Fall 2013 – Spring 2014

This course is a yearlong, participatory learning seminar that will provide an interdisciplinary approach to three areas of study as they intersect in the lives of court-involved adolescents: youth, media, and educational justice. A significant percentage of young people in urban contexts and beyond are under some form of court-mandated supervision, largely in the form of incarceration, probation, or foster care. Portrayals of these youth permeate popular and academic texts and shape educational practice and policy in subtle and explicit ways. Thus a main goal of the course is to develop an approach to the practice of educational justice through participatory research and active participation between graduate students and court-involved youth to complement the wide range of texts that will frame the course. This seminar will offer students an opportunity to engage with the ideas in these texts through course discussion, hands-on workshops, and the publication of a whole class multimedia text at the end of the academic year that will contribute a new set of narratives about the intersection of youth, justice, and educational justice. Course texts that will be drawn from various areas of inquiry – the arts, media studies, philosophy, anthropology, literature, sociology, law, literacy studies.

Teaching Team

• Prof. Lalitha Vasudevan, CCTE
• Prof. Yolanda Sealey-Ruiz, English Ed
• Melissa Wade, Manhattan Family Court
• Kristine Rodriguez Kerr, CCTE Doctoral Student
• Tara Conley, CCTE Doctoral Student
• Joe Riina-Ferrie, CCTE Doctoral Student

Course Flyer (pdf)

2013-2014 Graduate Students/Mentors

Emily Bailin
Francia Brito
Emeline Brylinski
Min Cho
Shoshana Gottesman
Roger Horton
Katie Newhouse
Laura Vernikoff
Kelly Gavin Zuckerman

2013-2014 Guest Speakers

• Prof. Anne Burns Thomas
• Prof. Suzanne Carothers
• Derek Koen
• Prof. Kiese Laymon
• Prof. Nancy Lesko
• Darnell Moore
• Judge Edwina Richardson Mendelsohn
• Mychal Denzel Smith
• Ouida Washington