Maisha T Winn
Biographic Data
| ID | 119884 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Maisha T Winn |
| GIVEN NAMES | Maisha T |
| FAMILY NAME | Winn |
| SIGNATURE | WINN M T |
| AFFILIATIONS | Emory University |
| ORCID | 0009-0002-0363-1337 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 20 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 80 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 20 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2010 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 5 |
Aera Presidential Address 2026 The Future Is Here: Historical Signals in Education Research
This presidential address builds the case that innovations in education should both spark and be grounded in historical methods and foresight thinking. Drawing our attention to historical signals, Winn demonstrates the ethos and strategies of parents, educators, artists, and community members who collectively envisioned and established teaching and learning communities focused on institution building in the decade following the Civil Rights Movem…
Futuring Black Lives: Independent Black Institutions and the Literary Imagination
Looking Back to Look Forward: Leveraging Historical Models for Future-Oriented Caregiving
What can we - as educators, parents, researchers, community members - learn from independent Black institutions about expansive ways to support the well-being of children and their families? And why and how ought we look back to look forward, regarding caregiving that is culturally relevant and sustaining? Here, we explore independent Black institutions as educational contexts in and through which Identity, Purpose, and Direction were cultivated …
“Love Liberates: ” A Kitchen Table Talk on Black Liberatory Education
Rooted in the Black feminist tradition, this kitchen table talk brings together scholars who are doing work in the name of liberation. We begin by naming people who ground us in our beings and our work, and from these offerings, we discuss the power of love in the fight for liberation with the hopes of cultivating educational spaces for Black students where they feel loved, seen, validated, and heard. Furthermore, the disruption of the ways knowl…
Restorative Justice, Civic Education, and Transformative Possibilities
Around the country, schools are using restorative justice circles as an approach to conflict resolution among students. This group work focuses on listening and speaking, knowledge sharing, and problem solving; and as such, it serves as an ideal space for civic education. I offer a vision of restorative justice practice in schools that emphasizes its potential to create social networks that are foundational to civic education. I draw on my experi…
Futures Matter: Creating Just Futures in This Age of Hyper-incarceration
What does it mean to teach and learn in this age of hyper-incarceration and the ongoing criminalization of multiply marginalized students and their families? And how can restorative justice be leveraged to initiate and sustain the important community-building and justice work needed in schools in the United States? In this article, the author revisits the four pedagogical stances she believes are foundational starting points for any educator seek…
Still Writing in Rhythm: Youth Poets at Work
In this article, the author uses a “humanizing research” framework to analyze longitudinal data collected over the course of 10 years during a multi-sited ethnography of youth poets in a poetry collective called Power Writing. Using qualitative interviews to understand the role that literacy continues to play in the lives of Power Writing alumni, the author demonstrates how Power Writing continues to influence youth poets’ views on education as t…
This Issue
Transforming Our Mission: Animating Teacher Education through Intersectional Justice
Teacher education programs often focus on developing teaching professionals and leaders committed to advocating for students, yet pervasive deficit mindsets reinforce and (re)produce societal inequities. In this paper, we outline why and how a turn towards justice in teacher education is an appropriate strategy to reduce harm and marginalization in contexts of K-12 schooling. We argue that a justice-grounded teacher education mission must be alig…
A Transformative Justice Approach to Literacy Education
This department explores how teachers can sustain students’ multilingual literacies and reimagine literacy learning across multiple contexts in conversation with researchers, practitioners, and communities
Building a “Lifetime Circle”: English Education in the Age of #BlackLivesMatter
This article argues that, to prepare teachers in the era of #BlackLivesMatter, there must be a radical reframing of teacher education in which teachers learn to disentangle their teaching from the culture of Mass Incarceration and the criminalization of Black and Brown people in the context of the United States in their practice. Using a restorative justice paradigm, I seek to understand in what ways, if any, teacher training, specifically of Eng…
Exploring the Literate Trajectories of Youth Across Time and Space
