In this talk, Dr. Baker-Bell will discuss the history of Black Language education, share counter-stories from Black students about how they navigate and negotiate their linguistic and racial identities across multiple contexts, and she will introduce a new way forward through Antiracist Black Language Pedagogy, a pedagogical approach that intentionally and unapologetically centers the linguistic, cultural, racial, intellectual, and self-confidence needs of Black students. This presentation will reflect ideas from Dr. Baker-Bell’s forthcoming book, Linguistic Justice: Black Language, Literacy, Identity, and Pedagogy, which will be published in May 2020 with Routledge. 

Bio: Dr. April Baker-Bell is an Assistant Professor of Language, Literacy, and English Education in the Department of English and African American and African Studies Department at Michigan State University. Her research interrogates the intersections of sociolinguistics, anti-black racism, and anti-racist pedagogies. As a transdisciplinary teacher-scholar-activist, Baker-Bell’s research draws from and makes contributions to the fields of English Education, Rhetoric & Composition, Literacy Studies, and Racio-linguistics.  Dr. Baker-Bell is the recipient of many prestigious awards and fellowships, including the 2018 AERA Language and Social Processes Early Career Scholar Award, the Literacy Research Association’s STAR fellowship, and the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE) Cultivating New Voices Among Scholars of Color fellowship. Dr. Baker-Bell’s research has been published in the English Education journal, the Journal of Literacy Research (JLR), the Journal of International Review of Qualitative Research, and Theory into Practice. In addition to her language research, Baker-Bell’s scholarly interests include: anti-racist writing pedagogies, critical media literacies, Black feminist-womanist storytelling, and academic mentoring, with an emphasis on early career women of color and graduate students.

Check out this short video to learn more about Dr. Baker-Bell and her current research: https://youtu.be/BmbzPzip4Fs

Dr. Baker-Bell will hold a separate Zoom meeting with Graduate students from 1:00pm to 1:45pm -- a discussion about research and her career in the academy. Register for small group student session here: https://forms.gle/JhwPmNGzAybh5Q8D7