Biography
Dr. Boni Fernandes Wozolek currently serves as the Director of Inclusive Excellence and as an Associate Professor of Education at Penn State University, Abington College. Her work considers questions qualitative research methods and teaching practices that focus on access, justice, and care for schools and student communities. Dr. Wozolek’s recent publications include two monographs, Assemblages of Violence in Education: Everyday Trajectories of Oppression (Routledge, 2021) and Educational Necropolitics: A Sonic Ethnography of Everyday Racisms in US Schools (Routledge, 2023), and three edited volumes: Letters to the Field: Curriculum Studies in Our Own Words (co-edited, Dr. Walter S. Gershon and Dr. Roland Mitchell, Myers Press), Black Lives Matter in US Schools: Race, Education, and Resistance (SUNY, 2022), and Queer Battle Fatigue: Education, Exhaustion, and Everyday Oppressions (co-edited, David Lee Carlson, Routledge, 2023). Additionally, she has two forthcoming edited volumes, Love and Power: A Curriculum of Black Joy (co-edited, Dr. Theodorea Regina Berry, SUNY Press) and The Infinite Circle (co-edited with Srijoni Mitra and Michael Bernstein). Dr. Wozolek has received multiple awards for her scholarship, including two book awards, an article of the year award, and an early career award.
Publications
Selected Publications
Books:
Wozolek, B. (in press). Educational necropolitics: A sonic ethnography of everyday racism in U.S. schools. Routledge.
Wozolek, B. (Ed.). (2022). Black lives matter: Race, education, and resistance in US schools. SUNY Press. (Contributors: Yolanda Sealy-Ruiz, Marcelle Haddix, Reagan Mitchell, Denise Taliaferro-Baszile, Ngozi Williams, David O. Stovall, Walter Gershon, Roland Mitchell, Sherick Hughes. Afterward by Lester Spence).
Wozolek, B. (2021). Assemblages of violence in education: Everyday trajectories of oppression.
Routledge.
- Winner: Critic’s Choice Book Award (2021), American Educational Studies Association
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Nominated: Outstanding Book Award, American Educational Research Association, Division B (Curriculum Studies) Gloria E Anzaldua Book Award, National Women’s Studies Association
Journal Articles:
Wozolek, B. (in press). “What does learning sound like?”: Reverberations, curriculum studies, and teacher preparation, Northwest Journal of Teacher Preparation.
Wozolek, B. & Atif, A. (2022). A nice white lady: Critical whiteness studies, teacher education, and city schools, International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education, 35(7), 755-763. DOI: 10.1080/09518398.2022.2061627
- Paper co-authored with a Penn State Abington undergraduate student.
Wozolek, B. & Antell, S. (2022). Curricula of oppressions: Queering elementary school norms and values, International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education. DOI: 10.1080/09518398.2022.2035460.
- Paper co-authored with a Penn State Abington undergraduate student.
Wozolek, B. (2021). “Is your dad a towelhead?”: Capitals of shame and necropolitics in post-9/11 America, Canadian Social Studies, 52(2), 10-21 https://doi.org/10.29173/css27.
Wozolek, B. (2021). Race, gender, and sexual orientations in curriculum studies. In M. Fang He & B. Shubert (Eds.) The Oxford Encyclopedia of Curriculum Studies. New York, NY: Oxford University Press. https://doi.org/10.1093/acrefore/9780190264093.013.1445
Wozolek, B. (2021). “It’s not fiction, it’s my life”: LGBTQ+ youth of color and kinships in an urban middle school, Theory into Practice, 60(1), 94-102. DOI:10.1080/00405841.2020.1829383
Wozolek, B. (2020). Hidden curriculum of violence: Affect, power, and policing the body. Educational Studies, 56(3), 269-285. DOI: 10.1080/00131946.2020.1745808
- Paper received the journal’s “2020 Paper of the Year” Award.
Wozolek, B. (2019). M/othering redux: A reading of curriculum theory to get through sleepless nights. The Journal of Gender Studies, 28(8), 873-882. DOI: 10.1080/09589236.2018.1564649.
Wozolek, B. (2018). Gaslighting queerness: GSAs, schooling, and teachers’ education. Journal of LGBT Youth, 15(4), 319-338. DOI: 10.1080/19361653.2018.1484839.
Wozolek, B. (2018). In 8100 again: The sounds of students breaking. Educational Studies: A Journal of the American Educational Studies Association, 54(4), 367-381. DOI: 10.1080/00131946.2018.1473869.
Wozolek, B. & Mitchell, R. P. (2018). Plastic or phalloplasty: Negotiating masculinity and (cis)gender norms in schools and the academy. The Journal of Curriculum & Pedagogy, 15(3), 318-322. DOI: 10.1080.15505170.2018.1525451.
Wozolek, B. (2018). The mothership connection: Utopian funk from Bethune and beyond. The Urban Review, 50(5), 836-856. DOI: 10.1007/s11256-018-0476-7.
Wozolek, B., Wootton, L., & Demlow, A. (2017). The school-to-coffin pipeline: Queer youth, suicide and resilience of spirit. Cultural Studies <> Critical Methodologies, 17(5), 392-398. DOI: 10.1177/1532708616673659
- Paper co-authored with high school students.
Book Chapters:
Wozolek, B. (in press). Forward: Becoming posthuman social studies. In B. A. Varga, T. Monreal, & R.C. Christ (Eds.), Toward a stranger and more posthuman social studies. Teachers College Press.
Wozolek, B. & Irizarry, J. (in press). Intersectional cartographies: Tracing the contours of the margins. In C.D. Gist & T.J. Bristol (Eds.), The Handbook of Research on Teachers of Color. Routledge.
Wozolek, B. & Huddelston, G. (2022). A curriculum of conflation: Using space and place to tell
“Big Little Lies”. Friedrich, D., Corson, J. & Hollman, D. (Eds.) Pop Culture and Curriculum, Assemble! Exploring the limits of curricular humanism through pop culture. (pp. 191-214). Dio Press.
Wozolek, B. (2020). Intellectual gatekeepers: Reclaiming Black queer youth as the public. In T.C. Wells, D.L Carlson, and M. Koro (Eds.), Intra-Public intellectualism: Critical Qualitative Inquiry in the Academy (pp. 118-133). Myers Educational Press.
Wozolek, B., & Gershon, W. (2019). Ethnography and middle education. In D. Virtue (Ed.), The International Handbook of Middle Level Education Theory, Research, and Policy (pp. 293-302). Routledge.
Wozolek, B. (2019). War of the half-breeds: Communities of color, resistance, and racist education in a high school in the Midwest. In W.S. Gershon (Ed.), Sensuous Curriculum: The Politics of the Senses in Education (pp. 67-84). Information Age Press.