ArCasia D. James-Gallaway
ArCasia D. James-Gallaway
ArCasia D. James-Gallaway, Ph.D., is a proud first-generation college graduate and Waco public schools (WISD) alumnae, whose family born and bred her in Waco, Texas. She is an interdisciplinary historian of education and teacher educator in the Teaching, Learning, and Culture Department at Texas A&M University, where she works as an Assistant Professor, ACES Fellow, and ADVANCE Scholar. Her scholarly aim is to bridge past and present perspectives on African American struggles for educational justice. She earned her PhD in History of Education from the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, her master's degree in Education, Culture, and Society from the University of Pennsylvania, and her bachelor's degree from the University of Texas, Austin, where she pursued a dual major in Sociology and History while earning her secondary social studies teacher certification.
Dr. James-Gallaway's research agenda follows three overlapping strands of inquiry: the history of African American education, Black history education, and gendered (anti)Blackness in education. Her work engages critical perspectives and approaches such as critical race theory, Black feminist theory, oral history methodology, and Black Southern epistemology to address questions of systemic domination, oppression, agency, and self-determination relative to African American education.
Dr. James-Gallaway's dissertation, More than Race: Differentiating Black Students' Everyday Experiences in Texas School Desegregation, 1968-1978, was supported in part by a Ford Foundation Dissertation Fellowship and won her the Honorable Mention designation for the 2021 Claude A. Eggertsen Dissertation Prize, awarded by the History of Education Society. As a former social studies teacher and current teacher educator, Dr. James-Gallaway's emphasis on social justice broadly and racial justice specifically was recognized by the National Council for Social Studies' College and University Faculty Assembly (CUFA), which awarded her the 2021 Kipchoge Neftali Kirkland Social Justice Award for her paper, "I Stay Mad: A Black Woman Social Studies Educator's Fight to be Seen, Heard, and Heeded." Some of her other notable awards include Emerging Gender Researcher by the academic journal Gender, Work, and Organization and an Illinois Distinguished Fellowship. Additionally, she was designated as a member of the University of Michigan's Diversity Scholars Network, which is part of its National Center for Institutional Diversity; a University Council of Educational Administration (UCEA) Barbara L. Jackson Scholar; and a Dean's Centennial Scholar at the University of Pennsylvania's Graduate School of Education.
