309W Patton Hall
Dr. Jenell Igeleke Penn is an assistant professor of Curriculum and Instruction in the Department of Teacher Education at Ohio University. Informed by her experiences as a former middle and high school English Language Arts teacher, her research, teaching, and service interests focus on critical literacies, Black feminism, and the cultivation of affirming, inclusive, and justice-oriented spaces and praxes for/with teachers, youth, families, and scholars. She centers collective and collaborative approaches to qualitative research to interrogate the ideologically and temporally situated nature of literacies and literacy practices. Dr. Penn has been the recipient of the NCTE Research Foundations’ Cultivating New Voices fellowship, the OCTELA Educator of the Year award, and the English Journal Edwin M. Hopkins Article of the Year award. A three-time alumnus of the Ohio State University, she holds a B.A. in English, a M.Ed. in Integrated Language Arts Education, and a Ph.D. in Education, specializing in Adolescent, Post-Secondary, and Community Literacies and Multicultural and Equity Studies in Education.
Recent Publications:
Dunn, M., Hunter, D. Penn, J.and Jones, J. (Accepted/In Press). Supporting Our Teacher Colleagues Following a Miscarriage: Recommendations for Administrators and Fellow Educators. English Leadership Quarterly.
Penn, J.and Merry, J. (Accepted/In Press). Art and Advocacy in Action. Voices from the Middle.
Hines, C. and Penn, J.(2024, March). “I’m not a monster because I live in a world that gives me impossible choices”: Examining Blackness and Identity in A Song Below Water. In Hinton-Johnson, K. & Chandler, K. (Eds). Teaching Black American Speculative Fiction and Beyond: Equity, Justice, and Antiracism . Routledge.
Hines, C. and Penn, J. (2023, September). Seeing Beyond the Surface: Using Critical Lenses to Combat Anti-Blackness in the English Classroom. English Journal, 113(1), 17-24.
Penn, J.(2021, December). Abolitionist Teaching. In Shrunk, K. & Shelton, S. (Eds.) Encyclopedia of Queer Studies in Education . Brill
Clark, C. and Penn, J. (2021, November). Critical Digital Storytelling, Intersectionality, and Family Involvement. In Guzzetti, B. (Ed.) Genders, Culture, and Literacies: Understanding Intersecting Identities. Taylor and Francis/Erlbaum.
Penn, J. (2021, November) Writing for the Soul: Dispelling Shame and Surveillance Through
Sustaining Writing Practices. In Whitney, A. (Ed.) Growing Writers: Principles for High School Writers and Their Teachers. National Council of Teachers of English.
Butler, T., Penn, J., and Merry, J . (2019, December) Pardon this Disruption: Cultivating Revolutionary Civics through World Humanities. In Kinloch, V., Burkhard, T. and Penn, C. (Eds.) Race, Justice, and Activism in Literacy Teacher Education. Teachers College Press.
Penn, J.,Clark, C., & Smith, J. (2018, September). Queering Conventional Narrative Elements with Lily and Dunkin . In Greathouse, P. Eisenbach, B. & Kaywell, J. (Eds.) Queer Adolescent Literature as a Complement to the English Language Arts Curriculum. Rowman and Littlefield.
Blackburn, M., Clark, C. & Schey, R. with Penn, J.,Johnson, C., Williams, J., Sutton, D., Swenson, K., and Vanderhule, L. (2018, April). Stepping Up: Teachers Advocating for Sexual and Gender Diversity in Schools . Routledge.