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There is currently a dearth of research on the implications of the epistolary as a site for knowledge production. This paper aims to demystify the process of academic theorizing through the co-authors’ co-excavative epistolary method.

Through co-excavative epistolary practices, the co-authors’ relationship was deepened, the collective sense was made of Covid-19, and racial literacy-centered academic theorizing commenced. In the co-authors making meaning of their letter-writing data, they provide examples of and analyze their co-excavative letter-writing process.

The co-excavative epistolary method deepened the co-authors’ relationship to one another and improved their ability to produce useful and complicated knowledge.

The co-excavative epistolary exchanges mark a new site for academic theorizing and incite creative approaches to academic co-writing, as well as more transparency about the academic writing process in general.

Co-excavative methods disrupt traditional academic sites of knowledge production and engender space for relational intimacy.

The work introduces both a new method, co-excavative epistolary writing and a new rational framework, the critical dignity relational framework.

The purpose of this study is to explore the means, rationale, challenges and opportunities of shifting focus from anti-racist to pro-Black educational practice. The authors argue that while anti-racism is necessary, it is insufficient in addressing the deeply entrenched anti-Blackness in US society. The instructor and three student members of a graduate course on Black girlhoods reflect on their time together to better understand the process of developing a classroom specifically for Black students.

Through a process of collaborative autoethnography, the authors used their reflections as data to identify the practices that served to establish their space as pro-Black and consider how these practices may apply to other contexts.

The data presented indicate that co-construction, intentionality and care and love are integral to developing a pro-Black classroom. The implementation of these practices in the authors’ graduate course allowed the students to feel seen and affirmed, which contrasts with their previous experiences in higher education.

This paper introduces the concept of the pro-Black classroom space as a pedagogical transformation aimed at preserving Black lives. The authors’ insights demonstrate how concrete practices that not only constitute anti-racist practice, but further challenge anti-Black bias, help to dismantle structural and systemic inequities in academia.

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.

Lead is a well-established environmental contaminant that over the last 50 years has become recognized as a neurotoxin with its greatest concern for the developing child (i.e. both in-utero and postnatally). What is problematic is that children exposed to lead often come from lower socioeconomic status (SES), are largely Black communities and are further at increased risk for developing adverse childhood experiences (ACEs). The literature on ACEs had focused much on trauma, single parenting, child abuse, lack of finances and stress, etc., but has not considered the intersectionality of these ACEs as risk factors within environmental neurotoxic exposures such as lead poisoning. This is important as most low SES communities are Black. In particular, within the New York City Housing Authority (NYCHA), Black families have been neglected of proper lead-abatement to their apartments for nearly 70 years.

This is a viewpoint/perspective paper that examines the lived experiences of Black folxs in NYCHA through a Black critical theory (BlackCrit) and antiblackness framework pertaining to ACEs, and lead poisoning within the NYCHA system of New York City. This perspective paper draws upon the last three years of news reports, five decades of publicly available data sets from NYCHA and the comptroller to raise an awareness of how Black children are treated by NYCHA generation after generation which can be argued as a mass atrocity against NYCHA residents. Furthermore, the systematic and institutionalized racism and environmental injustices by NYCHA and the state can also be considered as a crime against humanity. As such, BlackCrit could help to position awareness, advocacy and knowledge about Black folxs residing in NYCHA to achieve fair, safe and affordable public housing to experience Black joy across future generations.

Thus, rather than civic and state government response efforts focusing their full attention and resources to serving and supporting individuals affected by ACEs they should equally consider the environments in which Black people live and also allocate funds proportionally to address these areas often overlooked. Moreover, proportions of these funds should be redirected especially to lead-abatement and removal of known sources of lead exposures, evaluation of suspected sources of lead exposures (i.e. drinking water, baby food and formula, children’s juice and cereal products, superfund and other waste sites, electronic recycling plants, etc.) and accompanied by all affected children undergoing full and comprehensive neuropsychological testing and follow up studies paid for by the state. The goal should have two fundamental objectives: (1) accepting accountability for failing to address these preventable neuropsychological issues directly affecting Black children generation after generation and (2) offering the proper waived or reimbursable supports and resources to help Black children sustain the best quality of life (QOL) trajectory possible when diagnosed with lead poisoning.

The manuscript is a viewpoint/perspective paper grounded in BlackCrit and an antiblackness framework. There are ample public news reports and public data available from NYCHA on these matters over the last three years. However, the scope of this paper was not to delve too deep into these numbers per se, but rather to address the concerns leading up to and arguably contributing to, at least in part, to these numbers of lead-exposed Black children in NYCHA. Lead poisoning has never been considered as an ACE and its relationship to mass atrocity research is novel which may pave a new avenue for research of this kind through the utility of BlackCrit and antiblackness framework to support and advocate for change so that Black children can be provided with a basic human right of safe housing and experience Black joy.

BlackCrit has not been used in the context of lead poisoning research. Mostly individuals and families of middle- and low-income have been studied in the context of poverty and lead poisoning. However, many people who live in poverty, in public housing, within New York are Black. Thus, Black children are generation after generation exposed to unaddressed lead-abatement and it appears that now more than ever BlackCrit should become the framework for how this work should be discussed in the literature to raise awareness to state governments regarding Black folx's persistent lead poisoning, NYCHA's neglect and mass atrocity research as a long overdue advocacy effort to bring the necessary voice, authentic narrative, and actual knowledge of the lived experiences of Black families in NYCHA with lead poisoning.

