GSE Colloquium Series in History/Social Studies Education: Danielle Charlemagne

(Post)Diasporic Curriculum Inquiry: Refusing Linear Histories in Social Studies Education

How do students come to understand themselves through curriculum? This talk examines how social studies curriculum often represents Black experience through fixed, linear histories of the United States that flatten complex identities. Drawing from de/anticolonial research traditions, I introduce curriculum inquiry methods for analyzing and extending these representations. I demonstrate what diverse approaches to studying educational experience -- including material culture analysis, ethnopoetry, and speculative methods -- might reveal about how curriculum shapes diasporic identity. This work connects to broader conversations about the subjective nature of historical consciousness: how who we are informs the ways we read and make meaning of the past in our present toward more just futures. I conclude by illustrating what these methods offer to social studies teacher preparation.

Danielle I. J. Charlemagne, PhD, is a Limited-Term Assistant Professor of Social Studies Education at the University of Georgia. She examines how history curriculum shapes Black diasporic students' identity formation and civic consciousness, employing material culture analysis, ethnopoetry, and de-/anticolonial frameworks. Drawing on over a decade of teaching secondary social studies, she translates these inquiries into pedagogical tools to prepare teachers to design culturally responsive curricula through courses on social studies methods and curriculum inquiry.