Caroline Clark

Caroline T. Clark is Professor in the Department of Teaching and Learning and has been a faculty member on the Columbus campus of the Ohio State University since 1996. She specializes in English education, adolescent literacies, community engagement, and supporting diverse people in schools, especially LGBTQ and gender creative students. She is the Faculty Lead for the English Language Arts AYA 7-12 licensure program and teaches graduate and undergraduate courses on methods of teaching literature to middle and high school students and on adolescent literacies.

• Doctor of Philosophy in Educational Studies (Language, Literacy and Culture), University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI, 1996
• Master of Arts in Educational Studies (Reading and Literacy), University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI, 1993
•  Bachelor of Arts, English and Education, Indiana University, Bloomington, IN, 1986

• Access and Equity
• Children's Literature
• Cultural Studies
• Curriculum and Instruction
• English Language and Literature
• English/Language Arts Teacher Education
  • Active approaches
  • Curriculum
  • Initial teacher licensure
  • Literature
  • Pedagogy
  • Practitioner inquiry
  • Young adult literature
• Equity
• Junior High/Intermediate/Middle School Education and Teaching
• LGBTQ+ Studies
• Literacy
  • Adolescent literacies
  • Critical literacies
  • Family and community literacies
• Secondary Education and Teaching
• Social Justice
  • Antiracist teaching and teacher education
  • Critical approaches to SEL
  • Culturally responsive and sustaining pedagogies
  • Disability Critical Race Theory (DisCrit)
  • Queer-inclusive teaching and teacher education
• Teacher Education
• Young Adult (Adolescent) Literature

Clark’s research focuses on language and literacy practices and collaborative research with teachers, young people, and families in service of advocacy for social justice. She received the AERA Queer Studies SIG Body of Work Award in 2019. For over 12 years, she co-led a teacher-inquiry group whose purposes have ranged from using literature, film, and other media to combat homophobia and heterosexism in classrooms, to examining how LGBTQIA+ youth and families experience support and non-support in schools. She does this work through the frameworks of collaborative and practitioner inquiry and using ethnographic methods and Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA). Currently, she is researching antiracist approaches to teacher education with collaborators from 5 other teacher ed programs across the U.S.; and collaboratively creating critical race media literacy curricula with local teachers. She is also engaged in an ongoing, critical examination of social emotional learning (SEL), using Disability Critical Race Theory (DisCrit) and CDA to consider the social effects of SEL standards on multiply marginalized people, and examining representations of anger and other emotions in young adult literature.

Teaching

• EDUTL 8301: Research & Theory on Adolescent, Post-Secondary, and Community Literacies
• EDUTL 5346: Teacher Inquiry and Methods: Literature
• EDULT 6052: Classroom-Based Inquiry 

• Body of Work Award, Queer Studies Special Interest Group, American Educational Research Association, 2019
• Philip C. Chinn Book Award for the book Acting Out!: Combating Homophobia through Teacher Activism, National Association for Multicultural Education, 2011 
• Richard A. Meade Award for the book Acting Out!: Combating Homophobia throughTeacher Activism, Conference on English Education, National Council of Teachers of English, 2011
• Choice Award for the book Acting Out!: Combating Homophobia through Teacher Activism, American Library Association, 2011
• School of Teaching and Learning Probationary Faculty Research Award,1999 
• Jason Millman Promising Scholar Award Finalist, Cornell University, 1998
• Walgreen Award for Student Research in Literacy, University of Michigan, 1996
• Spencer Foundation Dissertation Fellowship, 1994
• Rackham Research Partnership Fellowship, University of Michigan,1994
• Prechter Scholarship in Reading, Literacy, and Language, University of Michigan, 1993

• Hashamova, Y. & Clark, C. T. “Fostering Racial Justice by Supporting Teachers in Creating and Implementing a Critical Race Media Literacy Curriculum for Middle and High Schools: Teacher Professional Development and Student Learning.” Global Arts and Humanities Discovery Theme Racial Justice and Community Engagement Grants.
• Clark, C. T., “Becoming Antiracist Educators in Partisan, Post-Pandemic Times.” Drake Institute for Teaching & Learning, Research and Implementation Grant.
• Clark, C. T. “Using Dialogic, Digital Tools to Decenter Whiteness in Teaching.” Drake Institute for Teaching & Learning, Scholarship of Teaching and Learning Grant.
• Clark, C. T.  “Supporting Parent and Teaching Learning Through a Culturally-Sustaining, Community-Based Partnership.” Ohio Department of Education, Office for Exceptional Children.

• Clark, C. T., Chrisman, A., & Lewis, S. (in press). (Un)standardizing emotions: An ethical critique of social and emotional learning standards using Discrit and CDA. Teachers College Record.
• Clark, C. T. & Penn, J. (in press). Family involvement, intersectionality, and critical digital storytelling. In, B. Guzzetti (Ed.), Genders, Cultures, and Literacies: Understanding Intersecting Identities. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
• Clark, C. T. & Williams, J. D. (In Press). Queer young adult literature. In K. K. Strunk & S. A. Shelton (Eds.), Encyclopedia of Queer Studies in Education. Boston, MA: Brill.
• Clark, C. T., Chrisman, A., & Lewis, S. (2021). Using picturebooks to teach with and against social and emotional learning. Language Arts, 98(5), 246-259.
• Clark, C. T. & Williams, J. (2020). The discursive construction of safe and subversive space in an ELA classroom. In Dyches, J., Sams, B., & Boyd, A. (Eds.). Acts of Resistance: Subversive Teaching in the English Language Arts Classroom. Gotham, ME: Myers Education Press.
• Penn, J. I, Clark, C. T., & Williams, J. (2018). Queering conventional narrative elements with Lily and Dunkin. In Greathouse, P., Eisenbach, B., & Kaywell, J. (Eds.) Queer adolescent literature as a complement to the English Language Arts curriculum. Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield.
• Blackburn, M. V., Clark, C. T., & Schey, R. (2018). Stepping up!: Teachers advocating for sexual and gender diversity in schools. New York: Routledge.

• Clark, C. T., Chrisman, A., & Lewis, S. G. (April, 2021). The productive potential of anger in YA literature as a force for social change. Paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the American Educational Research Association, Virtual Meeting.
• Clark, C. T., Chrisman, A., & Lewis, S. G. (February, 2021). Critical literacy and social emotional learning in the ELA classroom. Paper presented at the Ohio Council of Teachers of English Annual Conference, Virtual Meeting.
• Clark, C. T. & Williams, J. (November, 2020). The discursive construction of safe and subversive spaces in ELA classrooms. Paper presented at the National Council of Teachers of English Annual Convention, Virtual Meeting.
• Clark, C. T. & Chrisman, A. (April, 2020). Schooling emotions: Bringing a DisCrit lens to bear on SEL standards. Paper prepared for the Annual Meeting of the American Educational Research Association, Virtual Meeting.
• Chrisman, A., & Clark, C. T. (April, 2020). Self-management or social change? Representations of anger in SEL materials and children’s and young adult literature. Paper prepared for the Annual Meeting of the American Educational Research Association, Virtual Meeting.
• Clark, C. T., Chrisman, A., & Lewis, S. (February, 2020). (Un)Standardizing emotions: Using DisCrit and CDA to surface ideologies and critique damaging discourses in SEL. Paper presented at the National Council of Teachers of English Assembly for Research, Nashville, TN.
• Chrisman, A. & Clark, C. T. (February, 2020). Self-control, social change, and literacy learning: Representations of anger in SEL materials and children’s and YA literature. Paper presented at the National Council of Teachers of English Assembly for Research, Nashville, TN.