Professor Givens’ first book, Fugitive Pedagogy: Carter G. Woodson and the Art of Black Teaching, was published by Harvard University Press in 2021. Fugitive Pedagogy journeys through the subversive history of African American education from slavery through the Jim Crow era, analyzing the political and intellectual work of black teachers. The famed educator and groundbreaking historian Carter G. Woodson is the central character in this story. Fugitive Pedagogy was selected as the winner of the 2022 ASALH Book Prize, the 2022 AERA Outstanding Book Award, the 2022 HES Book Award, the 2022 Lois P. Rudnick Book Prize, the 2022 Frederic W. Ness Book Award, and a finalist of the 2022 MAAH Stone Book Award.

Professor Givens also co-edited We Dare Say Love: Supporting Achievement in the Educational Life of Black Boys, published by Columbia’s Teachers College Press in 2018. His articles appear in academic journals and various public outlets, such as The Atlantic, American Education Research Journal, Souls: A Critical Journal of Black Politics Culture and Society, Harvard Educational Review, Black Perspectives, Anthropology & Education Quarterly, Education Weekly, and more.

The historical questions at the heart of Professor Givens’ research inform practical efforts. In 2020 he began building The Black Teacher Archive at Harvard in partnership with Professor Imani Perry of Harvard University. Phase one of this digital humanities project consists of locating and digitizing a complete collection of journals published by Colored Teachers Associations between the 1920s and 1970. Professor Givens regularly engages educators, organizations, and communities around the importance of black educational history for our contemporary moment and the critical importance of African American teachers. He is also a proud life member and executive council member of the Association for the Study of African American Life and History.

Professor Givens second book, School Clothes: A Collective Memoir of Black Student Witness, was published by Beacon Press in February 2023. His third book, tentatively titled American Grammar: Race, School, and the Building of a Nation, is under contract with Harper Books. This latter work offers a new history of early US education by rigorously accounting for the Native American and African American presence in the political economic development of schooling through the 19th century. Professor Givens has also edited and re-introduced two African American classics, both of which were released in 2023: Carter G. Woodson’s (1933) The Mis-Education of the Negro, published by Penguin Classics, and Booker T. Washington’s (1901) Up from Slavery, published by the Norton Library.

Professor Givens earned a BS in Business Administration then a MA and PhD in African American Studies from the University of California, Berkeley. He is originally from Compton, California and currently resides in the Roxbury neighborhood of Boston, Massachusetts. Read Less ^