Emery Petchauer
petchau1@msu.edu
517-884-4413
C600 Wells Hall
619 Red Cedar Rd
East Lansing, MI 48824
FacultyEnglish
Professor
English Education; Race and Ethnic Studies; Urban Education; Teacher Education & Licensure; Hip-Hop Studies; Sound Studies
Biography
Emery Petchauer is a Professor in the Department of English. He also holds a faculty appointment in the Department of Teacher Education and coordinated the secondary English education program from 2016 to 2022. His research has focused on the aesthetic practices of urban arts, particularly hip-hop culture, and their connections to teaching, learning, and living. He is the author of Hip-Hop Culture in College Students’ Lives (Routledge, 2012), the first scholarly study of hip-hop culture on college campuses, and the co-editor of Schooling Hip-Hop: Expanding Hip-Hop Based Education Across the Curriculum (Teachers College Press, 2013). Over two decades of organizing and sustaining urban arts spaces across the United States inform this scholarly work.
Dr. Petchauer has also studied high-stakes teacher licensure exams and their relationship to the racial diversity of the teaching profession, a body of research that received the 2018 Innovation in Research on Equity and Social Justice in Teacher Education Award from Division K of the American Educational Research Association. The insights from this research are reflected most clearly in Navigating Teacher Licensure Exams: Success and Self-Discovery on the High-Stakes Path to the Classroom (Routledge, 2019). His co-edited book Teacher Education across Minority-Serving Institutions (Rutgers University Press, 2017) addresses the topic of teacher racial diversity from institutional perspectives, highlighting the ways Historically Black Colleges and Universities; Tribal Colleges and Universities; Hispanic Serving Institutions; and Asian American and Native American Pacific Islander-Serving Institutions educate and prepare teachers of Color.
Dr. Petchauer’s most recent work draws from sound studies and sound practice in both content and form, publishing in scholarly genres such as web texts and audio essays. Publishing in these genres has drawn from skills and sensibilities cultivated from 20+ years of turntablist/DJ artistry far outside of academe and his more recent, growing expertise and formal study of sound design and synthesis.
Dr. Petchauer has received teaching awards at both the high school and college levels, including the Board of Trustees Distinguished Teaching Award at Lincoln University in Pennsylvania, the nation’s first Historically Black University. His courses and research projects regularly collaborate with teaching artists, classroom teachers, activists, and community organizers. These collaborations have resulted in the People’s Sound Studio, the Sound it Out exhibit, and other public sites of witness. His scholarship and community work have been supported by the Spencer Foundation, the Office of Research and Innovation at MSU, and partnerships with Ableton and Koala Sampler.
Information on his most current projects can be found here.
Projects
Forms of Freedom: The Art and Design of Black and Indigenous Creative Public Pedagogies
This participatory research project explores the educational justice work of three Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC) creative public pedagogy collectives. The project explores the following questions: 1) How do these creative public pedagogy collectives evolve to sustain themselves over time amidst changing conditions? 2) How do their cultural products of making/educating operate as radical forms of pedagogy? Funded by the Spencer Foundation racial equity grants program.
Your Sound Sets Me Free: Literacy in the Groove
This research project explores literacy and literacy learning in community settings where youth and adults make beats, scratch records, play musical instruments, tinker with digital audio workstations, and make a lot of noise. The project assembles an emergent network of musicians and sound artists in the Detroit metro area for these space-making activities. Three questions drive this project: 1. How literacy formations circulate through community networks. 2. How artists working in the aural humanities learn to teach. 3. How young people use sound to compose about their vision of justice. Funded by the Humanities Arts and Research Program development grant at Michigan State University. Supported by Ableton education trade-in program and Koala Sampler.
Awards and Honors
Visiting Scholar
Racial Literacy Project, Teachers College, Columbia University
2022
Innovation in Research on Equity and Social Justice in Teacher Education Award
American Educational Research Association, Division K (Teaching and Teacher Education)
2018
Exemplary Research in Teaching and Teacher Education Award
American Educational Research Association, Division K (Teaching and Teacher Education)
2018
Outstanding Service Award
Urban Education (Journal)
2018
Faculty Fellow
MSU Hub for Innovation in Technology and Learning
2018-2019
Board of Trustees Distinguished Teaching Award
Lincoln University (PA)
2009
Courses
ENG 308: Young Adult Literature + Antiracist Teaching
ENG 408: Critical Literacies and Communities
ENG 413: Critical Questions in Language and Composition
ENG 819: Breakbeat Lit: Hip-Hop Generation Sounds and Stories
TE 250: Human Diversity, Power, and Opportunity in Social Institutions
TE 302: Learners and Learning in Context
TE 850: Critical Readings in Children’s and Adolescent Literature
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