ACADEMIC RESEARCH & WRITING
BOOKS
Cornell University Press, 2009
Celina Su examines the efforts of parents and students who sought to improve the quality of education in their local schools by working with grassroots organizations and taking matters into their own hands. Via close observation of activist groups in the Bronx, Su analyzes strategies that may ultimately lead to better and safer schools everywhere and help to revitalize American democracy.
"Streetwise for Book Smarts is a completely novel and provocative take on an extremely important topic. Its great strength arises from Celina Su's street-level research style. This book should be read by community organizers, foundation officers, and policy makers as well as political scientists, sociologists, urban anthropologists, and scholars of community organizing."
—Dennis Shirley, Boston College
New York University Press, 2009
In cities across the nation, many students are trapped in under-funded, mismanaged and unsafe schools. Yet, a number of scholars and public figures like Bill Cosby have shifted attention away from the persistence of school segregation to lambaste the values of young people themselves. Our Schools Suck (with Gaston Alonso, Noel Anderson, and Jeanne Theoharis) gives voice to the African American and Latino students who attend under-resourced inner-city schools, where guidance counselors and AP classes are limited and security guards and metal detectors are plentiful—and grow disheartened by a public conversation that continually casts them as the problem with urban schools.
"The student voices in this striking book are an intervention into the adult-driven stereotypes of urban youth. The students offer stories of anger, challenge and hope. We all need to pay attention to these voices, and act on the corrective lessons they provide."
—Jean Anyon, author of Radical Possibilities:
Public Policy, Urban Education, and A New Social Movement
Jossey-Bass/ John Wiley, 2013
The global health policy literature abounds with titles describing how multi-national organizations, governments, and private organizations have tried to solve development problems and failed. Introducing Global Health (with Peter Muennig) uses a more multi-dimensional approach; further, while it is certainly helpful to learn from our mistakes, this book emphasizes what has actually worked. The book reflects growing interest in the intersection between governance and health, especially in low- and middle-income countries—with a focus on politics and contested notions of accountability and democratic policy-making.
SELECTED PUBLIC SCHOLARSHIP/ ESSAYS/ EXHIBITS
Budgeting justice. Boston Review.
In the face of anti-Asian violence, we want budget justice. Gotham Gazette, with Shahana Hanif.
Democracy How? Harper's Magazine.
What Makes Young People Excited About Politics? Washington Post Monkey Cage blog.
Bildung als Farce. Die Tagezeitung.
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Reprinted as "Public Education: An Expendable Farce?” Killing the Buddha.
A Jarful of Stars. Berlin Journal.
Bürger entdecken Bürger. Die Tagezeitung.
Holiday in Cambodia. n+1.
Brown v. Board of Education at 55: Segregation in the 21st century.
With Gaston Alonso, Noel Anderson, & Jeanne Theoharis. The Progressive.
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Also printed in four newspapers nationwide.
Structural violence in a refugee community [photolog]. Asia Catalyst.
Waiting for Gautreaux: Gautreaux v. Chicago Housing Authority and HUD. With Damon Rich and Prem Krishnamurthy. [22-foot-long flow chart on legal arguments and policy changes in the case's 35-year history, pictured here] City Without a Ghetto Exhibit, Center for Urban Pedagogy. Storefront for Art and Architecture, New York.
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Included in various exhibits including the Rotterdam Architecture Biennial, 2009.
SELECTED JOURNAL ARTICLES
Su, Celina. 2018. Managed Participation: City Agencies and Micropolitics in Participatory Budgeting. Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector Quarterly. [Available here.]
Su, Celina. 2017. Beyond Inclusion: Critical Race Theory and Participatory Budgeting. New Political Science. 39(1):126-142. [Available here.]
Su, Celina. 2010. Marginalized stakeholders and performative politics: Dueling discourses in education policy-making. Critical Policy Studies, 4(4):362-383. [Available here.]
Su, Celina. 2007. Cracking silent codes: Critical race theory and education organizing. Discourse: Studies in the Cultural Politics of Education, 28(4):531-548. [Available here.]
For links to many of my other academic publications, please visit my academia.edu page.