Lecturers
- Title
- Lecturer
- Division Social Sciences Division
- Department
- Education Department
- Phone 831-459-4740
- Website
- Office Location
- McHenry Library, 3130
- Office Hours By Appointment
- Mail Stop Education Department
- Faculty Areas of Expertise Anthropology, Education, Critical Theory, Critical Race and Ethnic Studies, Ethnography, Marxism, School Reform and School Policy, United States Politics and Government
- Courses EDUC 160 Issues in Education Reform; EDUC 181 Race, Class & Culture in Education; EDUC 173 Critical Pedagogy; EDUC 164 Urban Education; EDUC 178 Education Politics & Nonprofits; EDUC 135 Gender and Education; EDUC 262 Social & Cultural Context of Education; EDUC 256 Intermediate Qualitative Analysis; EDUC 174 Educational Ethnography; EDUC 190 Senior Seminar
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
Biography, Education and Training
Ph.D. University of California Berkeley, Social and Cultural Studies in Education
B.A. Brown University, Educational Studies & Critical Theory
Honors, Awards 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 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.
Selected Presentations
New Approaches to Theorizing Anti-blackness in Education - podcast
American Anthropological Association, Baltimore, MD/virtual meeting, 2021
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
