Dr. Jessica Lee Stovall is an Assistant Professor of African American Studies at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, where she also holds affiliate positions in Curriculum and Instruction and Education Policy Studies at the UW-Madison’s School of Education. Her research in education draws on the discipline of Black Studies to explore how Black teachers create fugitive spaces to navigate and combat antiblackness at their respective school sites. Her dissertation on Black teachers provides a blueprint for how all teachers can create classrooms of liberated learning for their students, and it was awarded the Critical Educators for Social Justice Dissertation Award at the 2024 American Educational Research Association annual meeting. Her dissertation work was supported by the Spencer Dissertation grant, the Ford Predoctoral Program, and the Stanford Diversity Dissertation Research Opportunity. Jessica is published in English Journal, Equity & Excellence in Education, Phi Delta Kappan, Journal of Negro Education, Philosophy of Education, and Race Ethnicity and Education, among others. She holds a BS in Secondary Education from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, a MS in Literature from Northwestern University, and a PhD in Race, Inequality, and Language in Education (RILE) and Curriculum and Teacher Education (CTE) at Stanford University. Before beginning her doctoral studies at Stanford, Jessica taught English and reading for 11 years in the Chicagoland area.
