1600 Woodland Road
Abington, PA 19001
Biography
Dr. Wozolek currently serves as the Director of Inclusive Excellence and as an Associate Professor of Education at Penn State University, Abington College. Her work considers questions of social justice, qualitative research methods, and teaching practices that focus on the examination of race, sexual orientations, and gender identities (and their multiple forms of expression) across educational contexts. Dr. Wozolek is most recently the recipient of the 2023 Outstanding Book Award from Division B (Curriculum Studies) of the American Educational Research Association (AERA) for her edited book, Black Lives Matter in US Schools: Race, Education, and Resistance (SUNY Press). She is also the recipient of the 2021 “Best Paper Award” from Educational Studies: A Journal of the American Educational Studies Association, the 2021 Early Career Award from the Critical Issues in Curriculum and Cultural Studies special interest group of the American Educational Research Association, and a 2021 recipient of a Critics Choice Book Award for her first book, Assemblages of Violence in Education: Everyday Trajectories of Oppression (Routledge). Most recently, Dr. Wozolek's second monograph, Educational Necropolitics: A Sonic Ethnography of Everyday Racism in U.S. Schools (Routledge), was released in 2023 and she has a second forthcoming edited book with David Lee Carlson, Queer Battle Fatigue: Education, Exhaustion, and Everyday Oppressions (Routledge, Fall 2023). Dr. Wozolek has a forthcoming special issue co-edited with Dr. Walter Gershon (Rowan University) in the Journal of Curriculum Theorizing titled “Sound Traumas: Curricular Attunements for Care and Educational Understandings.” Recent publications by Dr. Wozolek include contributions to Educational Studies, Cultural Studies<>Critical Methodologies, The Urban Review, the Journal of LGBT Youth, the Journal of Gender Studies, and The Journal of Curriculum Pedagogy. Alongside her publications, grants, and teaching responsibilities, Dr. Wozolek is the secretary for Division B (Curriculum Studies) of the American Educational Research Association, the associate editor for the Journal of Educational Foundations, and a section editor for the Journal of Curriculum Theorizing.
Publications
Selected Publications
Books:
Wozolek, B. (in press). Educational necropolitics: A sonic ethnography of everyday racism in U.S. schools. Routledge.
Wozolek, B. (Ed.). (2022). Black lives matter: Race, education, and resistance in US schools. SUNY Press. (Contributors: Yolanda Sealy-Ruiz, Marcelle Haddix, Reagan Mitchell, Denise Taliaferro-Baszile, Ngozi Williams, David O. Stovall, Walter Gershon, Roland Mitchell, Sherick Hughes. Afterward by Lester Spence).
Wozolek, B. (2021). Assemblages of violence in education: Everyday trajectories of oppression.
Routledge.
- Winner: Critic’s Choice Book Award (2021), American Educational Studies Association
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Nominated: Outstanding Book Award, American Educational Research Association, Division B (Curriculum Studies) Gloria E Anzaldua Book Award, National Women’s Studies Association
Journal Articles:
Wozolek, B. (in press). “What does learning sound like?”: Reverberations, curriculum studies, and teacher preparation, Northwest Journal of Teacher Preparation.
Wozolek, B. & Atif, A. (2022). A nice white lady: Critical whiteness studies, teacher education, and city schools, International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education, 35(7), 755-763. DOI: 10.1080/09518398.2022.2061627
- Paper co-authored with a Penn State Abington undergraduate student.
Wozolek, B. & Antell, S. (2022). Curricula of oppressions: Queering elementary school norms and values, International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education. DOI: 10.1080/09518398.2022.2035460.
- Paper co-authored with a Penn State Abington undergraduate student.
Wozolek, B. (2021). “Is your dad a towelhead?”: Capitals of shame and necropolitics in post-9/11 America, Canadian Social Studies, 52(2), 10-21 http://doi.org/10.29173/css27.
Wozolek, B. (2021). Race, gender, and sexual orientations in curriculum studies. In M. Fang He & B. Shubert (Eds.) The Oxford Encyclopedia of Curriculum Studies. New York, NY: Oxford University Press. http://doi.org/10.1093/acrefore/9780190264093.013.1445
Wozolek, B. (2021). “It’s not fiction, it’s my life”: LGBTQ+ youth of color and kinships in an urban middle school, Theory into Practice, 60(1), 94-102. DOI:10.1080/00405841.2020.1829383
Wozolek, B. (2020). Hidden curriculum of violence: Affect, power, and policing the body. Educational Studies, 56(3), 269-285. DOI: 10.1080/00131946.2020.1745808
- Paper received the journal’s “2020 Paper of the Year” Award.
Wozolek, B. (2019). M/othering redux: A reading of curriculum theory to get through sleepless nights. The Journal of Gender Studies, 28(8), 873-882. DOI: 10.1080/09589236.2018.1564649.
Wozolek, B. (2018). Gaslighting queerness: GSAs, schooling, and teachers’ education. Journal of LGBT Youth, 15(4), 319-338. DOI: 10.1080/19361653.2018.1484839.
Wozolek, B. (2018). In 8100 again: The sounds of students breaking. Educational Studies: A Journal of the American Educational Studies Association, 54(4), 367-381. DOI: 10.1080/00131946.2018.1473869.
Wozolek, B. & Mitchell, R. P. (2018). Plastic or phalloplasty: Negotiating masculinity and (cis)gender norms in schools and the academy. The Journal of Curriculum & Pedagogy, 15(3), 318-322. DOI: 10.1080.15505170.2018.1525451.
Wozolek, B. (2018). The mothership connection: Utopian funk from Bethune and beyond. The Urban Review, 50(5), 836-856. DOI: 10.1007/s11256-018-0476-7.
Wozolek, B., Wootton, L., & Demlow, A. (2017). The school-to-coffin pipeline: Queer youth, suicide and resilience of spirit. Cultural Studies <> Critical Methodologies, 17(5), 392-398. DOI: 10.1177/1532708616673659
- Paper co-authored with high school students.
Book Chapters:
Wozolek, B. (in press). Forward: Becoming posthuman social studies. In B. A. Varga, T. Monreal, & R.C. Christ (Eds.), Toward a stranger and more posthuman social studies. Teachers College Press.
Wozolek, B. & Irizarry, J. (in press). Intersectional cartographies: Tracing the contours of the margins. In C.D. Gist & T.J. Bristol (Eds.), The Handbook of Research on Teachers of Color. Routledge.
Wozolek, B. & Huddelston, G. (2022). A curriculum of conflation: Using space and place to tell
“Big Little Lies”. Friedrich, D., Corson, J. & Hollman, D. (Eds.) Pop Culture and Curriculum, Assemble! Exploring the limits of curricular humanism through pop culture. (pp. 191-214). Dio Press.
Wozolek, B. (2020). Intellectual gatekeepers: Reclaiming Black queer youth as the public. In T.C. Wells, D.L Carlson, and M. Koro (Eds.), Intra-Public intellectualism: Critical Qualitative Inquiry in the Academy (pp. 118-133). Myers Educational Press.
Wozolek, B., & Gershon, W. (2019). Ethnography and middle education. In D. Virtue (Ed.), The International Handbook of Middle Level Education Theory, Research, and Policy (pp. 293-302). Routledge.
Wozolek, B. (2019). War of the half-breeds: Communities of color, resistance, and racist education in a high school in the Midwest. In W.S. Gershon (Ed.), Sensuous Curriculum: The Politics of the Senses in Education (pp. 67-84). Information Age Press.