2024 R.W.B. Jackson Lecture
Professor Jarvis R. Givens on Black Reconstructions: Race, Educational History, and the Problem of the Archive
Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, University of Toronto
Library
252 Bloor Street West
Toronto ON M5S 1V6
Canada
Please join us for OISE's annual R.W.B. Jackson Lecture on April 17.
We are delighted to welcome Jarvis R. Givens, a distinguished Professor of Education and African and African American Studies at Harvard University, as our special guest for this year's event.
As an interdisciplinary historian, Professor Givens' research falls at the intersection of the history of American education, 19th and 20th century African American history, and critical theories of race and schooling.
His emerging research is developing in two distinct directions. The first centers on interrogating silences in the archives of Black educational history and exploring possibilities for expanding this archive by building on new approaches in digital humanities. Secondly, he is exploring lessons to be gleaned from the history of Black teacher associations in support of contemporary efforts to recruit and retain African American educators.
Givens' work explores themes of education, power, and resistance contextually, beyond rigid frames that limit where we look for meaningful experiences of teaching and learning. His work is committed to clarifying how persecution has impacted the lives of black people (and other oppressed communities) in school and society, while also attending to how these communities have used education and culture, subversively, to seek out lives that transcend their suffering.
The reception will begin at 5:30 p.m., followed by Professor Given's lecture at 6:30 p.m., and a closing Q&A.
Don't miss what promises to be an inspired and stimulating evening.
About the Speaker
Jarvis R. Givens is an assistant professor at the Harvard Graduate School of Education and a faculty affiliate in the Department of African and African American Studies at Harvard University. He specializes in the history of education, African American history, and theories of race and power in education. His first book, Fugitive Pedagogy: Carter G. Woodson and the Art of Black Teaching, was published in 2021, and won the 2022 Book Prize for the Association for the Study of African American Life and History, as well as the 2022 Outstanding Book Award for the American Educational Research Association. Professor Givens is currently building the Black Teacher Archive, an online portal that will house digitized records documenting the more than 100-year history of “Colored Teachers Associations.”