Esther O Ohito
Biographic Data
| ID | 669494 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Esther O Ohito |
| GIVEN NAMES | Esther |
| FAMILY NAME | O Ohito |
| SIGNATURE | OHITO E O |
| AFFILIATIONS | Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-7827-7945 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 36 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 89 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 36 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2016 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 6 |
Methodologies and Epistemologies of the South
This article advances folktales as methodological tools for critical transcultural qualitative inquiry. We argue that mobilizing folktales as methodological pathways and content in transcultural qualitative research disrupts extractive, decontextualized Western research practices by foregrounding Indigenous, embodied, and storied onto-epistemologies. Using decolonial duoethnography, we place our autobiographical narratives in dialogue with the Lu…
Bethwell A. Ogot on Luo conceptions of justice
The Luo are an ethnolinguistic group largely located in East Africa. We engage Luo epistemologies of justice as resources for rethinking social justice education through the perspectives of the late Bethwell A. Ogot, foremost scholar of Luo history and thought. Our analysis is informed by an interview conducted with Ogot in April 2022, during which he shared insights drawn from decades of scholarship on Luo oral traditions, including proverbs, st…
The Educacene
Of a growing list of names that aim to describe our contemporary epoch, the field of curriculum and pedagogy ought to develop another—what might we collectively call the Educacene. Astride the prot
Thinking through decolonizing the hopelessly hegemonic curriculum of gender and sexuality in the present moment
In this article, I grapple with the educational implications of the sociopolitical realities characterizing the uncertainty of the present moment—a time defined by the rise of Trumpism, fascism, and the far right, and the onslaught of racist and anti-2SLGBTQ + legislation amid the ongoing consequences of COVID-19—for the official and unofficial bodies of knowledge about gender and sexuality that are taught and learned in educational spaces. I sha…
I Write With Intent
Writing is widely accepted as an appropriate tool for qualitative research, yet the question of how the entanglement of researchers' politics and positionalities inform the use of this method has been understudied. In this article, we tackle that gap in the extant literature through an improvisational inquiry extending from a Black feminist's written material. We begin by underscoring the generally purposeful nature of Black women's writing. Then…
Black Bullet in the Gun
In this Voices: Reflective Accounts of Education essay, Esther O. Ohito considers with Sherry L. Deckman how silence and silencing are experienced corporeally in socioculturally situated spaces, foregrounding their affective contours and material effects in their exploration of emotionally charged dialogues about race and racism in educational settings. Building their narrative around a Black male teacher candidate’s experience in a social justic…
The white silence(r)
Central to this phenomenological inquiry is the question of how whiteness informs discussions of race(ism) in anti-racist teacher education. I use an intimate pedagogical encounter in a white-dominant space, a teacher education program located in the United States, as a site of analysis. Operating as a sonic cartographer, I notice the verbal and nonverbal soundtrack while narratively mapping words spoken during an affectively charged classroom di…
An intersectional framework for anti-racist pedagogy in uncertain times
Anti-racism is an imperative for those committed to a world and planet free of the manifestations of racial oppression. This correspondence between two critical women teacher educators illustrates ideologically aligned ‘work friends’ theorising anti-racist pedagogy in the context of heightened sociopolitical uncertainty. We explore creative possibilities for uncertainty-oriented anti-racist pedagogy vis-à-vis the aims of inquiry-based, social jus…
(Re)turn Us to Our Names
”Return her to her name, which is her home. Can you not hear that? Her name is Home. She should be there inside her name.”-Alexis Pauline Gumbs, Undrowned, p. 75In our final editorial we, as co-edi
How to creatively theorise the wonder of erotica
Theory provokes and stimulates. This theoretical essay blurs the boundaries between academic and creative non-fiction writing to illustrate Black women artists mining self-serving economies of embodied, affective pleasure by crafting womanist erotica, that is, Black woman/girl-centred, eros-charged art, music, and literature. I play with words to produce a polyvocal diptych essay theorising the wonder of womanist erotica and elucidating my politi…
Education is a white woman’s world”
In this Black feminist critical inquiry, I theorize the politics of race, gender, and geography in the context of a liberatory Black pedagogical space located in the United States. Using curated interview and observation data, I position an anti-racist pedagogue as a cartographer who employed method, content, style, and technique to map freedom routes away from schooling, a Dumasian site of suffering for Black students. I paint a narrative portra…
No Disrespect
This article explores how extracurricular programs designed as interventions in the criminalization of Black girls may constrict their identities. Through a womanist theoretical framework, authors investigate the discourses about Black girlhood that permeate one extracurricular initiative which aims to counter the effects of exclusionary discipline practices on Black girls. The authors find that these discourses advance respectability politics, t…
