Nathaniel Bryan
Biographic Data
| ID | 4469128 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Nathaniel Bryan |
| GIVEN NAMES | Nathaniel |
| FAMILY NAME | Bryan |
| SIGNATURE | BRYAN N |
| AFFILIATIONS | Miami University |
| ORCID | 0000-0003-3275-5830 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 22 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 95 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 21 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 1 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2016 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 6 |
Centering Black Boys: Theorizing Humanity, Play, and Joy in Contemporary Children's Literature
Drawing from theories of humanity, knowledge, play, and representation, this article theorizes the narratives told about Black boys in children's literature from 2002 to 2025. Through a critical content analysis of 18 picture books, the authors examine how Black boys are depicted across stories, emphasizing representations that affirm their full humanity. This study explores how children's literature serves as a site of sociocultural meaning-maki…
From anti-Black violence to pro-Black protections: Black male teachers protecting Black boys in the early grades
There has been an emphasis, and in some cases, an overemphasis, on the anti-Black violence, suffering, and pain Black children experience and have experienced in early childhood classrooms. Early childhood scholars have underscored the five historical and contemporary types of anti-Black violence (e.g., physical, symbolic, linguistic, curricular/pedagogical, and systemic school) to which most teachers intentionally or unintentionally subject Blac…
The Good Cops, Bad Cops, Bullets, and Wounds: Toward Culturally Sustaining Prison Abolition Literacies in Early Childhood Education
Dominant discourses on the prison industrial complex/ mass incarceration tend to prioritize the experiences of Black adults. However, Black children are dual victims of the prison industrial complex. By that, we mean that they are subjected to incarceration in and beyond early childhood education, and the negative impact of the incarceration of parents/caregivers and other family members. With such considerations in mind, early childhood teachers…
ToponomiCrit: A theory for decolonization and dewhitesupremacization
Critical Race Theory and Classroom Practice
Toward What Justice and Justice for Whom? A BlackCrit Meditation on and against Miami University’s Department of Teaching, Curriculum, and Educational Inquiry’s Threshold Concepts
This article is my personal and decidedly unapologetic Black meditation on and against the threshold concepts the Department of Teaching, Curriculum, and Educational Inquiry, where I formerly taught has embraced as a means of addressing issues of social justice. Threshold concepts are a set of guide posts to enact change. Drawing on Black critical theory, this article argues that the concepts ignore Black suffering in and beyond K-12 schools and,…
They can play, but: Investigating teachers' use of exclusionary discipline practices as anti-Black misandric restrictions of Black boyhood play in early childhood classrooms
Living within it all”: Black Critical Theory, Imprisoned Black Radical Tradition, and the art of BlackCrit Portraiture to center voices from sites of incarceration
The voices of individuals who are incarcerated are missing from Black education research. Drawing from Black Critical theory, Imprisoned Black Radical Tradition, and the art of what we term BlackCrit portraiture, we center voices from sites of incarceration. Implications and recommendations are provided for Black education.Keywords: Black Critical TheoryBlack educationImprisoned Black Radical Tradition Disclosure statementNo potential conflict of…
Prison abolition literacies as Pro-Black pedagogy in early childhood education
The prison abolition movement has brought attention to the American carceral crisis, or better yet, the mass incarceration and disproportionate criminalization of Black people in America. It has also led to and fomented recent calls to defund prison systems, the police, and to remove police from schools. While discussions of prison abolition have been addressed in the carceral studies literature, they are seldom addressed in the education literat…
The Impact of Classroom Practices: Teacher Educators’ Reflections on Culturally Relevant Teachers
Debates regarding the qualities, skills, and dispositions of culturally relevant teachers and teaching have raged in teacher education for several decades. Ladson-Billings’ (2009) The Dreamkeepers: Successful Teachers of African American Children was a groundbreaking work that has become a foundational study that informs the work of culturally-relevant (Ladson-Billings, 2009) and culturally-sustaining (Paris & Alim, 2017) teaching. In her book Th…
