Dr. Jarvis Givens

Biography

Jarvis Givens is a professor at the Harvard Graduate School of Education and a faculty affiliate in the Department of African and African American Studies at Harvard University. His research focuses on the history of American education and African American history, examining the relationship between race and power in schools. Givens is the author of 'Fugitive Pedagogy: Carter G. Woodson and the Art of Black Teaching', published by Harvard University Press in 2021. His work traces African Americans' traditions of challenging racial domination in schools and society, highlighting intellectual and political strategies employed from the era of slavery through Jim Crow. He takes an interdisciplinary approach to studying history, utilizing conceptual and methodological interventions from the field of Black Studies. Givens is involved in the Black Teacher Archive project, a digital humanities initiative that aims to collect historical materials related to African American teaching. He is also working on a forthcoming book of creative nonfiction about black student life in American schools and preparing new editions of classic African American texts. His ongoing projects include an analysis of the relationships between Indigenous, white, and black education in the 19th century and a biography of civil rights leader Mary McLeod Bethune.

Research Interests