How to Tame an Imaginary Border
A borderland is a vague and undetermined place created by the emotional residue of an unnatural boundary. It is in a constant state of transition. The prohibited and forbidden are its inhabitants—G
Wading through coloniality
For Examining Power Through Community in the Era of Ongoing Pandemics
Any gains in social justice and racial equity have been and continue to be catalyzed by the collective power of oppressed communities. Among the most prolific models of power through community (edu
Dear Mama
I’m Very Hurt”
There has been a recent rise in research that has attuned to matters of the body in literacy learning. This article is a contribution to that emerging corpus of scholarship. Specifically, the article is a Black feminist narrative inquiry into the undertheorized role of embodiment―and relatedly, the embodied knowing that materializes as emotion or affect―in racial literacy learning. To illustrate, I employed a blend of embodiment, affect, and asse…
Pedagogies of Care, Dignity, Love, and Respect
Fugitivity and Abolition in Educational Research and Practice
Ooh childThings are gonna get easierOoh childThings’ll get brighterSome day, yeahWe’ll put it together and we’ll get it undoneSome dayWhen your head is much lighterSome day, yeahWe’ll walk in the r
Call Us by Our Names
(2021). Call Us by Our Names: A Kitchen-Table Dialogue on Doin' It for the Culture. Equity & Excellence in Education: Vol. 54, For the Culture: (Re)Defining the Future of Equity & Excellence in Education, pp. 1-18
This Moment is the Curriculum
Background: This article explores critical curriculum mapping in experiential education through immersive travel or Study Abroad Programs (SAPs). Purpose: The tetrad of authors theorizes then models the practice of criticality in curriculum mapping for SAPs. Methodology/Approach: Using Black feminist thought as a theoretical moor and dialogue and reflexive narrative as methods, authors present a curriculum mapping framework that is berthed to col…
CER Moderated Discussion on “‘Participation Does Not Equal Voice’
Remembering my memories
Broadly, this article details the imbrication of a Black feminist qualitative researcher’s onto-epistemology and data (meta-) analysis process. I theorize Black feminist memory work, then apply this method by returning to data I collected for a completed research project and meshing those data with a curated selection of thematically connected family photographs. By revisiting and reviewing textual and visual data, I demonstrate the function of B…
Feeling safe from the storm of anti-Blackness
Black affective networks form in evanescent moments when two or more Black people in a white space cluster around a Black feeling and other things. This article is a feminist narrative inquiry into Black affective networks in classrooms on the campuses of Predominantly White Institutions (PWIs) in the United States. Authors inhabit dual roles as researchers and study participants in an investigation of affects that percolated in two classrooms, c…
Storytellin’ by the light of the lantern
(2021). Storytellin' by the light of the lantern: A polyvocal dialogue turnin' towards critical Black curriculum studies. Curriculum Inquiry: Vol. 51, Curricular Confrontations in the Wake of Anti-Blackness and the Break of Black Possibilities, pp. 15-34
Thinking through the flesh
Although the ubiquitous nature of whiteness has been scrutinized in research on teacher preparation in the United States, scholarship on how this concept impinges upon the field’s overall culture, as well as on pedagogy, is scarce. Thus, I perform a critical autoethnographic study on the relationships among whiteness, pedagogy, and urban teacher education. The inquiry threads Critical Race Theory and feminist theorizing on (Black) bodies, affects…
No Disrespect
This article explores how extracurricular programs designed as interventions in the criminalization of Black girls may constrict their identities. Through a womanist theoretical framework, authors investigate the discourses about Black girlhood that permeate one extracurricular initiative which aims to counter the effects of exclusionary discipline practices on Black girls. The authors find that these discourses advance respectability politics, t…
Feeling safe from the storm of anti-Blackness
Black affective networks form in evanescent moments when two or more Black people in a white space cluster around a Black feeling and other things. This article is a feminist narrative inquiry into Black affective networks in classrooms on the campuses of Predominantly White Institutions (PWIs) in the United States. Authors inhabit dual roles as researchers and study participants in an investigation of affects that percolated in two classrooms, c…
Poetically Poking at Language and Power
Entanglements of power, language, identities, and ideologies perturb Black feminist poets and Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) scholars alike. Here, we detail our use of Black feminist poetry to address concerns with rigor in CDA. We marry Black feminist theorizing about language to feminist CDA to illuminate how-for qualitative data analysis-poetry can foster rigor. Poetry also illuminates the suitability of feminist CDA for the Black feminist …
Stirring vulnerability, (un)certainty, and (dis)trust in humanizing research
This article details how the embodied underpinnings of engaging in a duoethnographic collaboration were generative for theorizing and operationalizing humanization in a qualitative inquiry on social justice teacher education. We begin this exploring of humanization by presenting a poetic duoethnographic rendering of memories illustrative of affectively unsettling, racialized encounters re-membered from our lived experiences as two Black teacher e…
I Just Love Black People!”
