Youth Creativity and Hip-Hop Education Researcher Bettina Love to Speak at ODU

March 06, 2019

Bettina Love

Award-winning author Bettina Love will visit Old Dominion University's Darden College of Education and Professional Studies on Thursday, March 21. Love will present a lecture, "We Want to Do More Than Survive: Abolitionist Teaching," at 6:30 p.m. in the Multipurpose Auditorium, room 1106, in the Education Building. The lecture is free and open to the public.

"We are very excited about Bettina's visit and the opportunity to interact with such an impactful scholar and activist. We are certain that ODU students, faculty and the community will be inspired to engage with her message and what it means to be an ally and advocate for educational justice" said Judith Dunkerly-Bean, co-director of the Literacy Research and Development Center.

Love, associate professor of educational theory & practice at the University of Georgia, is one of the field's most esteemed educational researchers in the area of Hip-Hop education. Her research focuses on the ways in which urban youth negotiate Hip Hop music and culture to form social, cultural, and political identities to create new and sustaining ways of thinking about urban education and intersectional social justice.

Her work is also concerned with how teachers and schools working with parents and communities can build communal, civically engaged schools rooted in intersectional social justice for the goal of equitable classrooms.

Love will also be meeting with doctoral students and faculty from the Department of Teaching & Learning to discuss theory and the academic grounding for her work.

The Lecture is hosted by the Darden College of Education and Professional Studies Department of Teaching and Learning, in partnership with the Literacy Research and Development Center and with support from Warren Stewart, a retired educator who has served in numerous community and public service roles, including the Norfolk School Board.

Copies of Love's latest book, "We Want to Do More Than Survive: Abolitionist Teaching and the Pursuit of Educational Freedom," will be on sale from 5:30 - 6:00 p.m. before the event with a signing immediately following Love's presentation. Copies may also be purchased at the Village Bookstore, located at 4417 Monarch Way in Norfolk.

For information and questions about the lecture, please contact Judith Dunkerly-Bean at jdunkerl@odu.edu or Kristine Sunday at ksunday@odu.edu. Both are assistant professors in teaching and learning at the Darden College of Education and Professional Studies at ODU.