My scholarly research focus is interdisciplinary and primarily blends elements of Africana Education Studies, Black/African Psychology, and Africana Literature. My specific research program is focused on the following three areas of inquiry.
Raven M. Moses, PhD
Research
Areas of Research
I take a critical and Afrofuturist approach to the study and development of Afrocentric pedagogies—pedagogies that are purposefully oriented toward the future survival and success of Africana people.
My body of work aims to develop culturally-grounded teaching and learning discourses and practices that define and affirm uniquely Africana ideas and manifestations of identity, technology and progress and that ultimately improve the educational experiences and psychosocial outcomes for Africana students. And practically, I explore ways to implement these pedagogical tools within secondary and post-secondary school systems and within community and home education spaces.
In addition to an Afrofuturist focus, my work on Afrocentric pedagogy also focuses on exploring socialization factors and strategies that enhance the positive development of a sense of Afrocentric identity and agency by children and adolescents.
And as a secondary interest, I also study Africana contemporary, fantasy and science fiction literature, interrogating the ways that fictional representations of Black culture, identity and agency serve as cultural artifacts that provide important reflections of real Black life, experience and imagination.
I also utilize and develop Afrocentric critical literary analysis tools to engage these various representations in ways that demonstrate how literature both reflects and enhances our understanding of lived experience and functions as an important tool with the struggle for African liberation.
Current Research
I am developing an article based on my dissertation that argues that Black students’ Afrocentric identity and sense of agency are most likely enhanced when certain deliberate pedagogical philosophies and practices are used to encourage the development and demonstration of attitudes, actions and behaviors that reflect an African-centered sense of self. I operationalize the concept of Afrocentric agency and propose a pedagogical framework designed to amplify said agency.
I am in the early stages of developing a book that outlines a framework for a “sankofic educational praxis” that blends Africana cultural grounding with Afrofuturist-oriented skill, identity and agency development.
I am developing an article that uses my research on African-centered identity and agency development to examine the Black identity development engaged in by various fictional characters in several of Morrison’s novels. In this piece I argue that the unresolved tension between specific African cultural retentions and the cultural dislocation experienced as a result of internalizing certain Euro-American cultural values produces pronounced identity confusion that complicates the characters’ struggles to find the fulfilling and distinctly African American individual and collective identities and agency that they (sub)consciously seek.
Publications
Public Scholarship & Media
Charter Schools and the Black Independent School Movement
The article discusses the complicated history of the Black Independent School Movement and traces the history and struggles faced by Chicago’s New Concept Development Center, a once independent Afrocentric school which evolved into Betty Shabazz International Charter Schools network.
Professional Memberships
Raven M. Moses, PhD
raven@ravenmoses.com
“A race of people is like an individual man; until it uses its own talent,
takes pride in its own history, expresses its own culture, affirms its own selfhood, it can never fulfill itself.” — Malcolm X