Education Commons^™

Plugging Into Movement Work: White Racial Justice Action In The Era Of Colorblind Racism, Garrett Naiman

Doctoral Dissertations

This qualitative study explored the practices and consciousness of eight white identified participants, born 1970 or later, who are actively engaged in racial justice action. Although the field of critical whiteness studies has expanded markedly over the past couple of decades, little has been written specifically about white racial justice activists (and activism). This may be serving as a disconnect for white people who are trying to find their way in racial justice movement work.

Participants were involved in one or more of the following: community organizing, education, religious work and cultural arts. Research data was primarily generated/collected through qualitative …

The People Who Do ‘This’ In Common: Book Clubs As ‘Everyday Activists’, Julie E. Tyler

Doctoral Dissertations

This study of the Books-N-Wine club in Knoxville, Tennessee participates in a growing body of research on reading communities. Since the 1980s, researchers have investigated book clubs as social-intellectual phenomena whose history dates back to eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Intersecting with the development of the public sphere and even fueling concrete social movements, book clubs comprise a “shadow tradition of literature.” Current research suggests that contemporary clubs continue to advance this “shadow tradition” and have the potential to teach and transform their constituencies. Several areas remain unexplored in research on book clubs, including the ways in which particular categories of …