Under the Gaze

Learning to be Black in White Society

Jennifer Kelly

This book deals with the perceptions and experiences of Black Canadian high school students growing up in a White-dominated society. Using student narratives, the book gives an insight and understanding of the process of racialization as it relates to popular culture, gender, and relationship with peers. Student voices reveal a complex identity formation drawing on various sources and multiple meanings as they learn to be Black in a White society.

About the Author

Jennifer Kelly is Associate Professor in the Department of Education Policy Studies at the University of Alberta. Her research interests include: culture, youth, racialized identities, sociology and politics of education, Media culture, and globalization and identities. Jennifer is currently involved in a SSHRC-funded, three-year research project, entitled “Racialization, Immigration and Citizenship: Alberta 1900-1960s,” which explores how processes of immigration and racialization affected the social formation of African Canadian communities in Alberta. She also has an on-going oral history research project with Jamaican teachers who immigrated to Alberta during the 1960s.

Jennifer is also Vice Chairperson of the Alberta Labour History Institute, a group of historians, activists, and archivists who are concerned with collecting oral histories of working peoples in Alberta, and is a facilitator with the Living History Group, disseminating knowledge of and about lived experiences of peoples of African descent. She is also involved with the Council of Canadians of African and Caribbean Heritage, Aspen Foundation for Labour Education, Action Group Racial Equity in Education, and is the Faculty of Education representative on the Alberta Teachers Association, Committee on Membership Eligibility. She is a member of the Canadian Association of Cultural Studies.

Jennifer is also the author of the book, Borrowed Identities.
 

Excerpt

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