Dr. Stovall joined the Department of African American Studies as an Anna Julia Cooper Postdoctoral Fellow in the fall of 2023 after completing an M.A. in American Literature from Northwestern and a Ph.D. from Stanford University in Race, Inequality, and Language in Education, Curriculum and Teacher Education. Stovall graduated from UW-Madison in 2007 with her B.S.Ed. in Secondary English Education. This fall, Stovall became an Assistant Professor within the Department of African American Studies. We sat down with Professor Stovall to hear her reflect on her success, her current work, and her future goals.
What have been the highlights in your academic and professional journey thus far?
That is a hard question, because we are the sum of so many tiny little experiences, but I’d say one of my biggest highlights was my Fulbright to Aotearoa New Zealand in 2014. I traveled all over both the North and South islands learning from indigenous Māori leaders, teachers, and students about the impact of protecting and preserving Māori ways of life, especially in pakeha (white) schools. It was the first time I had ever conducted research, and I learned so much about the importance of building trust and partnering with nonprofits and schools doing the necessary work on behalf of the community. This experience really inspired me to study Black cultural and fugitive spaces, to better understand the transformative impact of spaces where one’s full self is no longer in direct contact with various forms of oppression.
I also am drawn to studying Black teachers’ livelihood because I taught ELA for 11 years, and teaching high school was a calling for me. My students brought me so much joy, and I could gush for hours about the amazing young people I got to work with. Unfortunately, my administration, racial equity leadership, and school union wasn’t invested nor supportive of my passion to impact the racial predictability of student academic achievement. As a consequence of that lack of support, I found teaching to be unsustainable because as much as I worked at disrupting inequities in my classroom, I wanted to also be a part of larger changes and transformations. Therefore, this research on what it would take for Black teachers to thrive and stay in the profession is very personal to me.
Do you have any advice to students wanting to carve a similar path of success to your own?
Study abroad. If you can remotely figure out how to financially do it, please do. I studied abroad at the University of Warwick in Coventry, England my junior year. I grew up that year abroad, and coming from a small town in Wisconsin, it was necessary for my worldview to be so broadened. The experience was so impactful that I got a job at the UW-Madison study abroad office when I returned because I was just so cup-runneth-over excited to tell folks to study abroad.
I’ve also had a lot of blessings, which I’ll occasionally highlight on social media. But in real life, I’ve had a lot of rejections, derailments, and wrong turns. I apply to a lot of things, I take the feedback when I get rejected, and I apply it to the next thing. I’ve gotten to where I am because I am not afraid of failure, and I think it’s fun to be bold. I would also say to lean into your mentors and professors. I am so glad I made connections with amazing people at UW-Madison, some of whom still support me twenty years later.
What are you currently thinking about within your research?
My biggest long and short term goals are to write a book on my research with Black teachers. My book project is tentatively titled The New Harriet Tubmans: Antiblackness and the Fortitude of Black Teachers. I’m taking it step by step, and I finished drafting the first two chapters this summer.
You’ve created a new course offering in the Department of African American Studies: “AfroAm101: Introduction to African American Studies” in which you aim to introduce students to the origins of African American studies as an academic discipline. Can you discuss why you created this course and some key takeaways you hope students will glean by the end of the semester?
I am super inspired by the 1969 Black Student strike that led to the departmentalization of the UW Madison African American Studies department in 1970. We already have amazing introductory courses that acquaint students with Black history and literature, and I am excited to expand our selections to include the legacy of Black thought. Each week will have a different topic, covering concepts like Black feminism, afropessism, Black queer theory, afrofuturism, and more. My hope is that students walk away with expanded ways of seeing Blackness, and they have new theory for explaining the antiblackness they encounter in media and their own lives. It’s also really designed to be a sampler platter to whet students’ appetite for what they would like to study more in depth. I am hoping the addition of AAS 101 will show us what classes we should offer at more advanced levels.
Are you currently reading anything that you can’t stop thinking about?
I just re-read Toni Morrison’s Beloved last week, and I just can never get over how precisely perfect her language is. Her words really have no fat. I also really enjoyed reading Kaliane Bradley’s The Ministry of Time this summer. It’s been a moment since a book surprised me with how delightfully interesting the premise is.
Do you have a beloved memory from UW-Madison? Perhaps in your time as an undergraduate, as an Alumni, or even as a new faculty member in the Department of African American Studies?
When I was a freshman at UW-Madison, I camped outside overnight in a freezing cold snowstorm with my friend Aubrey for men’s basketball season tickets. We were shivering so hard we couldn’t sleep, and so you can imagine why they don’t allow camping out anymore. But it felt worth it to my 19 year-old-self to have student floor seats. I rushed the court when Devin Harris made that game winning free throw to win the Big 10 title in 2003, and I took my little brother Danny to a game and yelled over the roar of the crowd, “See how close we are? We could almost touch the players!” Only to have Alando Tucker fly after a rebound and knock over my brother two seconds later. So many happy memories at those games.
But I am most grateful for the late Mercile Lee, whose call to tell me I was awarded the Chancellor Scholar fellowship (now called Mercile J. Lee Scholars) changed my life. Her tenacity and belief in me is a big reason I returned to UW-Madison to live in her legacy.