Dr. Philip S. S. Howard
Associate Professor
- Black Studies in Education
- Critical Race and Race Critical Studies in Education
- Racially-embodied epistemologies, knowledge, and agency
- Community-based agency and impacts on schooling and education
- Social Justice Education/Socially-Just Education
- Social Studies Education/Sociology in Education
Professor Philip Howard is interested in the social formations, pedagogical processes, and epistemological frames that mediate the ways we come to know ourselves, adopt identities, create community, and exercise agency and resistance in various forms against colonialism, antiblackness, and racial injustice. In settler-colonial contexts, racial violence, antiblackness, and injustice are not exceptional, but rather mundane and routine. What are the pedagogical processes—both within and beyond schools—through which we learn and normalize racial violence, antiblackness, and injustice? What are the mutually constitutive relationships among these processes, the knowledge they produce, and contested notions of national identity, citizenship, social justice, humanity, and belonging? What investments does the settler-colonial, neoliberal nation state and its institutions have in particular kinds of knowledge, and how are they enacted through public education? What investments does civil society have in these kinds of knowledge? Very importantly, how have Black people made life amid, and despite, these conditions, and what can we learn from this about how we can reshape society and our conceptions of what it means to be human? How can we challenge/resist colonialism, antiblackness, and racial inequity in their intersectional and interlocking manifestations among each other and with other forms of oppression? Who learns to rise to this challenge, and how? These are the overarching questions that drive Professor Howard's research. He investigates these questions at both formal and informal educational sites with a particular (though not exclusive) focus on Black experience in Canada.
- PhD, Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, University of Toronto, Toronto ON
- MA, Department of Integrated Studies in Education, McGill University, Montreal QC
- Dip. Ed., Department of Curriculum & Instruction, McGill University, Montreal QC
- B.A. Biological Sciences, School of Arts & Sciences, Cornell University, Ithaca NY
- 2024 The Anne Saddlemyer Award for the best book, Canadian Association for Theatre Research, Canada
- 2022 Graduate Faculty Teaching Award, Northeastern Association of Graduate Schools, US & Canada
- 2021 Carrie M. Derick Teaching Award for Graduate Supervision and Teaching, McGill University, Canada
Books
- Howard, P.S.S. (2023) Performing postracialism: Reflections on antiblackness, nation, and education through contemporary blackface in Canada. University of Toronto Press.
- Kitossa, T., Lawson, E.S., & Howard, P.S.S. (Eds.). (2019). African Canadian leadership: Continuity, transition and transformation. University of Toronto Press. https://doi.org/10.3138/9781487531409
Journal Articles
- Howard, P.S.S. & Tecle, S. (2025). Involving humans, Or Doing Good Work with Good People: Insights for Qualitative Research in Black Studies post-2020. International Review of Qualitative Research. 10.1177/19408447251334610
- Howard, P.S.S. (2024). Against the “Likewise” and toward the Otherwise: Lessons from the Past, Reflections for the Present in the Context of Canadian Universities’ Commitments to Address Anti-Black Racism. Topia: Canadian Journal of Cultural Studies, 48, 223-248, https://doi.org/10.3138/topia-2023-0045
- Howard, P.S.S. (2022). Quand se glisser dans la peau c’est s’immiscer dans la peau : antinoircité, proximité, résistance et le cas du spectacle SLĀV. Theatre Research in Canada, 43(2), 239-265, (translation in French of article below; translator Édouard Laniel-Tremblay) https://doi.org/10.3138/tric.43.2.a04
