Insurgent Social Studies

“Why and how social studies education has continued to fail to serve as a curriculum of humanity and justice for all children is laid bare by Insurgent Social Studies: Scholar-Educators Disrupting Erasure and Marginality. Neither natural nor inevitable, social studies that serves the status quo of white settler supremacy is always promoted by those who benefit from it. In this unapologetically insurgent book, the most important scholar-educators of our time name the beneficiaries of this system and guide us to take back the curriculum that has harmed our children and communities for far too long. Join the struggle. The time for insurgency is NOW!”

Sohyun An, Professor of Social Studies Education, Kennesaw State University

“The call for a more radical social studies has been clear since even before the field’s existence. Insurgent Social Studies is building from the radical tradition of scholars and teachers from historically and systemically excluded backgrounds who have used the classroom to challenge how humanity is defined. For the editors and authors of this book, they seek not for approval or permission from the social studies establishment, which for far too long has straddled the fence with those who want power and exhibit hegemony. The book forces us to rethink and reconsider what is social studies education. Insurgent outlines an ideological and pedagogical revolution with teachers, students, professors, and parents. The time is not to surrender or curtail from political pressure but to continue to do what is right for our children and citizens alike. Insurgent Social Studies will be a timeless classic that will influence social studies education for many years.”

LaGarrett J. King, Associate Professor, Social Studies Education Director, Center for K-12 Black History and Racial Literacy Education, University at Buffalo

“Insurgent Social Studies: Scholar-Educators Disrupting Erasure and Marginality is a powerful and timely volume on Critical Social Studies Education. The authors of this book provide a diverse assortment of chapters, all seeking to theorize, conceptualize and challenge majoritarian stories told about history education and social studies as a whole. This book is a must-read for all educators inside and outside the academy committed to insurgent pedagogy.”

Anthony Brown, Professor, Department of Curriculum and Instruction, and the Center for African and African American Studies, University of Texas, Austin

Introduction
We Won’t Wait Any Longer: An Introduction and Invitation to Insurgency for Social Studies
Natasha Hakimali Merchant, Sarah B. Shear, and Wayne Au

Chapter 1
Insurgence Must Be Red: Connecting Indigenous Studies and Social Studies Education for Anticolonial Praxis
The Turtle Island Social Studies Collective

Chapter 2
Solidarity Is a Verb: What the Black Lives Matter Movement Can Teach Social Studies About the Intersectional Fight Against Anti-Black Racism
Tiffany Mitchell Patterson

Chapter 3
The Audacity of Equality: Disrupting the Distortion of Asian America in Social Studies
Noreen Naseem Rodríguez and Esther June Kim

Chapter 4
“Existence is Resistance”: Palestine and Palestinians in Social Studies Education
H. Shatara

Chapter 5
Insurgente: A Familia in Conversation About Latinxs Voices in the Field of Social Studies
La Familia Aponte-Safe Tirado Díaz Beltrán Ender Busey Christ 

Natasha Hakimali Merchant

Natasha Hakimali Merchant is Assistant Professor of Social Studies and Multicultural Education at the University of Washington Bothell where she teaches courses in equity, critical diversity, and education. Natasha's research interests focus on how othered-bodies are taught in social studies curricula.

Sarah B. Shear

Dr. Sarah B. Shear is an Assistant Professor of Social Studies and Multicultural Education at the University of Washington-Bothell. She earned her doctorate in Learning, Teaching, and Curriculum from the University of Missouri in 2014 with concentrations in social studies education and Indigenous studies. Dr. Shear examines K-12 social studies curriculum within Indigenous contexts, as well as race/ism and settler colonialism in K-12 social studies teacher education, popular media, and qualitative methodologies. As a member of the Turtle Island Social Studies Collective, Dr. Shear is committed to collective action to combat oppression in education and academia. She and colleagues are published in Theory and Research in Social Education; Journal of Social Studies Research; Knowledge Cultures, Social Studies and the Young Learner; and Qualitative Inquiry. In addition, Dr. Shear co-edited (Re)Imagining Elementary Social Studies: A Controversial Issues Reader (2018) and Marking the Invisible: Articulating Whiteness in Social Studies Education (2020). Dr. Shear and colleagues have presented their collaborative work at the College and University Faculty Assembly of the National Council for the Social Studies (CUFA-NCSS), American Educational Research Association (AERA), International Congress of Qualitative Inquiry (ICQI), National Association for Multicultural Education (NAME), and Native American and Indigenous Studies Association (NAISA). These efforts have also been featured by the Zinn Project, Teaching Tolerance, Huffington Post, and several other media outlets. In addition, Dr. Shear has been a featured speaker at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian in Washington, D.C.

Wayne Au

A former public high school teacher, Wayne Au is a Professor in the School of Educational Studies and is currently serving as the Dean of Diversity & Equity for the University of Washington Bothell. He is a long-time editor for the social justice teaching magazine, Rethinking Schools, and his work focuses on both academic and public scholarship about high-stakes testing, charter schools, teaching for social justice, and anti-racist education. Recently, Dr. Au has been working in the Seattle area to support Black Lives Matter and Ethnic Studies in Seattle Schools and surrounding districts. His recent books include Rethinking Ethnic Studies (co-edited with Tolteka Cuahatin, Miguel Zavala, & Christine Sleeter, 2019), Teaching for Black Lives (co-edited with Dyan Watson and Jesse Hagopian, 2018), A Marxist Education (2018) and Reclaiming the Multicultural Roots of the U.S. Curriculum (coauthored with Anthony Brown and Dolores Calderon, 2016). He was honored with the UWB Distinguished Teaching Award in 2015, given the William H. Watkins award for scholar activism from the Society of Professors of Education in 2017, and was honored with the Distinguished K-12 Educational Leader Award from the Evergreen State College MiT program in 2019.