The goal of this viewpoint/perspective paper should have two fundamental objectives (1) NYCHA and New York State accepting accountability for failing to address these preventable lead poisoning issues directly affecting Black children; and (2) offering the proper support and resources to help Black children sustain the best QOL trajectory possible when diagnosed with lead poisoning.

Lead poisoning research has never been approached through a mass atrocity and BlackCrit framework and perspective. This is the first report on bridging these fields within the context of NYCHA public housing neglect of lead-abatement and continued poisoning of current and future generations of Black children. This failure of NYCHA lead-abatement contributes annually to economic loss in New York State for many years to come which could be entirely avoided.

Key to successfully addressing the ongoing transitions being experienced in the care home sector is a transformation of the workforce. This is required in order to respond appropriately to the increasing dependency of older people moving into care homes. This article considers the policy framework surrounding the provision of care services in England and reviews the relevant research into the workforce and the changes needed if the sector is to meet the needs of vulnerable older people living in care homes. Building on present policy and practice, consideration is given to how this change could be achieved.

Comics and graphic novels can disrupt traditional texts by challenging the “worship of the written word” (Torres, 2019), a feature of white supremacy that perpetuates textual hierarchies within educational spaces. Giving all of our students access to contemporary literature that centers Black youth perspectives is not only important in decolonizing literature education but also in presenting a holistic view of Black childhood. They can be used in the classroom as subjects to challenge stereotypical depictions by centering experiences, ideas, and concepts that are often marginalized in traditional curriculum. Within this chapter, we focus on comics and graphic novels as tools to enact students’ multiliteracies and to analyze visual stories depicting BlackBoy adolescence, using the frameworks of BlackBoy Crit Pedagogy (Bryan, 2022), an equity framework that interrogates the interdisciplinary ways that Black boy students' literacy learning can be formed through the teaching and learning of Blackness, maleness, and the schooling experiences of Black boys. We utilize this framework to analyze the use of diverse comics and graphic novels to facilitate critical conversations of bringing inclusive visual texts into the classroom. We invite practitioners to reimagine curricular ideas and content centered on empowerment and Black boy adolescence and how those ideas are presented to youth through a variety of visual narratives.

Entrepreneurship is promoted as a solution to high rates of youth unemployment around the world and especially in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA). This paper investigates the potential for youth entrepreneurship to alleviate unemployment, focusing on Egypt, Jordan and Tunisia.

The authors examine who entrepreneurs are (in comparison to the unemployed), using multinomial logit models. The authors compare entrepreneurs' and wage workers' working conditions and earnings. They exploit panel data to assess earnings and occupational dynamics. They specifically use the Labor Market Panel Surveys of 2012 (Egypt), 2016 (Jordan), and 2014 (Tunisia), along with previous waves.

The authors find that entrepreneurs are the opposite of the unemployed in MENA. The unemployed are disproportionately young, educated and women. Entrepreneurs are older, less educated and primarily men. Entrepreneurship does not generally lead to higher earnings and does have fewer benefits.

Promoting youth entrepreneurship is not only unlikely to be successful in reducing youth unemployment in MENA, but also, if successful, may even be harmful to youth.

This study investigated undergraduate preparation of English as a Second Language (ESL) students through English for Academic Purposes courses, in relation to recipient subject lecturers’ expectations. Qualitative data were gathered from 36 faculty teaching ESL undergraduates in nine countries. A two-phase approach included seeking discursive responses to questionnaires from faculty and information about curricula. Outcomes highlighted difficulties with material selection for EAP tutors. Tutors chose between ‘general interest’ or ‘discipline-specific’ material, but reported that the former could lead to oversimplification or discipline irrelevance, while the latter usually requires some specialized subject knowledge which may be beyond tutors’ remit. Addressing this, it is suggested that articles about EAP-related topics can form the subject matter of EAP courses with significant benefits. In particular, they can simultaneously provide students with models of academic writing, while the content reinforces skills needed for successful study.

The purpose of this paper is to mine Black mothers’ stories to highlight the critical literacy work they do for themselves and their daughters, to change stereotypic views of them, and to illuminate how they negotiate intersectional structures such as gender, sexuality, race and class practice, to sustain and uplift them.

To generate a mother’s narrative, the author asked the following research question: What do you think Black girls need in an afterschool club or in education, or in general?

The author found that the mother’s narrative could be productively contextualized within a reproductive justice framework which gave insights into the mother’s experiences of multiple and simultaneous oppressions which aligned with her social identities with regard to race, class, gender and sexuality. These experiences in turn informed her critical literacies of Black motherhood and girlhood. The author found the system of white heteropatriarchal capitalism, through the privatization of public goods and the lack of adequate social services penalizes Black working mothers and obstructs their ability to mother their children adequately.

Critical literacies of Black motherhood and girlhood should be harnessed for holistic approaches to the literacy education of Black girls, with a focus on improving their life outcomes, enhancing potential for them to realize their gifts, and ending the many forms of violence against them.

Centering the voices of Black mothers as critical literacy education has the potential to thwart oppressive reproductive politics and practices and promote social justice.