Department/College/UnitSocial Sciences Division

TitleContinuing Lecturer

AffiliationFaculty

Web SiteAcademia.edu

Primary Office LocationMcHenry Library
3130

Office HoursBy Appointment

Mail StopEducation Department

Biography, Education and Training

Ph.D.  University of California Berkeley,  Social and Cultural Studies in Education

B.A.     Brown University, Educational Studies & Critical Theory

Summary of Expertise

My scholarship examines broad relations between education politics and political culture in the United States. I bring an anthropological perspective to the study of processes that shape the identification of education problems, the political worlds organized to solve them, and the popularization of reform agendas across diverse communities. I am particularly interested in exploring how unofficial policy actors, such as professional reformers, teachers, parents, activists, and philanthropists, shape conceptions of social and educational inequality and corresponding interventions. To this end, I bring sustained attention to education nonprofits, grassroots education movements, and tensions between racial liberalism and race radicalism.

Research Interests

Marxist, Post-colonial & Afropessimist Theory

Anthropology & Politics of Education

Race, Class & Gender in U.S. Schooling

Urban School Reform

Anti-racist Ideologies & Movements

School Discipline/Incarceration/State Violence

Nonprofits & NGOs

International Development & Humanitarianism

Ethnography & other Qualitative Methodologies

Teaching Interests

Education and Social Change

Urban & Racial Politics of Schooling

Social & Cultural Contexts of Schooling

Comparative Social Movements

Ideology & Education

School Discipline/Incarceration/State Violence

Ethnographic Methods

Critical & Abolitionist Pedagogies

Awards, Honors and Grants

Distinguished Teaching Award, nominee, UC Santa Cruz, 2019-2020

Excellence in Teaching, nominee, UC Santa Cruz, 2016

Council on Anthropology & Education Presidential Early Career Fellowship, 2010

Council on Anthropology & Education Outstanding Dissertation Award, runner up 2009

Selected Presentations

 New Approaches to Theorizing Anti-blackness in Education - podcast

 American Anthropological Association, Baltimore, MD/virtual meeting, 2021

Selected Publications

Lashaw, Amanda, Vannier, Christian & Sampson, Steve (eds.). 2017. Cultures of Doing Good: NGOs and Anthropologists. University of Alabama Press.

Lashaw, Amanda. 2017. The Ambiguous Political Power of Liberal Education Reform. In The Anthropology of Education Policy, edited by A. Castagno and T. McCarty. New York: Routledge. Pp. 103-121.

Vannier, Christian & Lashaw, Amanda. 2017. Conclusions: A Second Generation of NGO Anthropology. In Cultures of Doing Good: NGOs and Anthropologists, edited by A. Lashaw, C. Vannier & S. Sampson.  University of Alabama Press.

Lashaw, Amanda. 2013. How Progressive Culture Resists Critique: The Impasse of NGO Studies. Ethnography 14 (4): 501-522.

Lashaw, Amanda. 2012. The Question of Perpetual Education Reform. Book Review Essay on “As Good As It Gets: What School Reform Brought to Austin” by Larry Cuban. Educational Studies 48 (5): 490-495.

Lashaw, Amanda. 2010. The Radical Promise of Reformist Zeal: What Makes ‘Inquiry For Equity’ Plausible? Anthropology and Education Quarterly 41 (4): 323-340.

Lashaw, Amanda. 2008. Experiencing Imminent Justice: The Presence of Hope in a Movement for Equitable Schooling. Space and Culture 11 (2): 109-124.