Jarvis Givens studies the History of African American Education (19th and 20th Century), Education and the African Diaspora, and Race and Urban Schooling. He is currently a PhD candidate in the African American Studies Department here at UC Berkeley, where he also received his B.S. in Business Administration in 2010.
The title of Jarvis’ dissertation is, “Culture, Curriculum, and Consciousness: Resurrecting the Educational Praxis of Dr. Carter G. Woodson.” This study details the life-long work of Carter G. Woodson as an educational theorist who influenced Black teachers on a national level through his textbooks and the institutions he built. In short, Woodson’s philosophy aimed to challenge the misrecognition of Black humanity facilitated by the prevailing ideology and structures in American education. He built on an inherited tradition that conceptualized education to be intimately tied to the largely project of Black freedom, and he developed a Black Educational Aesthetic that affirmed Black students’ racialized identities. Since the spring of 2011, Jarvis has also been working as a graduate student researcher through Berkeley’s Graduate School of Education, looking at Black student experiences of learning and identity development in a local school district.
Jarvis’s research has been funded by the Ford Foundation at both the pre-doctoral and dissertation level, and he has presented his work at conferences for the following: American Educational Research Association, Association for the Study of African American Life and History, National Council for Black Studies, History of Education Society, and Association for the Study of the Worldwide African Diaspora.
Selected Publications:
Jarvis Givens. “A Grammar for Black Education Beyond Borders: Exploring Technologies of Schooling in the African Diaspora.” (In press, Race Ethnicity and Education)
Jarvis Givens, Na’ilah Nasir, kihana ross, and Maxine McKinney de Royston. “Modeling Manhood: Reimagining Black Male Identities in School.” (In press, Anthropology & Education Quarterly)
Na’ilah Nasir, kihana ross, Maxine McKinney de Royston, Jarvis Givens, and Jalessa Bryant. 2013. “Dirt On My Record: Rethinking Discipline Practices in an All-Black, All-Male Alternative Class.” Harvard Educational Review, Vol. 83, No. 3, 489-512.
