Christopher Span

Activities & Honors

• Secretary, Division F (AERA) (2012-2014), AERA-Division F (History), AERA, 2012-2014
• CIC Academic Leadership Fellow—ALP (2010-2011)., Committee on Institutional Cooperation , 2010-2011
• Difference Makers in Our Community Award, eBlack Champaign-Urbana Campus Community Project, 2010-
• Dean's Fellow, College of Education, Dean's Cabinet, 2010-
• Editorial Board, American Educational Research Journal-Social and Institutional, Editorial Board, American Educational Research Journal-Social and Institutional Analysis, American Educational Research Journal, 2009-2012
• Board Member, Don Moyers' Boys and Girls Club, 2009-2010
• Distinguished Scholar Award, College of Education, 2009-
• Participating Historian on the Brief of Historians as Amicus Curiae for the Supreme Court Parents and Meredith (2007) case, NAACP Legal Defense Fund, 2007-2008
• Black Graduate Student Association Faculty of the Year Award, Black Graduate Student Association, 2007-
• Co-Editor, History of Education Quarterly, 2006-2013
• Outstanding Reviewer Award and Recognition for American Educational Research Association Journals, AERA, 2006-
• Incomplete List of Teachers Ranked as Excellent by Their Students, 2004 - 2011, Incomplete List of Teachers Ranked as Excellent by their Students, 2003-2011

Research Statement

I am an Associate Professor at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. I am an historian of education in the department of Educational Policy Studies. My research interests pertain to the educational history of African Americans in the 19th and 20th century.

Publications

• Span, Christopher M. and Rivers, Ishwanzya D.   “Reassessing the Achievement Gap: An Intergenerational Comparison of African American Student Achievement before and after Compensatory Education and the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA).”  Teachers College Record Online, 114(6) (April, 2012): 13-14, http://www.tcrecord.org ID Number: 16690, Date Accessed: 5/6/2012.
• Span, Christopher M.  From Cotton Field to Schoolhouse: African American Education in Mississippi, 1862-1875.  Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2009.
• Danns, Dionne and Christopher M. Span (2008).  “A Brief History of Schools in the United States,” in Tom Goodes (Ed.) 21st Century Education (New York: Sage Publication, 265-273.
• Span, C. M. (2003). Knowledge is light, knowledge is power: African American education in antebellum America. In C. C. Yeakey & R. D. Henderson (Eds.), Surmounting all odds: Education, opportunity, and society in the new millennium. Greenwich, CT: Information Age.
• Span, C. M. (2002). Alternative pedagogy: The rise of the private Black academy in early postbellum Mississippi, 1862-1870. In N. Beadie & K. Tolley (Eds.), Chartered schools: Two hundred years of independent academies in the United States (pp. 1727-1925). New York: Routledge Falmer.
• Span, C. M. (2002). Educational and social reforms for African American juvenile delinquents in 19th century New York City and Philadelphia. Journal of Negro Education, 71, 108-117.
• Johnson, L., & Span, C. M. (Eds.) (2002). Historical perspectives on cultural empowerment, activism, and urban school reform. Urban Education, 37(5).
• Span, C. M. (2002). "I must learn now or not at all": Social and cultural capital in the earliest educational initiatives of Mississippi ex-slaves, 1862-1869. Journal of African American History, 87(3), 196-205.