The University of Pittsburgh School of Education's Department of Teaching, Learning, and Leading (TLL) offers Freedom Seminars to support students in understanding and engaging education within global social, cultural, and political frameworks of freedom.
Course Structure:
-
1-credit courses offered in the fall, spring, and summer terms
-
Open to all undergraduate and graduate students at the University of Pittsburgh
-
Course title is EDUC 1067 for undergraduate students and EDUC 3067 for graduate students
Seminar Series Description:
The Freedom Seminars attend to a range of global freedom projects, theories, pedagogies, and praxes. Each course is a focused engagement with a specific set of questions, ideas, and topics relevant for understanding education within social, cultural, and political movements, systems, and structures. Students study both the what and how of freedom through global, insurgent knowledge traditions.
Act 48 Credits
For in-service educators who have already obtained their teacher certification, the Freedom Seminar courses can qualify for Act 48 credits. Please note: the Pennsylvania Department of Education makes educators responsible for ensuring that the course content aligns with their certification area. Visit our Act 48/Act 45 website for more information.
Summer 2023 Courses
Click link for expanded course description:
- Algorithms of Liberation (Taught by Beatrice Dias and Holly Plank)
Spring 2023 Courses
Click link for expanded course description:
- Prisons, Schools, & Abolition (Taught by Sabina Vaught)
Fall 2022 Courses
Click links for expanded course descriptions:
- Latinx Migration and Education (Taught by Lisa Ortiz)
- Political Education and Freedom Struggles 1 (Taught by Leigh Patel)
- Political Education and Freedom Struggles 2 (Taught by Leigh Patel)
- For an Afro-Latin American Feminism (Taught by Watufani Poe)
Summer 2022 Course
Click link for expanded course description:
- Disabilities, Genders, and Free Futures (Taught by Rachel Robertson, TA by Dylan Kapit)
Spring 2022 Courses
Click links for expanded course descriptions:
-
Africana Thought in Education: 1960-75 (Taught by Josué López)
-
The Black Radical Tradition and the Decolonial Turn (Taught by George Barganier)
-
Y(our) Community: Place and Possibility (Taught by Camilla J. Bell)
-
A Freedom Dialect: do Nascimento and Freire (Co-taught by Linda Kucan and Sabina Vaught)
-
Disabilities, Genders, and Free Futures (Taught by Rachel Robertson)
-
Place, Collective Economies, and Environmental Justice (Co-taught by Cassie Quigley and Danielle Andrews-Brown)
-
Global Water Activism and Pedagogies (Co-taught by Cassie Quigley and Danielle Andrews-Brown)
-
Emotion and Healing in Justice Education (Taught by Kari Kokka)
-
"Goin'" for broke...Education for Liberation (Taught by Professor Camilla J. Bell)
-
Political Education and Freedom Struggles (Taught by Leigh Patel)
Contact Us
For more information about the Freedom Seminar initiative, please contact Dr. Sabina Vaught, Director of the Kinloch Commons for Critical Pedagogy and Leadership, at svaught@pitt.edu.
Course Archive
View Freedom Seminar courses offered in past academic terms.