To Me, He Teaches Like the Child Learns: ” Black Maternal Caregivers on the Pedagogies and Schooling Practices of a Black Male Kindergarten Teacher
Respecting a Cultural Continuum of Black Male Pedagogy: Exploring the Life History of a Black Male Middle School Teacher
Black male teachers tend to enact culturally relevant pedagogical practices that support the academic achievement, cultural competence, and critical consciousness of Black male students. Using critical race theory, culturally relevant pedagogy, and life history methodology, we explore the life history and work of a Black male middle school teacher to examine ways in which his historical, societal, institutional, and communal and personal experien…
Remembering Tamir Rice and Other Black Boy Victims: Imagining Black PlayCrit Literacies Inside and Outside Urban Literacy Education
Building on Critical Race Theory, Black Critical Theory in education (BlackCrit), and Black Male Studies (BMS), the author theorizes what he terms Black PlayCrit and, by extension, Black PlayCrit Literacies. Black PlayCrit brings attention to the specificity of Blackness and anti-Black misandric violence in the play experiences of Black boys, including Tamir Rice, who was murdered by two police officers while playing with a toy gun in a public pa…
A Seat at the Kitchen Table: The Lived Experiences of Black Female Preservice Teachers in an Urban Education Cohort
The authors of this qualitative study provided Black female preservice teachers in an urban cohort at a predominantly white institution a seat at the kitchen table to share their racialized and gendered experiences. The research questions centered around the experiences of Black female preservice teachers, their participation in anti-racist spaces, and the role of critical for teacher educator programs in coursework and program development. The a…
Challenging Traditional Conceptions of English Curricula & Pedagogy: A Review of Literature on Teaching Critical Literacy through Political Music
In this review, we synthesise literature that draws on ‘political music’ as a curricular and pedagogical tool to support students’ critical literacy development. By using contextually relevant, politically oriented songs, teachers can foster critical literacy opportunities for students to cooperatively and collaboratively engage in ‘reading’, thinking about, and discussing social issues and inequities within their communities and society. The fol…
Show Us the Love: Revolutionary Teaching in (Un)Critical Times
Playing school”: Creating possibilities to inspire future Black male teachers through culturally relevant play
Purpose Much of the extant research literature on the initiatives to attract, inspire and recruit Black males to the teaching profession has focused on middle and high school students. Black boys’ socialization into dominant narratives regarding who can and cannot become teachers occurs as early as in early childhood classrooms; however, little attention has been given to ways to attract, inspire and recruit them to the professional teaching rank…
Shaking the bad boys: Troubling the criminalization of black boys’ childhood play, hegemonic white masculinity and femininity, and the school playground-to-prison pipeline
Few studies have sought to understand the childhood play experiences of Black boys in early childhood education (ECE), and a majority of those that investigate them often socially construct Black boys’ play as criminal, dangerous, and monstrous. Considering the dangers of hegemonic masculinity and femininity or the racial and gendered power and privilege White boys and girls bring to societal spaces including playgrounds, little is known about ho…
Playing with or like the girls’: Advancing the performance of ‘multiple masculinities in Black boys’ childhood play’ in U.S. early childhood classrooms
Play is a gendered activity among young children, especially boys. Boys often tend to be more actively engaged in the (re)production of gendered play. However, most research studies and conceptual papers have misread, ignored, devalued, or scrutinized the gendered ways Black boys engage in play. This idea is particularly true for Black boys who may not play within the monolithic gendered expectations of childhood play. Drawing from [Connell, R. W…
White Teachers’ Role in Sustaining the School-to-Prison Pipeline: Recommendations for Teacher Education
Using our voices, losing our bodies: Michael Brown, Trayvon Martin, and the spirit murders of Black male professors in the academy
The recent deaths of Michael Brown, Trayvon Martin, and other Black males have generated new civil rights urgencies in Black communities and spirited academic discourses in higher education regarding the educational and social plight of Black males in America. Connecting the deaths of Black males to our lived experiences in the academy, we use a text messaging performative writing style to demonstrate how Black males are not only gunned down in t…