Here, I offer a retrospective research narrative of four of my works, Writing in Rhythm: Spoken Word Poetry in Urban Classrooms (published under Maisha T. Fisher, 2007b); Black Literate Lives: Historical and Contemporary Perspectives (published under Maisha T. Fisher, 2009); Writing Instruction in the Culturally Relevant Classroom (with Latrise P. Johnson; Winn & Johnson, 2011); and Girl Time: Literacy, Justice, and the School-to-Prison Pipeline …
Expectations and Realities: Education, the Discipline Gap, and the Experiences of Black Families Migrating to Small Cities
Humanizing Research: Decolonizing Qualitative Inquiry with Youth and Communities
Forum: Toward a Restorative English Education
In this essay I argue for a Restorative English Education—that is, a pedagogy of possibilities that employs literature and writing to seek justice and restore (and, in some cases, create) peace that reaches beyond the classroom walls. A Restorative English Education requires English language arts teachers to resist zero-tolerance policies that sort, label, and eventually isolate particular youth, embracing a discourse of restoration in which all …
Toward a performance of possibilities: Resisting gendered (in)justice
In the twenty-first century the United States incarcerates more of its citizens than any other country. While the numbers of incarcerated males far outnumber incarcerated women, there are still great concerns about the growing female prison population. This fixation with incarceration and building prisons has trickled down to America’s children as well. Among those who have been strategically extracted from childhood and adolescence and catapulte…
Our side of the story’: Moving incarcerated youth voices from margins to center
This study examines the ways in which playwriting and performance provide tools for incarcerated and formerly incarcerated girls to prepare for their lives beyond detention centers and probation. In a three‐year multi‐sited ethnography journeying through regional youth detention centers (RYDCs), a multi‐service center serving formerly incarcerated youth, and a public theatre housing a women‐focused theatre company in the urban southeast, this stu…
Betwixt and between’: Literacy, liminality, and the celling of Black girls
In this article the author examines the lives of formerly incarcerated African American girls of ages 14–17 who participate in a playwriting and performance program in an urban southeastern American city and who consequently find themselves ‘betwixt and between’ incarcerated and liberated lives. Through interviews with formerly incarcerated girls in this program, participant observation, and student writing, this article contextualizes these girl…
Resisting the school to prison pipeline: The practice to build abolition democracies
In possession of the largest prison population in the world, the United States currently locks up over 2.3 million people (Pew Center on the States Public Safety Performance Project 2008). Dispropo
We Are All Prisoners: Privileging Prison Voices in Black Print Culture
Resisting the school to prison pipeline: The practice to build abolition democracies
In possession of the largest prison population in the world, the United States currently locks up over 2.3 million people (Pew Center on the States Public Safety Performance Project 2008). Dispropo
Transforming Our Mission: Animating Teacher Education through Intersectional Justice
Teacher education programs often focus on developing teaching professionals and leaders committed to advocating for students, yet pervasive deficit mindsets reinforce and (re)produce societal inequities. In this paper, we outline why and how a turn towards justice in teacher education is an appropriate strategy to reduce harm and marginalization in contexts of K-12 schooling. We argue that a justice-grounded teacher education mission must be alig…
Betwixt and between’: Literacy, liminality, and the celling of Black girls
In this article the author examines the lives of formerly incarcerated African American girls of ages 14–17 who participate in a playwriting and performance program in an urban southeastern American city and who consequently find themselves ‘betwixt and between’ incarcerated and liberated lives. Through interviews with formerly incarcerated girls in this program, participant observation, and student writing, this article contextualizes these girl…
Our side of the story’: Moving incarcerated youth voices from margins to center
This study examines the ways in which playwriting and performance provide tools for incarcerated and formerly incarcerated girls to prepare for their lives beyond detention centers and probation. In a three‐year multi‐sited ethnography journeying through regional youth detention centers (RYDCs), a multi‐service center serving formerly incarcerated youth, and a public theatre housing a women‐focused theatre company in the urban southeast, this stu…
Toward a performance of possibilities: Resisting gendered (in)justice
In the twenty-first century the United States incarcerates more of its citizens than any other country. While the numbers of incarcerated males far outnumber incarcerated women, there are still great concerns about the growing female prison population. This fixation with incarceration and building prisons has trickled down to America’s children as well. Among those who have been strategically extracted from childhood and adolescence and catapulte…
