Becoming an Antiracist Educator honours the enduring influence of Timothy J. Stanley, a visionary historian whose work has reshaped how racism, racialization, and historical consciousness are understood in Canada. This timely collection gathers scholars, teachers, and community advocates who reflect on how Stanley's scholarship and mentorship have challenged and guided their own commitments to antiracist education.
Spanning generations and disciplinary backgrounds, the contributors offer deeply personal and politically grounded reflections that connect Stanley's insights to the pressing realities of our time. They engage questions raised by the toppling of colonial statues, the resurgence of anti-Asian racism, and the uncovering of unmarked graves at residential school sites. Together, they show that antiracist teaching is not only about critiquing systems, but about reimagining how we understand the past, how we tell our histories, and how we live with one another in the present.
Concluding with a moving epilogue by Stanley, this collection speaks to educators, researchers, and community members seeking to confront racism in schools, museums, universities, and public life. It offers both a testament to his legacy and an invitation to carry that work forward with courage and care. Becoming an Antiracist Educator is an essential resource for educators, scholars, and community members committed to interrupting racism in schools, museums, universities, and beyond. It offers not only an archive of Stanley's impact but a roadmap for those seeking to carry his work forward in practical and transformative ways.
Also, listen to the FooknConversation podcast (episode 9):
Dr. Stanley shares his perspectives as a historian about the invisibility of everyday racisms in Canada. He discusses some of the following concepts: the rise of anti-Chinese racisms, the tragic death of Colten Boushie, the grammar of settler colonial racializations, racisms, and organized exclusions, the genealogy of Canadian settler property rights, removing monuments, the genealogical privileging certain inclusions and exclusions, living in Montreal as a mixed race youth, banning public expressions of faith in Quebec, the removal of national statues, living in China, and so much more.
Link: https://www.fooknconversation.com/podcast/episode-09-timothy-stanley/
Table of Contents:
Acknowledgements
Introduction
Toward Becoming an Antiracist Educator
Nicholas Ng-A-Fook and Mark T. S. Currie
Part I: Shaping Antiracist Approaches
Chapter 1
Banalities and Multiplicities: Applying Tim Stanley’s Work in and Across Places
Bryan Smith
Chapter 2
A Letter to Maleeka: Approaching Inescapable Racializations and Difficult Memories
Farah Virani-Murji
Chapter 3
Connection Across Space, Time, and Pandemics: A Conversation with Timothy Stanley
Samantha Cutrara
Chapter 4
Amnesia and Racial Tension: Lessons in the Wake of Racial Reckoning
Joseph Smith
Chapter 5
“Something to Think About”: Antiracisms and Learning to Kill Canadian History
Mark T. S. Currie
Part II: “Doing” History Differently
Chapter 6
Challenging the Old Guard and Disrupting the Grand Narrative
Shannon Conway
Chapter 7
The Canadian History Hall Revisited
Lindsay Gibson
Chapter 8
The Study of Afghan Textbooks for Citizenship Analysis Through the Work of Timothy Stanley
Noorin Nazari
Chapter 9
Letters, Points, and Trajectories in the Work of Timothy Stanley
Kent den Heyer
Part III: Mentorship
Chapter 10
The Accidental (Not Occidental) Anti‑Essentialist Antiracist Educator
Doug Tateishi
Chapter 11
Not Just Another Bobby Orr: Reflections on Academic Genealogy and the Scholarship of Timothy J. Stanley
Ken Montgomery
Chapter 12
“To Affect Eternity by Acting Through Others”: Timothy J. Stanley’s Graduate Student Mentorship
Pamela Rogers
Chapter 13
“And So?”: Lessons from Timothy Stanley in Engaging Racisms in the World
Nichole Grant
Epilogue
Building Connections: My Humble Reply
Timothy J. Stanley
References
Contributors
Index
About the Author :
Nicholas Ng-A-Fook is Professor of Curriculum Studies in the Faculty of Education at the University of Ottawa. He continues to address the 94 Calls to Action put forth by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in partnership with Survivors from the Algonquin First Nations communities. His teaching and research are situated within the wider international field of curriculum studies. As a curriculum theorist, he draws on different life writing research methodologies-autobiography, ethnography, oral history, and narrative inquiry-to co-create, co-support, and co-sustain culturally responsive, relevant, and relational curriculum with school leaders and teachers seeking to serve the public good. He is the host of the FooknConversation podcast.
Mark T. S. Currie is Adjunct Professor at the School of Canadian Studies at Carleton University. His post-doctoral research focuses on small-town communities in southern Ontario, investigating whether community members remember and/or see racism occurring in the town; if they see their town as an antiracist community; and how Whiteness is maintained or disrupted in the memories and perceptions of the town. This post-doctoral research builds on Mark's PhD in Education, which focused on sociohistorical geographies and enacting antiracisms in downtown Toronto. Mark holds a Master of Arts in Island Studies from the University of Prince Edward Island, for which he investigated postcolonial education and cultural identity on the Caribbean island of Dominica. He also achieved a Master of Teaching from Griffith University, for which he conducted action research on in-class student motivation in a secondary school in Cape Town, South Africa.
Review :
"That there is 'push back' to EDI initiatives in today's multicultural Canada is, as Dr. Timothy Stanley would say: 'something to think about.' In doing so, Becoming an Antiracist Educator is a timely contribution in which his students, mentees, and colleagues--weaving their experiences with Dr. Stanley and his scholarship--help us understand that reactions to EDI stem from Canada's colonial history and systemic racism. 'And so...?' The essays offer critical insights into what Stanley's impactful anti-racism and social justice work--reminding us of what might be achieved when we embark on 'a personal journey' of antiracism toward the equitable and just society and world we seek. It is true that the essays are appropriately, a 'Thank You, ' of sorts."--Carl Everton James, Professor, York University, Jean Augustine Chair in Education, Community and Diaspora
"This book captures how Dr. Tim Stanley reshaped scholarship in Canada with his research, his teaching, and his advocacy for methods and frameworks (sometimes against ad hominem opposition and attacks that went beyond the content of his evidence) for understanding white supremacy holistically rather than as separate racisms usually categorized by naming the targets of racism rather than their perpetrators. Dr. Stanley described the architecture and design of the systems created in Canada to allow colonialism and white supremacy to work openly and yet often unseen by being built into the woodwork that scaffolds our society. The essays here resonate with how his own work's impact has gone past academia to provoke Canadians into see the ongoing impact of colonialism in their everyday lives, from street signs and place names to their education systems. Perhaps what this volume reflects best, however, is in the ways Dr. Stanley's legacy extends beyond his own work through his mentorship of so many younger scholars who survived and thrived through his lowkey but wise advice and his support and supervision."--Henry Yu, Professor Department of History, University of British Columbia "Henry Yu"
