Kortney Hernandez

Antonia Darder is a Puerto Rican and American scholar, artist, poet, song writer and activist. She holds the Leavey Presidential Endowed Chair in Ethics and Moral Leadership in the School of Education at Loyola Marymount University. Her scholarship is known around the world and her efforts have earned her a large number of academic awards, including the Scholars of Color Distinguished Career Contribution Award by the American Education Research Association.

Three critical Darderean scholars (Kortney Hernandez, Sharon Cronin, and Eduardo Lopez), who have been lovingly mentored, empowered, and challenged by Darder, and who have developed their critical consciousness through the soulful educational wisdom of Darder, have come together to embrace the (im)possible task of curating a volume of some of her most powerful educational scholarship.

This volume includes Antonia Darder’s central writings on the topics of language, culture, inequality, and education. If one were to “read” Darder, as Paulo Freire encouraged us to “read the word and the world,” her works would speak volumes of her unwavering commitment to the struggle for liberation and an emancipatory vision of the world. This is embodied in all aspects of her work as the range of her scholarship spans across mediums and decades. The Antonia Darder Reader is essential reading as a keystone volume in multiculturalism, critical studies, cultural studies, and many other disciplines.