A scholar of African American Studies, Education, and History
Jarvis R. Givens, PhD
NEW BOOK!
American Grammar: Race, Education, and the Building of a Nation
A new history of US education through the nineteenth century that rigorously accounts for Black, Native, and white experiences; a story that exposes the idea of American education as “the great equalizer” to not only be a lie, but also a myth that reproduces past harms.
COMING SOON!
I’ll Make a World:
The 100-Year Journey of Black History Month
In its one-hundredth anniversary, a powerful and essential meditation on the origins, evolution, and future of Black History Month from one of America’s leading historians of Black education and the author of American Grammar.
Jarvis R. Givens
is a professor of Education and African & African American Studies at Harvard University, and he specializes in 19th and 20th century African American history and theories of race, power, and schooling. Professor Givens is the author of three books, American Grammar: Race, Education, and the Building of a Nation, published by Harper in 2025, School Clothes: A Collective Memoir of Black Student Witness, published by Beacon Press in 2023, and Fugitive Pedagogy: Carter G. Woodson and the Art of Black Teaching, published by Harvard University Press in 2021. He is also completing a fourth book entitled I’ll Make Me a World: The 100-Year Journey of Black History Month which will be released by Harper in February 2026.
Professor Givens earned his PhD in African American Studies from the University of California, Berkeley and his research has been published in several outlets, including The Atlantic, LA Review of Books, American Education Research Journal, Souls, Harvard Educational Review, and The Journal of African American History.
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