- Howard, P.S.S. (2020). Getting under the skin: Antiblackness, proximity, and resistance in the SLĀV affair. Theatre Research in Canada, 41(1), 126-148, https://doi.org/10.3138/tric.41.1.126
- Howard, P.S.S., & James, C.E. (2019). When dreams take flight: How teachers imagine and implement an environment that nurtures Blackness at an Africentric school in Toronto, Ontario. Curriculum Inquiry, 49(3), 313-337, https://doi.org/10.1080/03626784.2019.1614879
- Howard, P.S.S. (2019). Moving us nowhere: The politics of emotion and civility in the wake of the Quebec City massacre. Canadian Ethnic Studies, 51(1), 1-24, http://doi.org/10.1353/ces.2019.0000
- Howard, P.S.S. (2018). A laugh for the national project: Contemporary Canadian blackface humour and its constitution through Canadian anti-Blackness. Ethnicities, 18(6), 843–868, http://doi.org/10.1177/1468796818785936
- Howard, P.S.S. (2018). On the back of Blackness: Contemporary Canadian blackface and the consumptive production of post-racialist, white Canadian subjects. Social Identities: Journal for the Study of Race, Nation and Culture, 24(1), 87-103. (Published online: January 23, 2017), https://doi.org/10.1080/13504630.2017.1281113
- Howard, P.S.S. (2014) Drawing dissent: Post-racialist pedagogy, racist literacy, and racial plagiarism in anti-Obama political cartoons. Review of Education, Pedagogy, and Cultural Studies, 36(5), 386-402, https://doi.org/10.1080/10714413.2014.958379
- Howard, P.S.S. (2014). Taking the bull by the horns: The critical perspectives and pedagogy of two Black teachers in anglophone Montreal schools. Race, Ethnicity and Education, 17(4), 494–517, https://doi.org/10.1080/13613324.2012.759921
Research Reports
- James, C., Howard, P.S.S., Samaroo, J., Brown, R., & Parekh, G. (2015). The Africentric Alternative School Experience: Agency and Action, Final Report to Toronto District School Board.
Research Projects
- Lafortune, G. (Principal Investigator), Audet, G., Beauregard, C., Boatswain-Kyte, A., Charette, J., Howard, P.S.S., Kanouté, F. (2022-2025). Expérience des élèves noirs au préscolaire-primaire: comprendre les dynamiques de racisme et de constitution précoce des inégalités, et soutenir l’agentivité des acteurs en vue de les neutraliser. Social Sciences & Humanities Research Council, Race, Gender & Diversity Initiative. ($335 000)
- Howard, P.S.S. (Principal Investigator), Lawson, E., Saney, I., & Tecle, S. (2019-2025) Documenting and understanding Black Community Supplementary Educational Initiatives in Halifax, London, and Toronto from 1900 to Present. Social Sciences & Humanities Research Council, Insight Grant. ($283 622)
- McCready, L.(Principal Investigator), Hamilton-Hinch, B., Howard, P.S.S., Simmons, M., & Crichlow, W. (2019-2021) Black Student University Access Network. Employment and Social Development Canada, Social Development Partnership Program. ($250 000)
- Howard, P.S.S. (Principal Investigator), (2018-2021) Documenter et comprendre les initiatives d’éducation supplémentaire des communautés noires à Montréal de 1900 à nos jours (Documenting and Understanding Black Community Supplementary Educational Initiatives in Montreal from 1900 to the Present), Fonds de recherche du Québec–Société et culture (FRQ-SC), Soutien à la recherche pour la relève professorale. ($45 000)
- Howard, P.S.S. (Principal Investigator), (2017-2018) The Arts Against Postracialism: Strengthening Resistance against Contemporary Canadian Blackface. Social Sciences & Humanities Research Council, Connection Grant. ($49 000)
- Howard, P.S.S. (Principal Investigator), (2014-2017). Racial Humour in the Post-racial: A Critical Race Africology of Canadian Blackface Incidents. Social Sciences & Humanities Research Council, Insight Development Grant. ($67 000)
- James, C.(Principal Investigator) & Howard, P.S.S. (2011-2015) Africentric Alternative School Research Project: Agency and Action. Toronto District School Board and York Center for Education and Community, ($60 000)
Taking new students during the upcoming application period.
