John West
PhD Student
Criminology, Law, and Justice
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About
John West is a High school teacher and 1st year Ph.D. student in Criminology, Law, and Justice at UIC. John is also a local freelance photographer and DJ using both mediums to engage and heal people while connecting to a larger legacy of Black expressive culture. The goal of my research is to investigate not only the way pedagogical and cultural understandings of discipline render black students deviant, but also the ways that black folk continue to forge liberatory praxes while working within and against the anti-black school system. Utilizing Performance Studies, Critical Race Theory, Afro-pessimism, and Black Queer Feminists Theory, my research attempts to address the question: What are the conditions of possibility for black pleasure, joy, and resistance during a time that many scholars call the nadir of black life in the U.S.?