Building a “Lifetime Circle”: English Education in the Age of #BlackLivesMatter
This article argues that, to prepare teachers in the era of #BlackLivesMatter, there must be a radical reframing of teacher education in which teachers learn to disentangle their teaching from the culture of Mass Incarceration and the criminalization of Black and Brown people in the context of the United States in their practice. Using a restorative justice paradigm, I seek to understand in what ways, if any, teacher training, specifically of Eng…
Futures Matter: Creating Just Futures in This Age of Hyper-incarceration
What does it mean to teach and learn in this age of hyper-incarceration and the ongoing criminalization of multiply marginalized students and their families? And how can restorative justice be leveraged to initiate and sustain the important community-building and justice work needed in schools in the United States? In this article, the author revisits the four pedagogical stances she believes are foundational starting points for any educator seek…
Still Writing in Rhythm: Youth Poets at Work
In this article, the author uses a “humanizing research” framework to analyze longitudinal data collected over the course of 10 years during a multi-sited ethnography of youth poets in a poetry collective called Power Writing. Using qualitative interviews to understand the role that literacy continues to play in the lives of Power Writing alumni, the author demonstrates how Power Writing continues to influence youth poets’ views on education as t…
This Issue
Expectations and Realities: Education, the Discipline Gap, and the Experiences of Black Families Migrating to Small Cities
We Are All Prisoners: Privileging Prison Voices in Black Print Culture
Restorative Justice, Civic Education, and Transformative Possibilities
Around the country, schools are using restorative justice circles as an approach to conflict resolution among students. This group work focuses on listening and speaking, knowledge sharing, and problem solving; and as such, it serves as an ideal space for civic education. I offer a vision of restorative justice practice in schools that emphasizes its potential to create social networks that are foundational to civic education. I draw on my experi…
Our side of the story’: Moving incarcerated youth voices from margins to center
This study examines the ways in which playwriting and performance provide tools for incarcerated and formerly incarcerated girls to prepare for their lives beyond detention centers and probation. In a three‐year multi‐sited ethnography journeying through regional youth detention centers (RYDCs), a multi‐service center serving formerly incarcerated youth, and a public theatre housing a women‐focused theatre company in the urban southeast, this stu…
Betwixt and between’: Literacy, liminality, and the celling of Black girls
In this article the author examines the lives of formerly incarcerated African American girls of ages 14–17 who participate in a playwriting and performance program in an urban southeastern American city and who consequently find themselves ‘betwixt and between’ incarcerated and liberated lives. Through interviews with formerly incarcerated girls in this program, participant observation, and student writing, this article contextualizes these girl…
Resisting the school to prison pipeline: The practice to build abolition democracies
In possession of the largest prison population in the world, the United States currently locks up over 2.3 million people (Pew Center on the States Public Safety Performance Project 2008). Dispropo
We Are All Prisoners: Privileging Prison Voices in Black Print Culture
Toward a performance of possibilities: Resisting gendered (in)justice
In the twenty-first century the United States incarcerates more of its citizens than any other country. While the numbers of incarcerated males far outnumber incarcerated women, there are still great concerns about the growing female prison population. This fixation with incarceration and building prisons has trickled down to America’s children as well. Among those who have been strategically extracted from childhood and adolescence and catapulte…
Forum: Toward a Restorative English Education
In this essay I argue for a Restorative English Education—that is, a pedagogy of possibilities that employs literature and writing to seek justice and restore (and, in some cases, create) peace that reaches beyond the classroom walls. A Restorative English Education requires English language arts teachers to resist zero-tolerance policies that sort, label, and eventually isolate particular youth, embracing a discourse of restoration in which all …
Humanizing Research: Decolonizing Qualitative Inquiry with Youth and Communities
Exploring the Literate Trajectories of Youth Across Time and Space
