NCID-2431
Ebony Thomas
Associate Professor
University of Michigan
Education/Degree:
1 English and Education (University of Michigan)
About
Ebony Elizabeth Thomas is associate professor in the joint program in English and Education at the University of Michigan's Marsal School of Education. Previously, she was associate professor in the literacy, culture, and international education division at Penn GSE. A former Detroit Public Schools teacher and National Academy of Education/Spencer Foundation Postdoctoral fellow, she serves as co-editor of Research in the Teaching of English, and her most recent book is The Dark Fantastic: Race and the Imagination from Harry Potter to the Hunger Games (NYU Press, 2019), which won the World Fantasy Award and the British Fantasy Awards.
Current Work
Dr. Thomas' work on race and representation in children's and young adult literature has been sought after nationally and internationally. She has been interviewed by MSNBC, the BBC, the New York Times, the Philadelphia Inquirer, and the Chicago Tribune, to name a few. She is a former reviewer for Kirkus' children's book section, and has written book reviews for the Los Angeles Times. She is a past National Book Award for Young People's Literature judge, and is a current member of the United States Board on Books for Young People. In addition to her work on books for young readers, she has published widely on race, discourse, and interaction in classrooms and digital environments. In conjunction with the National Writing Project, Amy Stornaiuolo (Penn GSE), Elyse Eidman-Aadahl (NWP), and Sarah Levine (Stanford), she is a co-principal investigator on a major James S. McDonnell Foundation Teachers as Learners grant, the Digital Discourse Project (DDP).
Research Area Keyword(s)
discourse analysis, Young Adult literature, science fiction, fantasy, Afrofuturism