Raven M. Moses, PhD
Research
Areas of Research
I explore the contextualized development, embodiment and negotiation of Black identities and agency. And I apply the study of identity and agency to examinations of Africana literature and to the examination and development of culture-focused critical pedagogies for Africana students. Overall, my work seeks to investigate how Black identities, and their commensurate sociopolitical positionalities, in both literature and society, enable (or inhibit) the exertion of individual and/or collective agency by people and characters of African descent.
I examine and develop critical pedagogies and curricula that facilitate the study of Africana culture and identity as well as those that encourage the development of agentic Black identities by Africana students. I also study how to implement these tools within secondary and post-secondary school systems and home education spaces.
I interrogate various forms of Africana literature as cultural artifacts that present representations of Black identities in the past, present and imagined future. I also utilize and develop critical literary analysis tools to engage these various representations in ways that demonstrate how literature reflects and enhances our understanding of lived experience.
Current Research
I am developing an article and book project based on my dissertation that argues that an African-descended student’s psychological sense of agency is 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 African-centered psychological agency and propose a pedagogical framework designed to amplify said agency.
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.
I am in the early stages of developing research that examines the evolution and presentation of Black identities within contemporary Black fantasy novels.
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