Dr.Philip Howard

Dr. Philip Howard (Principal Investigator, AAPR) is an Associate Professor in the Department of Integrated Studies in Education, Faculty of Education at McGill University. His research interests are in the social formations, pedagogical processes, and epistemological frames that mediate the ways we come to know ourselves, create community, and exercise agency for social and racial justice.

AREA OF FOCUS

His scholarship is in the areas of Black Studies, anticolonial studies, and Critical Race Studies in education.  Professor Howard’s scholarship seeks to respond to the questions:

What are the pedagogical processes—both within and beyond schools—through which we learn and normalize racial violence, antiblackness, and injustice?  How do these take shape through the nation state and its institutions? 

This work pays particular attention to antiblackness and Black life in postracialist contexts—that is, contexts whose claims to have overcome racism are based in the very mechanisms through which racism continues to constitute their normative conditions.  With a view toward abolishing dehumanizing systems, Professor Howard’s research further examines the modes of survivance and resistance in which Black and racialized communities engage, often beyond the state and its institutions. His most recent research projects investigate contemporary blackface in Canada as a postracialist phenomenon; school to university transitions for Black students in Canada; and Black people’s agency in educational contexts in Toronto, Halifax, and Montreal as they unfold through Black community supplementary education initiatives.  

AKNOWLEDGEMENT & EXPERTISE

Professor Howard is recognized as an engaged and innovative educator. His work is grounded in his years of teaching experience in elementary, secondary and tertiary education.  He is the 2021 recipient of McGill’s Carrie M. Derick Teaching Award for Graduate Supervision and Teaching, and the 2022 recipient of the Northeastern Association of Graduate Schools’ Graduate Faculty Teaching Award.

  • Link(s): 

    Google Scholar

    Degree(s): 

    • PhD, Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, University of Toronto, Toronto ON

    • MA, Department of Integrated Studies in Education, McGill University, Montreal QC

    • Dip. Ed., Department of Curriculum & Instruction, McGill University, 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, McGill University, 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. https://doi.org/10.3138/9781487531409

    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, https://doi.org/10.3138/topia-2023-0045

    • 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, https://doi.org/10.1080/03626784.2019.1614879

    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)

PROJECTS

Racial Humour in the Post-Racial, funded by a Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) Insight Development Grant.  This project explored blackface incidents on contemporary Canada.  The main objectives of this research were to:

1) explore how claims to humour function rhetorically to allow particular forms of racial knowing and not knowing;

2) to understand how the colonial tropes of racism on which these acts seem to draw are or are not, learned, recognized, and forgotten; and

3) explore how black communities understand these acts, and exercise agency in challenging them. 

This project led to Howard’s publication Performing Postracialism as well as several journal articles.

The Arts Against PostRacialism Project (AAPR) funded by a Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) Connection Grant used arts-based methods to engage audiences with Professor Howard’s Racial Humour in the Post-racial research project. The objectives were to:

1) raise awareness about blackface, its history and its impacts at Canadian universities and beyond

2) offer Black students and others impacted by blackface a space to heal and to develop strategic responses, and

3) to combat isolation by fostering connections between Black student associations across Canadian universities. 

This website along with Chapter 9 in Performing Postracialism, are additional knowledge mobilized from these projects.