Preparing Black Male Teachers for the Gifted Classroom: Recommendations for Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs)
Shaking the bad boys: Troubling the criminalization of black boys’ childhood play, hegemonic white masculinity and femininity, and the school playground-to-prison pipeline
Few studies have sought to understand the childhood play experiences of Black boys in early childhood education (ECE), and a majority of those that investigate them often socially construct Black boys’ play as criminal, dangerous, and monstrous. Considering the dangers of hegemonic masculinity and femininity or the racial and gendered power and privilege White boys and girls bring to societal spaces including playgrounds, little is known about ho…
Using our voices, losing our bodies: Michael Brown, Trayvon Martin, and the spirit murders of Black male professors in the academy
The recent deaths of Michael Brown, Trayvon Martin, and other Black males have generated new civil rights urgencies in Black communities and spirited academic discourses in higher education regarding the educational and social plight of Black males in America. Connecting the deaths of Black males to our lived experiences in the academy, we use a text messaging performative writing style to demonstrate how Black males are not only gunned down in t…
White Teachers’ Role in Sustaining the School-to-Prison Pipeline: Recommendations for Teacher Education
Remembering Tamir Rice and Other Black Boy Victims: Imagining Black PlayCrit Literacies Inside and Outside Urban Literacy Education
Building on Critical Race Theory, Black Critical Theory in education (BlackCrit), and Black Male Studies (BMS), the author theorizes what he terms Black PlayCrit and, by extension, Black PlayCrit Literacies. Black PlayCrit brings attention to the specificity of Blackness and anti-Black misandric violence in the play experiences of Black boys, including Tamir Rice, who was murdered by two police officers while playing with a toy gun in a public pa…
Show Us the Love: Revolutionary Teaching in (Un)Critical Times
Respecting a Cultural Continuum of Black Male Pedagogy: Exploring the Life History of a Black Male Middle School Teacher
Black male teachers tend to enact culturally relevant pedagogical practices that support the academic achievement, cultural competence, and critical consciousness of Black male students. Using critical race theory, culturally relevant pedagogy, and life history methodology, we explore the life history and work of a Black male middle school teacher to examine ways in which his historical, societal, institutional, and communal and personal experien…
Playing with or like the girls’: Advancing the performance of ‘multiple masculinities in Black boys’ childhood play’ in U.S. early childhood classrooms
Play is a gendered activity among young children, especially boys. Boys often tend to be more actively engaged in the (re)production of gendered play. However, most research studies and conceptual papers have misread, ignored, devalued, or scrutinized the gendered ways Black boys engage in play. This idea is particularly true for Black boys who may not play within the monolithic gendered expectations of childhood play. Drawing from [Connell, R. W…
Living within it all”: Black Critical Theory, Imprisoned Black Radical Tradition, and the art of BlackCrit Portraiture to center voices from sites of incarceration
The voices of individuals who are incarcerated are missing from Black education research. Drawing from Black Critical theory, Imprisoned Black Radical Tradition, and the art of what we term BlackCrit portraiture, we center voices from sites of incarceration. Implications and recommendations are provided for Black education.Keywords: Black Critical TheoryBlack educationImprisoned Black Radical Tradition Disclosure statementNo potential conflict of…
Centering Black Boys: Theorizing Humanity, Play, and Joy in Contemporary Children's Literature
Drawing from theories of humanity, knowledge, play, and representation, this article theorizes the narratives told about Black boys in children's literature from 2002 to 2025. Through a critical content analysis of 18 picture books, the authors examine how Black boys are depicted across stories, emphasizing representations that affirm their full humanity. This study explores how children's literature serves as a site of sociocultural meaning-maki…
Playing school”: Creating possibilities to inspire future Black male teachers through culturally relevant play
Purpose Much of the extant research literature on the initiatives to attract, inspire and recruit Black males to the teaching profession has focused on middle and high school students. Black boys’ socialization into dominant narratives regarding who can and cannot become teachers occurs as early as in early childhood classrooms; however, little attention has been given to ways to attract, inspire and recruit them to the professional teaching rank…
