Dr. Philip S. S. Howard

Academic title(s): 

Associate Professor

Dr. Philip S. S. Howard
Contact Information
Email address: 
philip.howard [at] mcgill.ca
Alternate phone: 
514-398-2535
Address: 

Education Building
3700 rue McTavish
Montréal, Quebec H3A 1Y2
Canada

Division: 
Educational Leadership Supervisors
Educational Studies (Ph.D.) Supervisors
Education and Society Supervisors
Department: 
Department of Integrated Studies in Education (DISE)
Areas of expertise: 
  • 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
Biography: 

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.

Degree(s): 
  • PhD, Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, University of Toronto, Toronto ON
  • MA, Department of Integrated Studies in Education, , Montreal QC
  • Dip. Ed., Department of Curriculum & Instruction, , Montreal QC
  • B.A. Biological Sciences, School of Arts & Sciences, Cornell University, Ithaca NY
Awards, honours, and fellowships: 
  • 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, , Canada
Selected publications: 

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.

Journal Articles

  • 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,
  • 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,
  • 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,

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. (PI), 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.(PI), 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.(PI) & 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)
Graduate supervision: 

Taking new students during the upcoming application period.

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