Stevie Johnson was chosen to receive the 2019 Bobby Wright Dissertation of the Year Award through the Association for the Study of Higher Education. Johnson, who received his doctorate in adult and higher education in May 2019, wrote "Curriculum of the Mind: A Blackcrit, Narrative Inquiry, Hip-Hop Album on Anti-Blackness & Freedom for Black Male Collegians at Historically White Institutions."
This dissertation is a Hip-Hop album that explores how Black male collegians at historically white institutions theorize and disrupt anti-Blackness, in an effort to take flight or become free. You can hear the dissertation album at www.tspalbum.com/reviewers.
“Johnson’s co-created scholarship provides space for the Hip-Hop artists to develop their counterstories and his theorization of the work, as it relates to the tenets of higher education, carves out a new space for critical scholarship,” said Assistant Professor Derek Houston, who served as Johnson’s dissertation chair and nominator for the award. “His transformative work pushes the boundaries of higher education scholarship and provides not only a necessary critique of Hip-Hop scholarship, but also a call-to-action for the use of Hip-Hop scholarship as a cite of Black liberation.”
Oklahoma City Man Receives a Ph.D. by Using Hip-Hop Research
Named in memory of Irvin Lee “Bobby” Wright, the ASHE Dissertation of the Year award annually recognizes one or more exemplary dissertations in the field of higher education. Award criteria include the high quality of the methodology employed and the significance of the dissertation topic.
In addition to being recognized during the ASHE Awards Ceremony on Nov. 15 in Portland, Oregon, Johnson also delivered the Bobby Wright Dissertation of the Year Presentation on Nov. 14.