Preparing Black Male Teachers for the Gifted Classroom: Recommendations for Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs)
Using our voices, losing our bodies: Michael Brown, Trayvon Martin, and the spirit murders of Black male professors in the academy
The recent deaths of Michael Brown, Trayvon Martin, and other Black males have generated new civil rights urgencies in Black communities and spirited academic discourses in higher education regarding the educational and social plight of Black males in America. Connecting the deaths of Black males to our lived experiences in the academy, we use a text messaging performative writing style to demonstrate how Black males are not only gunned down in t…
Preparing Black Male Teachers for the Gifted Classroom: Recommendations for Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs)
White Teachers’ Role in Sustaining the School-to-Prison Pipeline: Recommendations for Teacher Education
Playing school”: Creating possibilities to inspire future Black male teachers through culturally relevant play
Purpose Much of the extant research literature on the initiatives to attract, inspire and recruit Black males to the teaching profession has focused on middle and high school students. Black boys’ socialization into dominant narratives regarding who can and cannot become teachers occurs as early as in early childhood classrooms; however, little attention has been given to ways to attract, inspire and recruit them to the professional teaching rank…
Shaking the bad boys: Troubling the criminalization of black boys’ childhood play, hegemonic white masculinity and femininity, and the school playground-to-prison pipeline
Few studies have sought to understand the childhood play experiences of Black boys in early childhood education (ECE), and a majority of those that investigate them often socially construct Black boys’ play as criminal, dangerous, and monstrous. Considering the dangers of hegemonic masculinity and femininity or the racial and gendered power and privilege White boys and girls bring to societal spaces including playgrounds, little is known about ho…
Playing with or like the girls’: Advancing the performance of ‘multiple masculinities in Black boys’ childhood play’ in U.S. early childhood classrooms
Play is a gendered activity among young children, especially boys. Boys often tend to be more actively engaged in the (re)production of gendered play. However, most research studies and conceptual papers have misread, ignored, devalued, or scrutinized the gendered ways Black boys engage in play. This idea is particularly true for Black boys who may not play within the monolithic gendered expectations of childhood play. Drawing from [Connell, R. W…
Show Us the Love: Revolutionary Teaching in (Un)Critical Times
A Seat at the Kitchen Table: The Lived Experiences of Black Female Preservice Teachers in an Urban Education Cohort
The authors of this qualitative study provided Black female preservice teachers in an urban cohort at a predominantly white institution a seat at the kitchen table to share their racialized and gendered experiences. The research questions centered around the experiences of Black female preservice teachers, their participation in anti-racist spaces, and the role of critical for teacher educator programs in coursework and program development. The a…
Challenging Traditional Conceptions of English Curricula & Pedagogy: A Review of Literature on Teaching Critical Literacy through Political Music
In this review, we synthesise literature that draws on ‘political music’ as a curricular and pedagogical tool to support students’ critical literacy development. By using contextually relevant, politically oriented songs, teachers can foster critical literacy opportunities for students to cooperatively and collaboratively engage in ‘reading’, thinking about, and discussing social issues and inequities within their communities and society. The fol…
The Impact of Classroom Practices: Teacher Educators’ Reflections on Culturally Relevant Teachers
Debates regarding the qualities, skills, and dispositions of culturally relevant teachers and teaching have raged in teacher education for several decades. Ladson-Billings’ (2009) The Dreamkeepers: Successful Teachers of African American Children was a groundbreaking work that has become a foundational study that informs the work of culturally-relevant (Ladson-Billings, 2009) and culturally-sustaining (Paris & Alim, 2017) teaching. In her book Th…
To Me, He Teaches Like the Child Learns: ” Black Maternal Caregivers on the Pedagogies and Schooling Practices of a Black Male Kindergarten Teacher
Respecting a Cultural Continuum of Black Male Pedagogy: Exploring the Life History of a Black Male Middle School Teacher
