Sherry L. Deckman – författare

Gender is a prominent and often-contested issue in educational settings across the globe. Although understandings of gender and academic and professional potential, roles and expectations, and opportunities and abilities have greatly expanded over the past century in various contexts, schools remain sites of intense conflict around definitions of gender and gendered access and expression. Yet, despite rapid changes in gendered educational patterns and in how education scholars conceptualize and study gender, the field lacks a recent, comprehensive resource text. This two-volume encyclopedia, a unique compendium on gender and education with an expansive and inclusive approach, will address this urgent need. Featuring a broad range of 250 to 300 well-researched, short articles written by global experts in the field, this much-needed guide will be an essential, first-stop resource for students and scholars exploring issues of gender and education, as well as for educators engaging in a rapidly changing and nuanced field. 

Protests against racial injustice and anti-Blackness have swept across elite colleges and universities in recent years, exposing systemic racism and raising questions about what it means for Black students to belong at these institutions. In Black Space, Sherry L. Deckman takes us into the lives of the members of the Kuumba Singers, a Black student organization at Harvard with racially diverse members, and a self-proclaimed safe space for anyone but particularly Black students. Uniquely focusing on Black students in an elite space where they are the majority, Deckman provides a case study in how colleges and universities might reimagine safe spaces. Through rich description and sharing moments in students' everyday lives, Deckman demonstrates the possibilities and challenges Black students face as they navigate campus culture and the refuge they find in this organization. This work illuminates ways administrators, faculty, student affairs staff, and indeed, students themselves, might productively address issues of difference and anti-Blackness for the purpose of fostering critically inclusive campus environments.