Clinical Professor of American Studies
Research Areas: Education and civil rights history, literature and history of adoption in the U.S, and contemporary education policy and parent advocacy
Selected Publications:
With Jeannette Balantic and Andrea Libresco. Notable Books, Notable Lessons: Putting Social Studies Back into the K-8 Curriculum (ABC-CLIO, 2017)
With and Felicity Crawford. “Why Every Student Succeeds Act Still Leaves Most Vulnerable Students Behind.” U.S News and World Report, Dec. 14, 2015.
“Round and Round Together: The Civil Rights Movement Comes to an Amusement Park.” Social Studies and the Young Learner, November/December 2013.
Mary Battenfeld comes to BU’s American and 新英格兰澳门威尼斯人注册网站研究项目 from Wheelock College, where she was a tenured full professor of Humanities and Chair of General Education. At Wheelock, she served on numerous faculty committees, including Faculty Senate and Curriculum Committee, and in 2012 was awarded the Edward H. Ladd Award for Academic Excellence and Service. She is also the former President of the New England American Studies Association, and has been a Fulbright Scholar, and an NEH fellow at Harvard’s Hutchins Center for African and African American Research.
Professor Battenfeld’s interdisciplinary scholarship includes publications on the history of adoption, the civil rights movement, and children’s literature. Her most recent research focuses on education history and policy, with articles on charter schools, parent engagement, and federal education laws. In Notable Books, Notable Lessons: Putting Social Studies Back into the K-8 Curriculum (ABC-CLIO, 2017), co-authored with Andrea S. Libresco and Jeannette Balantic, she examines the decline of social studies in the era of No Child Left Behind, and offers practical lessons for using children’s literature to prepare students to think critically and participate in our multicultural democracy. Her current book project (with Andrea S. Libresco), Raising Citizens, focuses on the development of civic engagement in children.
You can view her CV here.