, I reflect on the place of hope in activist criminology. Offering reflections from my own activist scholarship, this chapter draws out the ways in which hope structures and sustains our work across temporal frames and distinct modes of academic practice. This chapter develops a hopeful analysis of lineage, memory and resistance, reflecting on my participatory research with the Tamil community in London, and reflects on the revival of utopian thought in criminological scholarship. Hopeful imaginaries of an abolitionist future inform my scholar-activism with Reclaim Holloway – an abolitionist collective formed to influence the redevelopment of the Holloway prison site. I describe this future-oriented work before considering hope as a practice in the present, focusing on ‘pedagogies of hope’ as activist criminology in the classroom.

This study aims to use an autoethnography and ethnopoetic approach, interweaving personal narratives with scholarly research, to illuminate the profound and far-reaching consequences of fat phobia. Through a multifaceted lens, the lived experiences of a fat, black woman subjected to fat shaming, discrimination and societal prejudice are explored.

Ethnopoetic methodologies were used to showcase how creating critically compassionate dialogues on fat phobia can be used to create discursive spaces where fat folx are able to share their lived experiences, discuss how they are socialized into current beliefs and analyze the confluence of face, gender, fat and body positivity.

By artfully blending autoethnographic memories with poetical insight, the manuscript offers a poignant exploration of the emotional and psychological toll exacted upon those marginalized by fat bias.

The works aims to cultivate understanding and empathy, fostering a deeper awareness of the urgent need to challenge and dismantle fat phobia within educational institutions and society at large for the betterment of all individuals.

This study aims to explore the self-efficacy of social studies teacher education working with lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer (LGBTQ) preservice teachers, teaching LGBTQ content in their methods courses, and helping the preservice teachers they teach in those classes reduce their bias and prejudice against LGBTQ individuals.

This study, framed by self-efficacy theory, employs a mixed methods approach, qualitative semistructured interviews (n = 6) and quantitative (Likert-scale) survey questions (n = 174).

Participants reported high self-efficacy in working with LGBTQ students but showed decreased efficacy in teaching about LGBTQ content and helping reduce preservice teacher LGBTQ bias. Participants suggested that time in the curriculum, lack of knowledge about LGBTQ topics/issues, and the lack of institutional support are some of the leading barriers to LGBTQ inclusion in the social studies teacher preparation curriculum.

This is the only work conducted at this scale to examine social studies teacher educators' self-efficacy in LGBTQ-inclusion in methods courses. It has implications for increasing this self-efficacy to help make P-16 social studies education LGBTQ-inclusive.

The authors describe an original unit plan that draws from local and national concerns for truthful history education about the history of racial violence in the United States. The unit plan contextualizes one impetus for truth and reconciliation in a community with a history of anti-Black violence.

The participants partnered with the Equal Justice Initiative to pilot the unit in their district’s new African American History course. The unit drew on historical research and cultural memory to situate local history within a broader context of racism and violence.

The teachers identified eight goals for the unit so that students could understand racialized violence, acknowledge racism as the lived experience of many of their students, and participate in a collaborative learning environment with productive discussions. Speaking from their own experiences with racism, and creating opportunities for students to do the same, the teachers aided the community in voicing long-silenced memories.

Besides bridging some of the gaps between local, regional, and national histories, more research is needed to further examine historical trauma and its implications for both the past and present, in order to amplify and humanize experiences of racism. Additional research is a critical step in developing more thoughtful, empathic and holistic discussions of history and racism at the local level.

In the wake of the recent past, the authors have learned that teaching about the history of racial violence can be enhanced and empowered by reference to relevant current events. The resurgence of racially charged language and violence over the past few years makes this goal more urgent than ever. This unit gives practical guidance to teachers who face this challenge.

The sociopolitical reality of historical trauma and racism must be confronted, and proximity to key events is important in conveying the urgency of racial violence and the need for history education that addresses it. Teachers are making difficult decisions about their options for teaching about race, and they are understandably concerned about any perceived missteps. Nonetheless, inclusive, truthful history education is an appropriate and essential response to narratives of exclusion and silence as the authors help students to develop deliberative skills concerning difficult topics such as racial violence. Teachers and students, together, can do the crucial work of remembering.

The stripping away of narrative agency, identity and history can cover up stories about the stripping away of life and dignity. In the unit plan, the authors recognize truth and reconciliation—especially in the education of people who have relatively little exposure to topics of race and racism—as elemental to a restorative stance against racism.

