David E. Kirkland

David E. Kirkland is a transdisciplinary scholar of language, literacy, and urban education who examines the intersections among language, race, gender, and urban youth culture under the lens of literacy. His work has also explored, among other things, urban teacher preparation, digital media, and the sociopolitical aesthetics of revolutionary justice as (re)produced in artifacts of hip-hop. He has spent the past decade analyzing the culture, language, and texts of groups of urban American youth, and has expertise in critical literary and linguistic and ethnographic research methods. He has received many awards for his groundbreaking work including an NAEd/Spencer Foundation Postdoctoral Fellowship Award, a Ford Foundation Postdoctoral Fellowship Award, a NCTE Cultivating New Voices Fellowship Award, the 2006 AERA Division G Dissertation Award, among many others. He has published widely. His most recent publications include: “‘Books Like Clothes’: Engaging Young Black Men with Reading” (Journal of Adolescent and Adult Literacy), “Listening to Echoes: Teaching Young Black Men Literacy, and the Distraction of ELA Standards” (Language Arts), “‘Black Skin, White Masks’: Normalizing Whiteness and the Trouble with the Achievement Gap” (TCRecord), “English(es) in Urban Contexts: Politics, Pluralism, and Possibilities” (English Education), and “‘We real cool’: Examining Black males and literacy” (Reading Research Quarterly). A Search Past Silence: The Literacy of Young Black Men is the fourth book that Dr. Kirkland has authored, co-authored, edited, or co-edited.