Michael J. Dumas
Michael J. Dumas' scholarly interests focus on three interrelated areas of inquiry: the cultural politics of Black education, the cultural political economy of urban education, and public discourses and policy-making related to Black boyhood and the education of young Black boys. His publications include critical cultural analyses of school desegregation politics and educational equity policy formation and implementation, and theoretical explorations of what he has termed the Black educational imagination, which is concerned with the ways Black people—and particularly African American leaders, educators, activists and other cultural workers make meaning of the relationship between education and everyday Black existence and collective survival. His emerging ethnographic projects aims to explore how young Black parents of young Black boys make meaning of social and educational policy in the city, and specifically, how these Black social actors negotiate tensions between the public sphere and the Black counterpublic imaginary. Dumas received his Ph.D. in Urban Education/Educational Policy in 2007 from The Graduate Center of The City University of New York, where he was a recipient of the Spencer Foundation Dissertation Fellowship. Prior to coming to NYU, he served as assistant professor in the Master’s Program in Social and Cultural Analysis of Education and the Ed.D. Program in Educational Leadership at California State University, Long Beach.
View this video in which Dr. Dumas speaks about his 2011 Teachers College Record article, "A Cultural Political Economy of School Desegregation in Seattle."