Rate My Professor Lasana Kazembe

Lasana D. Kazembe, Ph.D., serves as Department Chair and Associate Professor in the Department of Urban Teacher Education at the IU Indianapolis School of Education. He holds faculty appointments in the IU Indy Africana Studies Program and as Associate Director of the IU Indianapolis Arts & Humanities Institute, while also sitting on the Executive Advisory Committee for the Center for Africana Studies and Culture. Kazembe earned his Ph.D. from the University of Illinois at Chicago in 2013, M.A. from Bowling Green State University in 1994, and B.F.A. from the same institution in 1992. An Emmy Award-winning poet, educator, and critical Black scholar, his research and creative scholarship examine culture, race, history, the arts, and the social context of education. Kazembe's philopraxis explores the sacred epistemologies of Africana peoples—history, expressive forms, imaginaries, folklore, and futurities—as sites of memory, critical pedagogy, cultural production, and social action. His academic interests encompass urban education and teacher education, global Black arts movements, culturally sustaining pedagogy, arts and arts pedagogy, social and racial justice in education, the Black intellectual tradition, Black education history scholarship, and liberatory pedagogical practices. From 2021 to 2023, he was the inaugural Artist-in-Residence at The Cabaret in Indianapolis, where he presented twelve creative works, including Firedance: Body + Word + Sound as Prism, The Blues and Black America, and Wah Wah & Whatnot: A Love Note to Jazz.

Kazembe's key publications include Entertainers or Education Researchers? The Challenges Associated with Presenting While Black (2016, Race Ethnicity and Education); Internalized Racism and the Pursuit of Cultural Relevancy: Decolonizing Practices for Critical Consciousness with Preservice Teachers of Color (2021, Theory Into Practice); 'The Steep Edge of a Dark Abyss': Mohonk, White Social Engineers, and Black Education (2021, Journal of Black Studies); Furious Flowers: Using Black Arts Inquiry and Pedagogy to Engage Black Males (2014, Journal of African American Males in Education); and Curriculum Studies and Indigenous Global Contexts of Culture, Power, and Equity (2021, Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Education). Forthcoming works feature contributions to the Oxford Handbook on Global Black Arts Movements and chapters on spirit murder, epistemic justice, and Carter G. Woodson's philopraxis. He guest-edited a special theme issue (two volumes) on 'Concepts and Categories in the Praxis of the Black Intellectual Tradition' for the International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education. Kazembe leads the translational research project elev8te: Exploring Global Black Arts Movements, a literacy and creative arts program grounded in culturally sustaining pedagogy and African-centered education. His public pedagogy includes multimedia performances such as The Voodoo of Hell’s Half-Acre: The Travelin’ Genius of Richard Wright and Paul Robeson: Man of the People, alongside digital curricula like Teaching Black Arts Traditions.