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Watch this welcome video from Dr. Jeanine Staples, your host.
Are you a student or scholar of race, gender, ability, orientations, identities, diversity, and/or social justice?
Are you an educator for critical studies, truth and reconciliation, and/or inclusive social contexts?
Are you an activist in these areas? Do you aspire to be?
Are you an administrator or executive leader in charge of diversity and inclusion initiatives for your academic institution?
Do you promote the evolution of schools and society within which many variations of people and experience actually live and learn?
If so, then you need to understand the strengths and struggles students with identities socially constructed as "marginal" (i.e. black, brown, indigenous, native, multitudinous, queer, woman, girl, trans, disabled, first generation, etc.) may cultivate throughout their lifespans.
Learn how students manage complex identities and lived experiences.
Regenerate respect and admiration for the dexterity, agility, and resilience required to manage these strengths and struggles.
Why? Because these strengths and struggles map the scope of our past and trajectory of our future.
Learn from dozens of some of the best college and university scholarly minds as they come together to share with you a collection of timely, power-packed, cutting-edge discussions on life in the margins...entirely for FREE.
All interviews will be sent to the email address you provide here. Each will be viewable from your phone, laptop, or tablet.
Register for FREE below!
What do marginalized students experience in schools and society?
- Some school and social experiences support students’ strengths. There are affirming spaces, approving messages, supportive structures, conscious curriculum, inclusive instruction, dynamic assessments, ample funding, celebrations of accomplishments, acknowledgment of intelligences and beauty, honoring of gifts, programmatic cultivation of skills, and coaching, with deference, to talents.
- Some school and social experiences compound students’ struggles. There are social erasures, physical criticisms, microaggressions, macroaggressions, systemic injustices, hate crimes, painful curriculum, alienating instructional practices, stifling assessments, lack of research, defunded programs that protect academic, cultural, and politically sensitive and inclusive communities.
- These experiences present paradoxes, conundrums, conflicts, and dissonances.
Why are these issues important?
- The strengths generated on the margins of schools and society result in stunning academic excellence and innovative social agility among students that often go unnamed. We must systematically acknowledge and learn from these elusive gifts and talents.
- The struggles generated on the margins of schools and society result in anxieties, insecurities, depressions, and rage that are also, often, missed. Yet, they have far reaching, deleterious effects on stabilizing senses of belonging and empowerment among students. We must systematically acknowledge and learn from these grievances.
- These strengths and struggles are embodied by marginalized youth and adults of color throughout their academic and social careers, reproducing powerful sensibilities, Pre-K-college.
Here's what you'll get...
- Access...to discussions with undergraduate and graduate student scholars of race, gender, equity, justice, and intersectionality about strengths and struggles on their home campuses.
- Insights...as students and scholars of color break down the scope of their academic and social experiences as they live in Black and Brown bodies, and female/queer bodies, while navigating multiple academic and social contexts.
- Clarity...about what microaggressions and macroaggressions are and how to identify and intercept them where you learn and live.
- Definitions...of key concepts in social justice and how they are evolving to capture, and stand for, radical inclusivity for members of marginalized communities.
- Discoveries...about the differences between “diversity initiatives” and “decolonizing initiatives” for schools and society, and why we need to advocate for the latter.
- Action plans...for advancing inclusion without repressive assimilation in schools and social circles. Predictions...about how race and gender equity are likely to (d)evolve during the Trump Era.
- Scripts...to use with colleagues, peers, administrators, and instructors, as you navigate through ranks in academia and multiple social circles.
- Resources...to generate dynamic outlets for celebratory news about the strengths you’ve developed as a person on the margins in schools and society.
- And much, much more...
Here's who you'll hear from...

