Stephanie Toliver
Assistant Professor, Curriculum and Instruction
Stories can be interventions with the power to (re)shape collective memory and understanding. Works like Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart exposed the complex realities of colonialism, while Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle illuminated social injustices that sparked legislative reform. John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath ignited movements for farmworkers’ rights, and James Baldwin’s The Fire Next Time forced readers to reckon with the deep-seated racial inequities that permeated American society. In each instance, stories carved out new spaces of understanding, interrupting narratives of power and creating alternative points of meaning that challenged established historical and social knowledge. Because stories are powerful instruments that can be used to control or liberate, change or stagnate, express or suppress, it is no wonder why they are strategically shared or censored in one of the nation’s most contentious battlegrounds: schools. Considering how stories have been used as weapons to bolster or challenge the dominant story, it is crucial for people to recognize the power of stories and how personal ideologies shape the stories we read, share, and believe. So, in this hands-on talk, Toliver considers how the stories we live by and the narratives we read affect the futures we can imagine…or deny.
Stephanie R. Toliver ‘s research employs creativity and imagination as tools to confront systemic inequities and promote more equitable education environments, and her scholarship centers the freedom dreams of Black youth and honors the historical legacy that Black imaginations have had and will have on activism and social change. She is the author of the award-winning book, Recovering Black Storytelling in Qualitative Research: Endarkened Storywork, and her academic work has been published in several journals, including Equity, Excellence, & Education; Journal of Literacy Research; and Teachers College Record. Her public scholarship has been featured in the Chicago Tribune, Ms. Magazine, and Visible Magazine.
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