Petchauer, Emery M. (emp2233)

Emery Petchauer is a scholar and artist who is at his best in intergenerational spaces where people make things together — especially beats, sounds, songs, and beautiful noise. He is interested in how educators, artists, and youth connect their assets to bring about the world they wish to experience. Emery’s four books and 50 peer-reviewed publications include emerging genres of scholarly communication that incorporate sound design and multimodal production, such as web texts and audio papers. His scholarship in English education brings together sound studies, hip-hop studies, and his expertise as a former high school English teacher and community-based music educator. His scholarship and community work have been supported by the Spencer Foundation and through partnerships with Ableton and Koala Sampler.

Emery’s first two books explored the relationship between hip-hop culture and education. Hip-Hop Culture in College Students’ Lives (Routlege, 2012) explored how young adults apply the aesthetics and worldviews of hip-hop to their educational lives. The book received popular coverage in the Philadelphia, Boston, and New York Metro Paper, and was reviewed in Journal of College Student Development, International Journal of Critical Pedagogy, Scratched Vinyl, and other venues. Schooling Hip-Hop: Expanding Hip-Hop Based Education Across the Curriculum (Teachers College Press, 2013) explored the theory and practice of hip-hop based education in science, social studies, college composition, teacher education, and other fields. Called “incredibly important” by hip-hop artist Immortal Technique, the book was positively reviewed in Harvard Educational Review; Journal of Urban Learning, Teaching, and Research; and other venues.

Emery’s third and fourth books addressed the racial diversity of the teaching profession. Navigating Teacher Licensure Exams (Routledge, 2019) looked at the experiences aspiring teachers of color have with the high stakes standardized exams that can keep them out of the profession. Emery’s work in this area received the Innovations in Research on Equity and Social Justice in Teacher Education Award from Division K of the American Educational Research Association. Teacher Education Across Minority Serving Institutions (Rutgers University Press, 2018) consolidated scholarship from institutions that play the largest roles putting Black and Brown teachers in classrooms: Historically Black Colleges and Universities, Tribal Colleges and Universities, Hispanic Serving Institutions, and Asian American and Native American Pacific Islander Serving Institutions. The first of its kind, the book received the Exemplary Research in Teaching and Teacher Education Award from Division K of the American Educational Research Association.

Emery’s editorial appointments include serving as associate editor of Journal of Teacher Education (2017-2021) and Urban Education (2018-2023). In 2015, he served as guest editor of “Back to the Lab with Hip Hop Education,” a special issue of Urban Education. His expert commentary has appeared in popular venues including Education Week, Inside Higher Education, Diverse: Issues in Higher Education, Salon, The Conversation, The Tom Joyner Morning Show, The Detroit News, and other outlets.

Emery teaches courses on language, literacy, and culture; writing pedagogies; urban education; hip-hop literature and aesthetics; qualitative research methods; young adult literature; critical race and whiteness studies; and emerging genres of scholarly communication. His courses regularly collaborate with artists, classroom teachers, and community organizers. Moving across disciplinary norms, his courses activate social design, performance, hacking, sound design, and art making. Antiracism, education justice, and ethical community partnerships are common themes in his courses. 

Emery has received teaching awards as a high school English teacher and college professor, including the Board of Trustees Distinguished Teaching Award at Lincoln University in Pennsylvania, the first historically Black university in the United States. Before joining the faculty at Teachers College, Emery spent eight years as a tenured professor at Michigan State University, where he also served as coordinator of the English Education program.