Here, I offer a retrospective research narrative of four of my works, Writing in Rhythm: Spoken Word Poetry in Urban Classrooms (published under Maisha T. Fisher, 2007b); Black Literate Lives: Historical and Contemporary Perspectives (published under Maisha T. Fisher, 2009); Writing Instruction in the Culturally Relevant Classroom (with Latrise P. Johnson; Winn & Johnson, 2011); and Girl Time: Literacy, Justice, and the School-to-Prison Pipeline …
Expectations and Realities: Education, the Discipline Gap, and the Experiences of Black Families Migrating to Small Cities
A Transformative Justice Approach to Literacy Education
This department explores how teachers can sustain students’ multilingual literacies and reimagine literacy learning across multiple contexts in conversation with researchers, practitioners, and communities
Building a “Lifetime Circle”: English Education in the Age of #BlackLivesMatter
This article argues that, to prepare teachers in the era of #BlackLivesMatter, there must be a radical reframing of teacher education in which teachers learn to disentangle their teaching from the culture of Mass Incarceration and the criminalization of Black and Brown people in the context of the United States in their practice. Using a restorative justice paradigm, I seek to understand in what ways, if any, teacher training, specifically of Eng…
Still Writing in Rhythm: Youth Poets at Work
In this article, the author uses a “humanizing research” framework to analyze longitudinal data collected over the course of 10 years during a multi-sited ethnography of youth poets in a poetry collective called Power Writing. Using qualitative interviews to understand the role that literacy continues to play in the lives of Power Writing alumni, the author demonstrates how Power Writing continues to influence youth poets’ views on education as t…
This Issue
Transforming Our Mission: Animating Teacher Education through Intersectional Justice
Teacher education programs often focus on developing teaching professionals and leaders committed to advocating for students, yet pervasive deficit mindsets reinforce and (re)produce societal inequities. In this paper, we outline why and how a turn towards justice in teacher education is an appropriate strategy to reduce harm and marginalization in contexts of K-12 schooling. We argue that a justice-grounded teacher education mission must be alig…
Futures Matter: Creating Just Futures in This Age of Hyper-incarceration
What does it mean to teach and learn in this age of hyper-incarceration and the ongoing criminalization of multiply marginalized students and their families? And how can restorative justice be leveraged to initiate and sustain the important community-building and justice work needed in schools in the United States? In this article, the author revisits the four pedagogical stances she believes are foundational starting points for any educator seek…
“Love Liberates: ” A Kitchen Table Talk on Black Liberatory Education
Rooted in the Black feminist tradition, this kitchen table talk brings together scholars who are doing work in the name of liberation. We begin by naming people who ground us in our beings and our work, and from these offerings, we discuss the power of love in the fight for liberation with the hopes of cultivating educational spaces for Black students where they feel loved, seen, validated, and heard. Furthermore, the disruption of the ways knowl…
Restorative Justice, Civic Education, and Transformative Possibilities
Around the country, schools are using restorative justice circles as an approach to conflict resolution among students. This group work focuses on listening and speaking, knowledge sharing, and problem solving; and as such, it serves as an ideal space for civic education. I offer a vision of restorative justice practice in schools that emphasizes its potential to create social networks that are foundational to civic education. I draw on my experi…
Futuring Black Lives: Independent Black Institutions and the Literary Imagination
Looking Back to Look Forward: Leveraging Historical Models for Future-Oriented Caregiving
What can we - as educators, parents, researchers, community members - learn from independent Black institutions about expansive ways to support the well-being of children and their families? And why and how ought we look back to look forward, regarding caregiving that is culturally relevant and sustaining? Here, we explore independent Black institutions as educational contexts in and through which Identity, Purpose, and Direction were cultivated …
Aera Presidential Address 2026 The Future Is Here: Historical Signals in Education Research
This presidential address builds the case that innovations in education should both spark and be grounded in historical methods and foresight thinking. Drawing our attention to historical signals, Winn demonstrates the ethos and strategies of parents, educators, artists, and community members who collectively envisioned and established teaching and learning communities focused on institution building in the decade following the Civil Rights Movem…
Sociology (18 works) · Pedagogy (12 works) · Political science (12 works) · Criminology (9 works) · Critical Race Theory in Education (8 works) · Law (8 works) · Psychology (8 works) · Education Discipline and Inequality (7 works) · Economic Justice (6 works) · Gender Studies (6 works)