Dr. Regina A. Bernard-Carreño was born and raised in New York City’s Hell’s Kitchen. She was a graduating pioneer of the African American Studies Master’s Degree Program at Columbia University, where she worked as the Assistant Editor of the Malcolm X Multimedia Project. She completed her M.Phil. and Ph.D. degrees in Urban Education at the City University of New York Graduate Center. She has taught graduate-level courses at Hunter College’s School of Education as well as courses at Boricua College. Dr. Bernard-Carreño currently is an assistant professor at Baruch College in New York City, where she teaches undergraduate courses in Black and Latino/a studies as well as Women’s Studies. The scholar holds a deep interest in race, gender and the study of knowledge, and looks for ways to incorporate these topics into her classes and research. She is the author of Black and Brown Waves: The Cultural Politics of Young Women of Color and Feminism (Sense Publishers 2009) and Nuyorganics: Organic Intellectualism, the Search for Racial Identity, and Nuyorican Thought (Peter Lang Publishers 2010). She has published essays in What You Don’t Know About Schools(Palgrave MacMillan, 2006) and the award-winning Encyclopedia of Contemporary Youth Culture (Greenwood Press, 2004). Most recently, she has published an article entitled The Critical Pedagogy of Black Studies for the Journal of Pan African Studies. Dr. Bernard-Carreño is currently working on a new project that deals with high school girls in New York City.
At Baruch College, Dr. Bernard-Carreño’s Women of Color course attracts students from every possible department, which might seem unexpected at a business-oriented college. “I think one of the things that make my classes so attractive is that they are relevant. The material is current, and a lot of the things that we read have to deal with real-life experiences. It’s very important that professors assign work that the students can relate to. Because no one likes to walk out of class feeling, ‘What was that for?’ You want to make some type of connection.” (Bernard-Carreño, 2010).
As an advocate of doing what you believe in, Dr. Bernard-Carreño reinvented the course, Women of Color in the Americas, to address the interests and needs of her female students. “I first offered the class in 2006. It had existed on record, but people weren’t teaching it. And I thought, ‘Wow, what a great opportunity.’” Her students have learned the importance of being critically conscious and individuals seeking social justice. In her courses, they have organized the production of their very own documentary film about the issues women in NYC face, organized an open-mic event at the Nuyorican Poets Café as they raised money for Friends of Joe Kincheloe Foundation and the Freire Project at the The Paulo and Nita Freire International Project for Critical Pedagogy at McGill University. She also partnered with the National Organization for Women (NOW) to spread awareness about advertisements that portray women in negative ways.
When she’s not teaching at Baruch, Dr. Bernard-Carreño is invested in research not just on ethnic studies but women’s studies and education theory and practice. In her second book, Nuyorganics: Organic Intellectualism, the Search for Racial Identity, and Nuyorican Thought (2010), Dr. Bernard-Carreño takes education and learning to another level as she explains her theory of Nuyorganics (Bernard-Carreño, 2010) as it joins Nuyorican poetry to organic intellectualism. Examining its possibilities, her book questions existing theories of the educated dominant elite and offers new theories for those who struggle for accurate representation in various academic environments. It shows the importance of understanding that lived experiences are often undiscovered sources of expertise – and untapped resources for both teachers and students – in classrooms of higher education. Drawing attention to new ways of thinking, Dr. Bernard-Carreño’s book is a voice for those who have fought for a rigorous, socially just education to be the primary goal of any academic training.
Her founding of the 425 Book Club Project is an example of her commitment to spreading critical pedagogy and literacy all over the world, one area at a time.
To purchase and view her books in detail, please click here.
Lastly, to read her Faculty Spotlight at Baruch College, click here.
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