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CICCS November Newsletter

For those of you in the throes of the end-of-semester slog, I hope you see some light at the end of the tunnel.  If you are swimming along relatively unscathed, I hope you can continue to do so for the foreseeable future.  For all the rest somewhere in-between, I send positive vibes regardless of where you find yourself. 

As you may have heard, AERA will be in hybrid format next year.  Details are still being worked out, but the current SIG leadership will do our best to make sure our sessions run as smoothly as possible.  I plan to attend the conference in person, so our business meeting should have an in-person element. 

I’m pleased to report that we have a very strong slate of candidates for the next round of SIG officers.  First, thanks to our nominations chair, Whitney Roach, for leading this process.  Thanks to all the candidates for running.  Regardless of the outcome, the SIG is in good hands moving forward.  When the time comes, please vote in the AERA election.  Below is some information about each candidate. 

Also below is information about our annual rewards and the nomination process.  Please consider nominating yourself or others for these awards. 

Finally, see both below and attached for various CFPs and job postings. 

All the best,

Gabe


Candidates for CICCS SIG Officers

 

Chair:

Reagan Patrick Mitchell, University of North Carolina School of the Arts (UNCSA)

Reagan P. Mitchell, a Nashville, Tennessee native, received his/their Bachelors of Music from Middle Tennessee State University, his/their Masters of Music from the University of Northern Colorado, his/their Educational Specialist degree from Louisiana State University, and his/their Doctor of Philosophy from Louisiana State University. Mitchell’s formal training and personal passions directly challenge the current dominant educational paradigms overemphasizing the significance of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) areas to the determinant of the arts and humanities. 

Kirsten Robbins, Ball State University

Kirsten Robbins is an assistant professor of curriculum and instruction of elementary education at Ball State University. Her work, based in material feminism, has been published in a variety of journals, including the Journal of Curriculum Theorizing and the Journal of Curriculum and Pedagogy. In 2017, a paper from her dissertation won the Bergamo Curriculum Conference Graduate Student Paper Award. She has been a member of Division B and the CICCS SIG for more than five years and has presented at AERA in both the division and the SIG.

Treasurer:

Alycia Elfreich, Indiana University

Alycia Elfreich was a secondary social studies teacher in urban public schools for a decade.  She received her Ph.D. in Urban Education Studies from Indiana University—IUPUI. She is currently a professor in the department of Curriculum and Instruction at Indiana University Bloomington. Her work examines justice-oriented curriculum and pedagogy in teacher education and K-12 contexts that focus on issues of equity and culturally responsive & sustaining pedagogies within the secondary curriculum.  Further, her professional work is community oriented, has practical implications, and requires developing strong partnerships with K-12 schools and the communities they serve.  Most recently, her research explores the integration of an interdisciplinary and collaborative arts-based curriculum as an emergent strategy to better understand how critical theory informs secondary curriculum development and pedagogical practices with pre-service teachers.

Sarah E. Truman, University of Melbourne

Sarah E. Truman is a Senior Research Fellow at University of Melbourne where she researches English literary education, literacies, and speculative fiction. In addition to research in literary education and literacies, Truman is co-director of the international research-creation project WalkingLab. Truman’s latest monograph is  Feminist Speculations and the Practice of Research-Creation: Writing Pedagogies and Intertextual Affects (Routledge, 2021). Her projects and publications are detailed at www.sarahetruman.com

Secretary

Mark Helmsing, George Mason University 

Dr. Mark Helmsing is an assistant professor at George Mason University, where he teaches graduate courses in curriculum theory, social studies education, teacher education, and teaching with media and popular culture. He is also a faculty member of the Reconciling Societal Divisions and Memories Lab in the Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter School for Peace and Conflict Resolution at George Mason. His scholarship applies methods and theories from historical theory, affect theory, and folkloristics to examine how we feel about the past and how the past makes us feel. His work has also included international experiences with students in Germany and Poland to study how people express historical attachments to the Holocaust and in Cyprus to study Greek-Cypriot and Turkish-Cypriot historical attachments across borders. In 2019 he worked with colleagues to establish the Death Collective, a research group of scholars across universities who study how we learn from death, grief, and the ghosts of our past. Within AERA, he serves as the Communications Chair for the Social Studies Education Research SIG and the Section 3 Program Co-Chair for Division B: Curriculum Studies. A member of the CICCS SIG for over the past decade, he is eager to serve and grow our SIG and help make connections between the work of our SIG and other groups within and outside AERA.

Annie Daly, The University of Texas at Arlington

Annie is an Assistant Professor of Literacy Studies in the Department of Curriculum and Instruction in the College of Education at the University of Texas at Arlington. Prior to earning her Ph.D. at the University of Texas at Austin, Annie was a classroom teacher for seven years and served students from linguistically and racially minoritized backgrounds. Annie’s current research examines how elementary teachers and students start and sustain conversations about race, racism, and antiracism through shared book readings and discussion of texts. In both research and teaching, Annie draws on critical theories of race and discourse to destabilize dominant racial ideologies that are naturalized through everyday classroom talk, curriculum design, and instruction. Annie's work has been published in the Journal of Literacy Research, Teaching and Teacher Education, Literacy Research: Theory, Method, and Practice and Texas Education Review. She is an active member in multiple professional organizations including the American Education Research Association (AERA) and is the recipient of AERA Division K’s Teaching and Teacher Education Equity and Inclusion Committee Award. 

Annie brings experience to the Critical Issues in Curriculum and Cultural Studies (CICCS) Special Interest Group (SIG) as a former elected officer, having served a two-year term as the treasurer for the Literacy Research Association’s Doctoral Student Innovative Community Group (DSICG) and a one-year term as a DSICG newsletter contributor. Annie is excited to apply for the Secretary position and bring her organizational skills, attention to detail, and collaborative spirit to support the inclusive, justice-oriented aims of the CICCS SIG.