S.R. Toliver

Stephanie R. Toliver is an assistant professor of Literacy and Secondary Humanities at the University of Colorado, Boulder. She earned her PhD in Language and Literacy Education as well as a graduate certificate in diversity, equity, and inclusion from the University of Georgia, and was a 2019 NAEd/Spencer Dissertation Fellow. Informed by her love of science fiction and fantasy texts as well as her experience as a 9th and 10th grade English teacher, Toliver’s scholarship centers the freedom dreams of Black youth and honors the historical legacy that Black imaginations have had and will have on activism and social change. Specifically, she focuses on representations of and responses to Black youth in speculative fiction texts to discuss the implications of erasing Black children from futuristic and imaginative contexts and to assist teachers in imagining how classrooms can use speculative fiction as a means to center Black joy and Black dreams. Her academic work has been published in several journals, including Journal of Literacy Research, Journal of Children’s Literature, Journal of Adolescent and Adult Literacy, and English Journal. Her public scholarship has been featured on LitHub, Huffpost, and the Horn Book.