Rainbow Elementary, Decatur, Georgia
i am a Black, queer doctoral student, poet and writer, and teacher-educator in the Joint Program in English and Education at the University of Michigan. Georgia is the place that raised me and the people there are my home. they remind me to pick my chin up, trust the ancestors, and move forward with love, grace, and holding no cut cards. as a scholar and researcher, i use ethnographic methods and the poetics of interiority and aliveness, and Black queer theorizations of selfhood and futurity to learn about the literacies, imaginaries, and making practices of African American and Latinx trans and queer girls and genderexpansive youth both inside and outside of school. i also studies the impacts of internalized antiblackness on African American and Afro-Latinx educator relationships with themselves, students and families, teaching and learning practices, and perceptions of student potential. i am the recipient of the 2021 Hurston-Wright Foundation College Poetry Award and the University of Michigan School of Education’s Student (diversity, inclusion, justice, and equity) dije Award. i have work forthcoming in This House Will Not Dismantle Itself: Critical Futures in Education and Women’s Studies Quarterly. i also launched Dancing on Desks, a podcast about justice-full, liberatory, and abolitionist education with my sis and fellow educator Erin Thesing. come hang out with us wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts or at www.dancingondesks.org. we’re available for workshops, dialogue, listening, and strategizing ways to get free.
check my footwork.
erinmonetcooper.com 