Black male teachers tend to enact culturally relevant pedagogical practices that support the academic achievement, cultural competence, and critical consciousness of Black male students. Using critical race theory, culturally relevant pedagogy, and life history methodology, we explore the life history and work of a Black male middle school teacher to examine ways in which his historical, societal, institutional, and communal and personal experien…
Remembering Tamir Rice and Other Black Boy Victims: Imagining Black PlayCrit Literacies Inside and Outside Urban Literacy Education
Building on Critical Race Theory, Black Critical Theory in education (BlackCrit), and Black Male Studies (BMS), the author theorizes what he terms Black PlayCrit and, by extension, Black PlayCrit Literacies. Black PlayCrit brings attention to the specificity of Blackness and anti-Black misandric violence in the play experiences of Black boys, including Tamir Rice, who was murdered by two police officers while playing with a toy gun in a public pa…
Prison abolition literacies as Pro-Black pedagogy in early childhood education
The prison abolition movement has brought attention to the American carceral crisis, or better yet, the mass incarceration and disproportionate criminalization of Black people in America. It has also led to and fomented recent calls to defund prison systems, the police, and to remove police from schools. While discussions of prison abolition have been addressed in the carceral studies literature, they are seldom addressed in the education literat…
Living within it all”: Black Critical Theory, Imprisoned Black Radical Tradition, and the art of BlackCrit Portraiture to center voices from sites of incarceration
The voices of individuals who are incarcerated are missing from Black education research. Drawing from Black Critical theory, Imprisoned Black Radical Tradition, and the art of what we term BlackCrit portraiture, we center voices from sites of incarceration. Implications and recommendations are provided for Black education.Keywords: Black Critical TheoryBlack educationImprisoned Black Radical Tradition Disclosure statementNo potential conflict of…
Critical Race Theory and Classroom Practice
Toward What Justice and Justice for Whom? A BlackCrit Meditation on and against Miami University’s Department of Teaching, Curriculum, and Educational Inquiry’s Threshold Concepts
This article is my personal and decidedly unapologetic Black meditation on and against the threshold concepts the Department of Teaching, Curriculum, and Educational Inquiry, where I formerly taught has embraced as a means of addressing issues of social justice. Threshold concepts are a set of guide posts to enact change. Drawing on Black critical theory, this article argues that the concepts ignore Black suffering in and beyond K-12 schools and,…
They can play, but: Investigating teachers' use of exclusionary discipline practices as anti-Black misandric restrictions of Black boyhood play in early childhood classrooms
From anti-Black violence to pro-Black protections: Black male teachers protecting Black boys in the early grades
There has been an emphasis, and in some cases, an overemphasis, on the anti-Black violence, suffering, and pain Black children experience and have experienced in early childhood classrooms. Early childhood scholars have underscored the five historical and contemporary types of anti-Black violence (e.g., physical, symbolic, linguistic, curricular/pedagogical, and systemic school) to which most teachers intentionally or unintentionally subject Blac…
The Good Cops, Bad Cops, Bullets, and Wounds: Toward Culturally Sustaining Prison Abolition Literacies in Early Childhood Education
Dominant discourses on the prison industrial complex/ mass incarceration tend to prioritize the experiences of Black adults. However, Black children are dual victims of the prison industrial complex. By that, we mean that they are subjected to incarceration in and beyond early childhood education, and the negative impact of the incarceration of parents/caregivers and other family members. With such considerations in mind, early childhood teachers…
ToponomiCrit: A theory for decolonization and dewhitesupremacization
Centering Black Boys: Theorizing Humanity, Play, and Joy in Contemporary Children's Literature
Drawing from theories of humanity, knowledge, play, and representation, this article theorizes the narratives told about Black boys in children's literature from 2002 to 2025. Through a critical content analysis of 18 picture books, the authors examine how Black boys are depicted across stories, emphasizing representations that affirm their full humanity. This study explores how children's literature serves as a site of sociocultural meaning-maki…
Sociology (18 works) · Critical Race Theory in Education (17 works) · Gender Studies (16 works) · Pedagogy (12 works) · Political science (12 works) · Psychology (12 works) · Black male (11 works) · Education Discipline and Inequality (11 works) · Early Childhood Education and Development (10 works) · Law (9 works)