Remembering my memories
Broadly, this article details the imbrication of a Black feminist qualitative researcher’s onto-epistemology and data (meta-) analysis process. I theorize Black feminist memory work, then apply this method by returning to data I collected for a completed research project and meshing those data with a curated selection of thematically connected family photographs. By revisiting and reviewing textual and visual data, I demonstrate the function of B…
Some of us die
I engage Black feminist thought in this genre-blending text to further theorize Black feminist memory work, a visual research tool for embodied reflexivity. Using my lived experience surviving bereavement, I demonstrate how Black feminist thought—as anchored to the concepts of creation, improvisation, and memory—shaped the aforementioned self-invented method for humanely undertaking the task of heeding the embodied intensities of grief-borne sorr…
How to be an antiracist teacher educator in the United States
I’m Very Hurt”
There has been a recent rise in research that has attuned to matters of the body in literacy learning. This article is a contribution to that emerging corpus of scholarship. Specifically, the article is a Black feminist narrative inquiry into the undertheorized role of embodiment―and relatedly, the embodied knowing that materializes as emotion or affect―in racial literacy learning. To illustrate, I employed a blend of embodiment, affect, and asse…
Reparative readings
Black girls and women in the west reside at the nexus of racism and sexism, pinned down by a vitriolic hate for the black feminised body that is wedded to legacies of slavery. Dominant discourses configure these bodies as animalistic and other (than human), thus informing a range of (educational) policies, practices, and programmes. These narratives shape teachers’ curricular and pedagogical practices in ways that potentially objectify and wound …
Refusing curriculum as a space of death for Black female subjects
The currents of elitism surging through curriculum studies in the United States have long been of chief concern to critical scholars in the field. Elements of this elitism running along racialized, gendered, classed and other such lines elide to marginalize knowledge generated by and about the “other.” For this racialized, gendered, classed and otherwise marked “other,” curriculum can be conceptualized as an unwelcoming and uninhabitable space. I…
Mapping women’s knowledges of antiracist teaching in the United States
The white silence(r)
Central to this phenomenological inquiry is the question of how whiteness informs discussions of race(ism) in anti-racist teacher education. I use an intimate pedagogical encounter in a white-dominant space, a teacher education program located in the United States, as a site of analysis. Operating as a sonic cartographer, I notice the verbal and nonverbal soundtrack while narratively mapping words spoken during an affectively charged classroom di…
Storytellin’ by the light of the lantern
(2021). Storytellin' by the light of the lantern: A polyvocal dialogue turnin' towards critical Black curriculum studies. Curriculum Inquiry: Vol. 51, Curricular Confrontations in the Wake of Anti-Blackness and the Break of Black Possibilities, pp. 15-34
Postscript
Making the Emperor's New Clothes Visible in Anti-Racist Teacher Education
The failures of university-based teacher education programs in the United States with regard to the preparation of White preservice teachers for engagement with students who embody marginalized racial identities in public schools are well documented. One such shortcoming is the inadequate attention paid to the unholy trinity of race, racism, and White supremacy. This article details how I, a Black teacher educator, performed a self-study on my ut…
Reparative readings
Black girls and women in the west reside at the nexus of racism and sexism, pinned down by a vitriolic hate for the black feminised body that is wedded to legacies of slavery. Dominant discourses configure these bodies as animalistic and other (than human), thus informing a range of (educational) policies, practices, and programmes. These narratives shape teachers’ curricular and pedagogical practices in ways that potentially objectify and wound …
Refusing curriculum as a space of death for Black female subjects
The currents of elitism surging through curriculum studies in the United States have long been of chief concern to critical scholars in the field. Elements of this elitism running along racialized, gendered, classed and other such lines elide to marginalize knowledge generated by and about the “other.” For this racialized, gendered, classed and otherwise marked “other,” curriculum can be conceptualized as an unwelcoming and uninhabitable space. I…
Thinking through the flesh
Although the ubiquitous nature of whiteness has been scrutinized in research on teacher preparation in the United States, scholarship on how this concept impinges upon the field’s overall culture, as well as on pedagogy, is scarce. Thus, I perform a critical autoethnographic study on the relationships among whiteness, pedagogy, and urban teacher education. The inquiry threads Critical Race Theory and feminist theorizing on (Black) bodies, affects…
Stirring vulnerability, (un)certainty, and (dis)trust in humanizing research
This article details how the embodied underpinnings of engaging in a duoethnographic collaboration were generative for theorizing and operationalizing humanization in a qualitative inquiry on social justice teacher education. We begin this exploring of humanization by presenting a poetic duoethnographic rendering of memories illustrative of affectively unsettling, racialized encounters re-membered from our lived experiences as two Black teacher e…
Mapping women’s knowledges of antiracist teaching in the United States
I Just Love Black People!”
