Michigan State University

Arts and Letters College Directory

Alexis Morgan Young

  • (She/Her)
  • Assistant Professor of Black Feminisms, Genders, and Sexualities
  • African American and African Studies
Biography

Alexis Morgan Young is an Assistant Professor of Black Feminisms, Genders, and Sexualities in the Department of African American and African Studies at Michigan State University. Her research centers the liberatory literacies of Black girls in elementary and middle schools to illuminate the utility of Black girls’ utopian fantasies in world-making projects. She partners with them to co-create spaces that forefront their expertise and utopian fantasies where they dream of otherwise worlds and have their recommendations for the future recognized as valid knowledge. Her work underscores the importance of recognizing Black girls and women  as whole, imaginative beings and challenges us to (re)imagine a world where they are seen as experts of liberation. She holds a Ph.D. in Urban Education from the University of Maryland, College Park, as well as an M.A. in Teaching and Curriculum and a B.A. in Elementary Education, both from Michigan State University.

 

Works

Peer-Reviewed Journal Publications 

  • Young, A. M. (In Press). Subverting the Stargates: Black Girl Protagonist Pursuing Interstellar Emancipation in Space Operas. Science Fiction Film and Television
  • Young, A. M. (Accepted). (Earth)Seeds of Liberation: Using a Parable Praxis to Dream of New Worlds with Black Girls. Taboo: The Journal of Culture and Education
  • Young, A. M. (2021). Witnessing Wonderland: Research with Black girls imagining freer futures. English Teaching: Practice & Critique, 20(4), 420-439.

Book Chapters

  • Turner, B., Douglass, C., Johnson, M., & Young, A. M. (In Press). When the theory is your life: Black critical theory as embodied methodology. In Laing, T. & McPherson, E. (Eds.) On brilliance and resilience in education: Black student support networks from G.E.D to Ph.D. SUNY Press.
  • Johnson, A. C., Young, A. M., & Turner, J. D. (2024) Holy by our own: Theorizing Black girl divine love. In A. Griffin & Y. Sealy-Ruiz (Eds.), All About Black Girl Love in Education (pp. 183-197). Routledge.
  • Young, A.M., Johnson, M., Douglass, C., & Turner, B. O. (2023). Cultivating a conscious cohort: Sisterhood as a site of institutional change. In Fries-Britt, S & Kelly, B. T. (Eds.) Black Women Navigating the Doctoral Journey (pp. 125-138). Routledge.
  • Gibbs Grey, T., Turner, J. D., Young, A. M. (2023). All the stars are closer: Black girl multimodal practices for time traveling in a dystopian world. In Silvestri, K., Barrett, N. Nyachae, T. M. (Eds.) Toward Critical Multimodality: Theory, Research, and Practice in Transformative Educational Spaces. IAP.

 

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