Amanda Richey Synopsis

Amanda B. Richey, Ph.D. is an Assistant Professor of TESOL and Literacy Education in the Inclusive Education Department at Kennesaw State University. At KSU she teaches in the graduate TESOL program and coordinates the TESOL Ed.S./Ed.D. programs. She has long-term experience working, teaching, and living in Morocco, first as a Peace Corps volunteer, and later as an EFL (English as a Foreign Language) teacher and freelance writer for Fodor’s Morocco.

Richey’s research has focused on the intersection of culture, narrative, and curriculum, with a particular interest in the MENA region, the experience of Muslim families and faith communities in the U.S., and the representation of Muslims and Islam in official school curricula. An example of this work is the co-written article (with Lisa Zagumny), “Orientalism(s), world geography, and temporal paradox: questioning representations of Southwest Asia and North Africa” in International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education.

She has published and delivered workshops on the topic of Islamophobia and education in many different contexts. As a Fulbright Scholar to Jordan during the 2014-15 academic year, Richey taught in the Faculty of Foreign Languages at the University of Jordan, developed a community-engaged, literacy-rich curriculum for the refugee education program, Jesuit Commons: Higher Education at the Margins, and taught EFL and education pedagogy to adult refugee students.

Currently, Richey is finishing work on her narrative research project on the issue of reconciliation in adult refugee education programs in Amman, Jordan. Richey has an extensive background in narrative inquiry and oral history interviewing and has recently published a chapter on transforming teacher collaboration to include approaches to oral history and community asset-mapping that encourage teacher-community partnerships.

Her co-edited book (with Linda Evans) Mothering and Literacies, explores the intersections of culture, motherhood, and literacy practices in multicultural, multilingual contexts. Recently, Richey (in collaboration with Nichole Guillory) developed and delivered a three-year, secondary arts-based curriculum project and participatory research study, Photovoice, at Osborne High School in Marietta, Georgia. Richey is a speaker of Moroccan Arabic (Darija) and Tamazight.