Postscript
Poetically Poking at Language and Power
Entanglements of power, language, identities, and ideologies perturb Black feminist poets and Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) scholars alike. Here, we detail our use of Black feminist poetry to address concerns with rigor in CDA. We marry Black feminist theorizing about language to feminist CDA to illuminate how-for qualitative data analysis-poetry can foster rigor. Poetry also illuminates the suitability of feminist CDA for the Black feminist …
Some of us die
I engage Black feminist thought in this genre-blending text to further theorize Black feminist memory work, a visual research tool for embodied reflexivity. Using my lived experience surviving bereavement, I demonstrate how Black feminist thought—as anchored to the concepts of creation, improvisation, and memory—shaped the aforementioned self-invented method for humanely undertaking the task of heeding the embodied intensities of grief-borne sorr…
How to be an antiracist teacher educator in the United States
Pedagogies of Care, Dignity, Love, and Respect
Fugitivity and Abolition in Educational Research and Practice
Ooh childThings are gonna get easierOoh childThings’ll get brighterSome day, yeahWe’ll put it together and we’ll get it undoneSome dayWhen your head is much lighterSome day, yeahWe’ll walk in the r
Call Us by Our Names
(2021). Call Us by Our Names: A Kitchen-Table Dialogue on Doin' It for the Culture. Equity & Excellence in Education: Vol. 54, For the Culture: (Re)Defining the Future of Equity & Excellence in Education, pp. 1-18
This Moment is the Curriculum
Background: This article explores critical curriculum mapping in experiential education through immersive travel or Study Abroad Programs (SAPs). Purpose: The tetrad of authors theorizes then models the practice of criticality in curriculum mapping for SAPs. Methodology/Approach: Using Black feminist thought as a theoretical moor and dialogue and reflexive narrative as methods, authors present a curriculum mapping framework that is berthed to col…
CER Moderated Discussion on “‘Participation Does Not Equal Voice’
Remembering my memories
Broadly, this article details the imbrication of a Black feminist qualitative researcher’s onto-epistemology and data (meta-) analysis process. I theorize Black feminist memory work, then apply this method by returning to data I collected for a completed research project and meshing those data with a curated selection of thematically connected family photographs. By revisiting and reviewing textual and visual data, I demonstrate the function of B…
Feeling safe from the storm of anti-Blackness
Black affective networks form in evanescent moments when two or more Black people in a white space cluster around a Black feeling and other things. This article is a feminist narrative inquiry into Black affective networks in classrooms on the campuses of Predominantly White Institutions (PWIs) in the United States. Authors inhabit dual roles as researchers and study participants in an investigation of affects that percolated in two classrooms, c…
Storytellin’ by the light of the lantern
(2021). Storytellin' by the light of the lantern: A polyvocal dialogue turnin' towards critical Black curriculum studies. Curriculum Inquiry: Vol. 51, Curricular Confrontations in the Wake of Anti-Blackness and the Break of Black Possibilities, pp. 15-34
How to Tame an Imaginary Border
A borderland is a vague and undetermined place created by the emotional residue of an unnatural boundary. It is in a constant state of transition. The prohibited and forbidden are its inhabitants—G
Wading through coloniality
For Examining Power Through Community in the Era of Ongoing Pandemics
Any gains in social justice and racial equity have been and continue to be catalyzed by the collective power of oppressed communities. Among the most prolific models of power through community (edu
Dear Mama
I’m Very Hurt”
There has been a recent rise in research that has attuned to matters of the body in literacy learning. This article is a contribution to that emerging corpus of scholarship. Specifically, the article is a Black feminist narrative inquiry into the undertheorized role of embodiment―and relatedly, the embodied knowing that materializes as emotion or affect―in racial literacy learning. To illustrate, I employed a blend of embodiment, affect, and asse…
An intersectional framework for anti-racist pedagogy in uncertain times
Anti-racism is an imperative for those committed to a world and planet free of the manifestations of racial oppression. This correspondence between two critical women teacher educators illustrates ideologically aligned ‘work friends’ theorising anti-racist pedagogy in the context of heightened sociopolitical uncertainty. We explore creative possibilities for uncertainty-oriented anti-racist pedagogy vis-à-vis the aims of inquiry-based, social jus…
Sociology (34 works) · Critical Race Theory in Education (23 works) · Gender Studies (19 works) · Pedagogy (18 works) · Psychology (17 works) · Political science (16 works) · Gender Studies (12 works) · Art (11 works) · Law (10 works) · Aesthetics (9 works)