Ana Carolina Díaz Beltrán - Advanced doctoral candidate, Curriculum & Instruction at the Pennsylvania State University

Dr. Beth Berila - Director of the Women's Studies Program, Professor of Ethnic and Women's Studies at St. Cloud State University

Brian Davis - Undergraduate student scholar and leader at the Pennsylvania State University

Dr. Christiana Awosan - Assistant Professor, PhD., LMFT, Marriage and Family Therapy Program at Seton Hall University

Donna-Marie Cole-Malott - Advanced doctoral candidate, Curriculum & Instruction at the Pennsylvania State University

Dylan Rogers - Undergraduate Student at Bucknell University

Dr. Fred A. Bonner II - Professor and Endowed Chair in Educational Leadership and Counseling at Prairie View A&M University

Grevelin Ulerio - Undergraduate Student at Bucknell University

Indira Bailey - Doctoral candidate in Art Education and Women's Gender and Sexuality Studies at the Pennsylvania State University

Dr. Jennifer Turner - Associate Professor of Reading Education at University of Maryland College Park

Josh Hunter - Undergraduate student scholar and leader at Bucknell University

Dr. Kakali Bhattacharya - Associate Professor of Educational Leadership & Qualitative Research at Kansas State University

Dr. Kimberly Griffin - Associate Professor of Higher Education, Student Affairs, and International Education Policy at the University of Maryland College Park

Dr. Margaret Ferrara - Director of Elementary, Secondary, and Human Development and Family Studies at the University of Nevada, Reno

Dr. Michael Vavrus - Professor Emeritus, Interdisciplinary Studies at the Evergreen State College

Dr. Nikki Young - Assistant Professor of Women's and Gender Studies and Religion at Bucknell University

Dr. Nina Banks - Associate Professor of Economics and Affiliated Faculty Member in Women's and Gender Studies and Africana Studies at Bucknell University

Pauli Badenhorst - Advanced doctoral candidate: Curriculum & Instruction and Comparative & International Education at the Pennsylvania State University

Dr. Rebecca Bigler Professor of Psychology and Women's and Gender Studies at University of Texas at Austin

Dr. Samantha Pinto - Associate Professor of African American Studies and English at Georgetown University

Dr. Samuel Tanner - Assistant Professor of Literacy Education at Penn State Altoona

Shirah Moffatt-Darko - Undergraduate student at Bucknell University

Dr. Shirley Moody-Turner - Associate Professor of English and African American Studies at the Pennsylvania State University

Dr. Silvia Bettez - Associate Professor in the Cultural Foundations program at The University of North Carolina at Greensboro

Dr. Stephanie Anne Shelton - Assistant Professor, Qualitative Educational Research at The University of Alabama

Dr. Stephen Graves - Postdoctoral Fellow of Political Science and Black Studies at the University of Missouri

Symone McCollum - Undergraduate student scholar and leader at the Pennsylvania State University

Dr. Wendi Williams - Associate Dean of Academic Affairs, Bank Street College of Education

I'm an Associate Professor of Literacy and Language, African American Studies, and Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at The Pennsylvania State University. I focus on dismantling supremacist patriarchies through research, teaching, and coaching. As a sociocultural literacist, I work to understand personal and public voices and stories to solve personal and public problems. I do this by researching the evolutionary nature and function of literacies and texts through the discourses of narrative research. My work exposes impetuses for various personal and social ills such as racism, sexism, and ableism.
I love to meditate way before dawn, work out like a soldier, and shop alone. I prefer rum to wine, jeans to skirts, and like my heels sky high (except when I'm wearing cowboy boots). Every year I ask my stylist to cornrow and bead my hair in homage to Patrice Rushen and Stevie Wonder (if you know of these artists and understand why demonstrating embodied respect for them is important, we can probably be friends). I believe in ghosts, fairies, and hobbits (for real). Musically, I vibe to old school everything (hip hop, R&B, jazz, rock, and classical) and especially dig Hildegard von Bingen. I trust children a little bit more than adults, respect teens for their fearlessness, admire elders for their tenacity, and occasionally prefer the company of dogs to people. I'm really getting into interior design and have a penchant for acquiring east coast real estate. I'm also a survivor of multiple terrors in love.
I invite you to learn more about me and the projects I am involved with at JeanineStaples.com.