My research interests sit comfortably in the 20th century U.S., at the intersection of the history of education, the history of the American left, and the history of ideas. I am particularly interested in how education, broadly conceived, fits into the theory and praxis of radical politics. My dissertation is on the history of the turn to “critical” work in the field of education that occurred during the 1970s and 1980s, with special focus on the writings of Paulo Freire, Michael Apple, and Henry Giroux. Previously, I completed a B.S. in Political Science at the University of Oregon, an M.A. in Afro-American Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and an M.Ed./teacher certification program in middle/secondary social studies at the University of Oregon.
Heather Weaver
PhD student, ABD
My research is grounded in the discipline of history and seen through the lens of cultural studies. In my dissertation, I focus on the ways in which image-rich texts of the earlier twentieth-century U.S., such as mass-distributed films and magazines, used recurring visual tropes to portray the experience of compulsory schooling. In the process, I explore how our cultural imaginings inhabit the space between the intellectual and the social, between theory and practice. I have an A.B. in English and History from Stanford University, and an M.A. in History from the University of Michigan. For a number of years prior to my current work, I taught history and humanities in the college-prep and community-college settings, and later directed an elementary-school literacy program.
