K. Wayne Yang

Education

Ph.D. Social and Cultural Studies in Education, University of California, Berkeley

Research Interests

• Popular culture and social movements;
• Urban education and critical pedagogy;
• Coloniality in urban ghettos;
• Decolonization

Biography

Wayne Yang is currently serving as Provost of John Muir College. As evident from many “co-s”, he thrives on collaboration and believes in the power of collective intelligence. He co-founded the Indigenous Futures Institute, which channels Indigenous knowledge through community-based participatory models to harness science and technology, critically intervene in the production of knowledge, and imagine abundant futures that resolve pressing issues facing our climate, health, and environment. He co-founded Black Like Water, which identifies, amplifies, and analyzes Black relationships to land and water. He co-chaired the Academic Senate workgroup that created the Jane Teranes Climate Change Education Requirement.

His main research collaborator is Indigenous Unangax̂ scholar Eve Tuck, James Weldon Johnson Professor and founding director of the Provostial Center for Indigenous Studies at NYU. Together they edit the book series Indigenous and Decolonizing Studies in Education with Routledge Press. Their current research focuses on Indigenous, Black, and people-of-color communities’ relationships to Indigenous land, the impact of these relationships to health and wellbeing, and the private efforts as well as public policies that regenerate Indigenous relationships to land for all people, particularly for communities in urban areas. They have several participatory action research projects with the Land Relationships Super Collective, which consists of community organizations engaged in land-based projects.

Dr. Yang writes about decolonization and everyday epic organizing. His publications have been translated to Spanish, Portuguese, and French. He is interested in the complex role of cities in global affairs: cities as sites of settler colonialism, as stages for empire, as places of resettlement and gentrification, and as communities of possibility that are always-already on Indigenous lands.

An accomplished educator, Dr. Yang was the recipient of the UC San Diego Academic Senate Distinguished Teaching Award. Before his academic career, he co-founded the Avenues Project, a youth development non-profit organization, as well as East Oakland Community High School.  He facilitated community action-research at multiple levels with community and state actors: youth, families, schools, grassroots organizations, non-profits, school district administration, and labor unions.

Sometimes he writes as la paperson, an avatar that irregularly calls.

Climate Change News

UC San Diego launches climate change course requirement. KPBS. October 3, 2024.

UC San Diego Launches New Graduation Requirement, Bolstering Climate Change Education. UC San Diego Today. September 26, 2024

San Diego Heat & Human Health Summit. 2023.

Climate Change Solutions Summit. 2020.

SOME SELECT PUBLICATIONS

Organizing Communities and Institutions

A Third University is Possible. la paperson (2017). University of Minnesota Press.

How long is never? Halajian, Shoghig, and K. Wayne Yang (2019). Georgia. November 5, 2019.

Deep Organizing: To Build the Beloved Community. K. Wayne Yang (2015). In E. Welch, J. Ruanto-Ramirez, N. Magpusao & S. Amon E. (eds.), Nexus: Complicating community & centering the self. Pp. 9-21. Cognella Academic Publishing.

Organizing MySpace: Youth walkouts, pleasure, politics and new media. K. Wayne Yang (2007). Educational Foundations. 21 (1-2), 9-28.

Youth Studies and Research Methods

New Approaches to Inequality Research with Youth: Theorizing Race Beyond the Traditions of Our Disciplines. Eve Tuck, K. Wayne Yang, & Jade Nixon (eds). Routledge (2023).

Youth Resistance Research and Theories of Change. Eve Tuck & K. Wayne Yang (eds). Routledge. (2014).

R-words: Refusing research. Eve Tuck & K. Wayne Yang (2013). In D. Paris & M. Winn (Eds.), Humanizing Research: Decolonizing Qualitative Inquiry With Youth and Communities. Sage.

Unbecoming claims: Pedagogies of refusal in qualitative research. Eve Tuck & K. Wayne Yang (2014). Qualitative Inquiry, 2(6), pp. 811-818.

Not Child but Meager: Sexualization and Negation of Black Childhood. Tezeru Teshome & K. Wayne Yang (2019). Small Axe.

Indigenous Studies and Decolonization Studies

Beyond Land Acknowledgement in Settler Institutions. Theresa Stewart-Ambo & K. Wayne Yang (2021). Social Text.

Indigenous and Decolonizing Studies in Education: Mapping the Long View. Linda Tuhiwai Smith, Eve Tuck, & K. Wayne Yang (eds). Routledge (2018).

A ghetto land pedagogy: an antidote for settler environmentalism. la paperson (2014). Environmental Education Research, 20(1), pp. 115-130.

Decolonization is not a metaphor. Eve Tuck & K. Wayne Yang (2012). Decolonization: Indigeneity, Education & Society, 1(1), pp. 1-40.

The postcolonial ghetto: Seeing her shape and his hand. *la paperson (2010). Berkeley Review of Education, 1(1).

Architecture

Sustainability as Plantation Logic, Or, Who Plots an Architecture of Freedom? K. Wayne Yang (2020). e-flux Architecture.

This Is a Beautiful World: In Conversation with K. Wayne Yang. Cephas, Jay, Igor Marjanović, and Ana Miljački (2022) Journal of Architectural Education 76.2: 145-152.

Between Ship and Sea and Shore: Spatial Practices from the Black Pacific. Caroline Imani Collins and K. Wayne Yang (2024). Scroope 33.1: Disenclosure.

Education Studies

Pedagogy of Intercambio: Movements at the Ends of Empire. Davíd Morales & K. Wayne Yang (2021). Lapis.

Towards What Justice? Describing Diverse Dreams of Justice in Education. Eve Tuck & K. Wayne Yang (eds). Routledge. (2018).

Mathematics, critical literacy, and youth participatory action research. K. Wayne Yang (2009). New Directions for Youth Development. (123): pp.99-118.

Discipline or Punish? Some suggestions for teacher practice and policy. K. Wayne Yang (2009). Language Arts, 87(1), pp.49-61.

Interviews, Podcasts, Webinars

Learning to Theorize Blackness, Indigeneity, and Racism in Youth Research to Reduce Inequality. [Webinar]. William T. Grant Foundation. Updated April 23, 2023.

Keolu Fox, Theresa Stewart-Ambo & K. Wayne Yang dream of flourishing Indigenous futures. [Podcast]. Scott Stoneman. Pretty Heady Stuff. 2022.

Decolonial Desires: Is a Third University Possible? Natchee Blu Barnd & K. Wayne Yang (2020). Ethnic Studies Review.

A Third University Is Always Happening: A Conversation with K. Wayne Yang. [podcast]. Tina Pippin & Lucia Hulsether. Nothing Never Happens: A Radical Pedagogy Podcast. April 29, 2020

What Does An Abolitionist Asian American Politics Look Like? [Webinar] Building Community and Abolitionist Futures series. Institute of Arts and Humanities at UC San Diego. October 16, 2020.

At the Edge of Canada: Indigenous Research. [podcast interview]. Trevor Phillips. February 26, 2018.

Films

Pandemic Bread. Directed by Zeinabu irene Davis, script by Marc Chery, story by Marivi Soliven, Producers Nicoletta Vangelisti and C. Ree, Associate Producer K. Wayne Yang, Joseph Ruanto Ramirez, Lev Kalman. Wimmin With a Mission, 2023.