Elisabeth Johnson

Liz Johnson is an assistant professor of English Education and Literacy at CUNY College of Staten Island. Prior to her time at CUNY, she spent six years as a K-12 teacher in Compton, California; Buenos Aires Argentina; and New Haven, Connecticut and several years conducting qualitative research about small high school reform at the National Center for Restructuring Education, Schools, and Teaching. Currently, Liz is interested and invested in using “out of school” research findings to fuel "in school" research on pop culture, literacy, and identity, given the porous brick, mortar, and socio-political boundaries that divide them to start. This translated to a year long performance ethnography exploring the range and variation of pop culture texts five young people and their teacher engaged in and beyond a tenth grade English class, ways they used these different texts to negotiate who they were and perceived one another to be, and moments when these meaning conflicts made new ways of “being” possible. Her current and upcoming publications appear in the New Educator, Academic Exchange Quarterly, Journal of Curriculum Theory, and Theory into Practice.