Joanna Batt

Joanna Batt is an Assistant Professor of Secondary Education in Social Studies at University of Cincinnati. Informed and inspired by her time as a high school teacher in Buffalo, NY, Dr. Batt is deeply passionate about the relationship of history teaching and social justice. She studies secondary social studies education with an emphasis on race, gender and sexuality, researching via feminist methods how critical history teaching and multimodal curricula centered in students' lives can support educational equity and student agency. Her work can be found in peer-reviewed journals such as Social Education, Middle Level Learning, and Texas Education Review; books such as Mindful Social Studies: Frameworks for Social Emotional Learning and Critically Engaged Citizens; and in popular media on the intersections of history, teaching and culture such as Not Even Past. Joanna received her B.A. in history from the University of Notre Dame, and her M.Ed. in language and literacy from Harvard Graduate School of Education. She taught U.S. History for seven years, was a Donald D. Harrington Fellow at University of Texas at Austin’s College of Education in the Department of Curriculum and Instruction, and has moderated racial literacy book clubs for middle schoolers in Buffalo, NY and Austin, TX.

Ph.D. : University of Texas at Austin (Curriculum and Instruction (Social Studies))

M.A.: Harvard Graduate School of Education (Language and Literacy)

B.A.: University of Notre Dame (History; French and Francophone Studies)

Peer Reviewed Publications

Brown A.L., Batt, J., Kim, E (2020. ) "Beyond the 19th: A Brief History on the Voter Suppression of Black Americans" .Social Education, , 84 (4 ) ,204-208

Batt, J. (2021. ) “Racial Literacy Book Clubs in Middle School: Five Things to Consider” .Middle Level Learning, , 71 (May/June ) ,8-14

Batt, J., & Joseph, M. (2022. ) “The work of art is a scream of freedom”: The power of multimodal arts and humanities in teaching marginalized histories .Texas Education Review, , 10 (1 ) ,49-72

Batt, J., & Janak, J. (2022. ) “Finding Pride: Teaching Trans History in Secondary Social Studies” .Social Education, , 83 (6 ) ,170-175

Batt, J. & Joseph, M. (2022. ) "Who Lives, Who Dies, Who Sings Which Story?: Narrative Production and Race in the Curriculum of Film Musicals" .Northwest Journal of Teacher Education, , 17 (3 ) ,1-10

Batt, J., & Joseph, M. (2023. ) ““It always had your heart, now it has your curiosity”: Versions of Disney’s The Little Mermaid as lessons in dominant and counter racial narratives” .Oregon Journal of the Social Studies, , 11 (2 ) ,70-77

Batt, J., & Joseph, M. (2023. ) “Part of whose world?: The Little Mermaid, fantasy media, and casting backlashes as racial projects for social studies classrooms” .Social Studies Research and Practice, , 19 (1 ) ,34-50

Batt, J. (2024. ) "Queer in Plain Sight: Using Everyday Social Studies to Engage in LGBTQ2IA+ Histories" .Social Studies and the Young Learner, , 36 (4 ) ,24-31

Other Publications

Batt, J. (2022. ) “Teaching slavery, possibilities for historical restitution, and the papers of Indigenous enslaver Rebecca McIntosh Hawkins Hagerty” .Not Even Past, University of Texas at Austin

“Teaching slavery, possibilities for historical restitution, and the papers of Indigenous enslaver Rebecca McIntosh Hawkins Hagerty”

Book Chapter

Batt, J., Mehta, M (2022 ) ““Still Can’t Say Namaste?!”: Making Asian and Asian Americans Visible in the School-Based Mindfulness Movement” Mindful Social Studies: Frameworks for Social Emotional Learning and Critically Engaged Citizens .(pp. 11-32).Lexington Books

Encyclopedia Article

Brown, K., Batt, J., Odim, N. (2022. ) The Encyclopedia of Social Justice in Education .Bloomsbury