Dr. Zachary A. Casey is Associate Professor of Educational Studies at Rhodes College in Memphis, TN, USA. He joined the faculty at Rhodes College in 2014 and earned tenure and promotion to Associate Professor in 2020.
Dr. Casey’s research and teaching focuses on critical whiteness studies, teacher education, anticapitalism, and critical pedagogy. He is particularly interested in the ways racial identity and systemic racism intersect in classrooms, schools, and in the lives of teachers and students. Focusing in particular on the ways neoliberal capitalism undermines antiracist praxis and pedagogies, his scholarship seeks to better understand the ways that white racial identities impact possibilities for a more humanizing education. His work centers on building antiracist pedagogies with practicing and future teachers, as well as the social, cultural, and philosophical contexts of education. Dr. Casey has published over 40 peer reviewed journal articles, book chapters, and encyclopedia entries. He is the author of several books focused on critical whiteness studies and critical pedagogy and teaches classes that focus on the social and cultural foundations of education in the United States.
Dr. Casey has led dozens of professional development sessions and seminars for practicing teachers focused on racial equity and social justice. This work has seen him work with teachers and schools across the United States to grow their capacity to combat racism. The book Building Pedagogues: White Practicing Teachers and the Struggle for Antiracist Work in Schools, (co-authored with Dr. Shannon K. McManimon) documents much of his approach to antiracist professional development and was published by SUNY Press in 2020. He received the 2019 Rising Alumni Award from the College of Education and Human Development at the University of Minnesota for his work to develop the Educational Studies Department at Rhodes College and his first book, A Pedagogy of Anticapitalist Antiracism, was awarded the 2018 Outstanding Book Award from the Society of Professors of Education. In 2022, Dr. Casey won the Clarence Day Award for Outstanding Faculty Research, the highest faculty honor at Rhodes, for his accomplishments as a scholar.
His newest book, Critical Pedagogy and the Trouble with Consciousness Raising, will be published by Routledge in 2025.
Casey, Z. A. (2025). Critical pedagogy and the trouble with consciousness raising. Routledge.
Casey, Z. A. (Ed.) (2020). Encyclopedia of Critical Whiteness Studies in Education. Brill Publishers.