Guided by an interest in how K-12 history teachers think about teaching race and related concepts in their courses, this paper explores the impact of a workshop put on by a history and civics professional learning organization that explicitly focused on historicizing race, racism and whiteness as a method for furthering teachers' understandings and commitments to antiracist teaching.

This paper draws on Critical Race Theory and Critical Whiteness Studies to make sense of the idea of history teaching as a racial project. Using surveys and a focus group discussion as data.

The authors found that, after the workshop, teachers reported increased comfort and interest in teaching more about race and racism, while fewer stated explicit commitments and plans to teach about whiteness. The authors also found that teachers' definitions of whiteness were largely framed as habits of mind and individual practices and situated within an educational sphere. Additionally teachers initially grappled with systemic interpretations of whiteness, yet ended up landing on identity as the starting point for critical history instruction.

These findings prompt the authors to discuss the continued challenges of linking whiteness with antiracist history teaching and also grapple with the affordances and pitfalls of identity as a starting point for race work.

This study aims to stimulate scholarly attention and practical application pertaining to individuals recognized as “Docs.” Through conducting a comprehensive analysis and acquiring a profound understanding of its many connotations, the objective is to shift attitudes and approaches concerning those who are seen to possess knowledge and value within society.

For this study, culturally relevant pedagogies were used as theoretical frameworks in addition to Sankofa and concept explication being used as methodologies.

The authors identified three themes: (1) honorary cultural practice-community nomination of “professahs” and “docs,” (2) (Black) robinhoods – cultural signifiers of distinction and relatability and (3) docs as catalysts – elevating community via consciousness, trust and mentorship as significant understandings of this distinction.

The study emphasizes the importance of “Docs” in both academic and social contexts. The role of “Docs” serves to alleviate potential conflicts of being a Black intellectual. This study further reveals the ways in which Docs align with, promote or possibly undermine established frameworks of thought. Finally, this study provides institutions with opportunities to consider strategies for the utilization, recognition and integration of individuals who are frequently overlooked or undervalued.

This paper aims to trace how Asian American girls engaged with civic learning in a virtual out-of-school literacy community featuring a curriculum of diverse literary texts.

The researcher used practitioner inquiry to construct a virtual literacy education community dedicated to the civic learning of Asian American girls.

The paper explores how participants mobilized critical practices of textual consumption and production rooted in their intersectional identities and embodied experiences to make meaning of the civic constraints and affordances of marginalized identities and to read and (re)design author choices for civic purposes. These findings – examples of youths’ critical civic meaning-making – indicate how they claimed space for Asian American civic girlhoods in literacy education.

This paper foregrounds how Asian American girls mobilize critical processes of text consumption and production to assert civic identities in literacy education – a significantly under-examined topic in literacy studies. This work has implications for how literacy practitioners and scholars can prioritize Asian American civic girlhoods through pedagogy and research.

This article aims to examine the manifestation of coloniality within social studies curricula and explore strategies for rejecting colonial paradigms through teaching praxis. The author presents a curriculum that unveils the narratives of Linnentown, a local Black community, to examine the impacts of colonial legacies on people's everyday lives.

Using the teaching and learning cycle framework, the author demonstrates the integration of sequenced embodied and multimodal activities. Furthermore, the author utilizes the concept of critical place-based education (CPBE) to demonstrate how critical pedagogies within the context of place can cultivate transformative learning experiences.

By guiding students to critically analyze the sociopolitical conditions of Linnentown residents, CPBE, paired with multimodal activities, helps challenge dominant narratives and empowers students to become agents of change in their local communities.

This curriculum fosters a nuanced understanding of structural oppression, empowers students to develop critical awareness and social agency and guides youth in confronting settler colonialism within and beyond their communities.

The purpose of this study is to analyze the first major federal education policy, the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965, and the most recent federal policy, the Every Student Succeeds Act of 2015, through a Black critical theory (BlackCrit) lens to understand better how these educational policies have served as antiblack projects. Furthermore, this study locates examples of educational Freedom Dreams in the past and present to imagine new possibilities in Black education.

By analyzing education policy documents and history through BlackCrit methods, the authors expose how education policy is inherently an antiblack project. Freedom Dreams catalyze possibilities for future education.

The data confirms that while these policies purport equity and accountability in education, they, in practice, exacerbate antiblackness through inequitably mandated standardized testing, distributed funding and policed schooling.

This paper applies BlackCrit analysis of education policy to reimagine Black educational possibilities.