Jolivette Anderson-Douoning
Graduate Student // American Studies // SIS
Office and Contact
Room: HEAV G001
Email: anders50@purdue.edu
Jolivette Anderson-Douoning, PhD Candidate in American Studies, is 2021 Outstanding Teaching Assistant in Women's Gender and Sexuality Studies. Jolivette has made an effort to create a place/space for students to feel intellectually safe, emotionally safe, and physically safe during COVID-19 Pandemic, but to be clear, she has been working to create these spaces inside of classrooms for a long time because she works to be racially safe wherever she goes on campus or in the world. Her committment to race is central to black feminism and its committment to address interlocking oppression of all kinds. As such, she wants the same kind of safety for all students and all people.
Jolivette is a Race and Culture Researcher and Educator who specializes and has expertise in Comparative Black Cultures, Intracultural Communication, and Intra-racial identity in the United States. Her work extends into transnational research into Black Cultures in the United Kingdom, France, and West African nations. She has 15 years of experience working in communities in the Deep South, USA using theater and literary arts as tools to teach black culture. She has 15 years of experience in higher education working as an administrator at the Purdue Black Cultural Center and as a Graduate Student Instructor in the classroom teaching American Studies, Communication, and Women’s Gender and Sexuality Studies. She uses her academic research, research methods, and curriculum – the D. Ciphers Curriculum: Explorations in Reading, Writing, and Critical Thinking - that is designed to build knowledge of self and society in all areas of instruction from communities to classrooms and beyond.
Jolivette has crossed disciplines and used mixed methods to gather information about people and communities of the Black Diaspora by doing educational and arts consulting (workshops and/or performance) work in: the United Kingdom (Oxford, Birmingham, London), Central America (Belize), the Caribbean (Jamaica-Cutting Edge Radio Show, Cruising Into History – Haitian Revolution at 200) and throughout the United States, specifically in the Deep South region.
Jolivette has conducted teacher training in Mississippi at Lanier High School and in Louisiana at Bethune Middle School in the Caddo Parish Schools. She has used her D. Ciphers Curriculum to train students to think critically about themselves and the spaces they occupy by using a project-based learning model called the ‘My Mississippi Eyes Migration Project’ that took students from Jackson, Mississippi to Chicago, IL and Harlem, NY. Students conducted interviews, took photographs of people's eyes, and made an exhibition of the photos and snippets of interviews. She was a chaperone for the Rosa and Raymond Parks Institute for Self-Development on their national program called Pathways to Freedom, the program retraces stops on the Underground Railroad throughout the USA.
Jolivette focuses on five shelters (‘places’) of the African American lived experience for her dissertation research work. These ‘shelters of existence’ include: the Family House, the School House, the Church House, the Work-House (labor), and the Play (Leisure) House. She identifies how African Americans lived in ‘Black Spaces’ and has used her wealth of research and knowledge to teach and/or train students, teachers, administrators and the general public. Her concentrations in educational studies (School – Community Relations) and curriculum and instruction (Pedagogy) informs the way she trains teachers to develop their pedagogical skills for teaching about race and culture in their classrooms and to engage with all students when teaching about race and ethnicity via social studies and ethnic studies standards in Indiana, formerly with Freetown Village, Inc and also as a parent volunteer in the West Lafayette School Corporation in Tippecanoe County.
Jolivette has been Guest Faculty for Indiana Voices of Women (IVOW). She is a theater performance artist and voice actor who has narrated for historical projects that have appeared on National Public Radio (NPR) and Public Radio International (PRI).
Jolivette is a Race and Culture Researcher and Educator who specializes and has expertise in Comparative Black Cultures, Intracultural Communication, and Intra-racial identity in the United States. Her work extends into transnational research into Black Cultures in the United Kingdom, France, and West African nations. She has 15 years of experience working in communities in the Deep South, USA using theater and literary arts as tools to teach black culture. She has 15 years of experience in higher education working as an administrator at the Purdue Black Cultural Center and as a Graduate Student Instructor in the classroom teaching American Studies, Communication, and Women’s Gender and Sexuality Studies. She uses her academic research, research methods, and curriculum – the D. Ciphers Curriculum: Explorations in Reading, Writing, and Critical Thinking - that is designed to build knowledge of self and society in all areas of instruction from communities to classrooms and beyond.
Jolivette has crossed disciplines and used mixed methods to gather information about people and communities of the Black Diaspora by doing educational and arts consulting (workshops and/or performance) work in: the United Kingdom (Oxford, Birmingham, London), Central America (Belize), the Caribbean (Jamaica-Cutting Edge Radio Show, Cruising Into History – Haitian Revolution at 200) and throughout the United States, specifically in the Deep South region.
Jolivette has conducted teacher training in Mississippi at Lanier High School and in Louisiana at Bethune Middle School in the Caddo Parish Schools. She has used her D. Ciphers Curriculum to train students to think critically about themselves and the spaces they occupy by using a project-based learning model called the ‘My Mississippi Eyes Migration Project’ that took students from Jackson, Mississippi to Chicago, IL and Harlem, NY. Students conducted interviews, took photographs of people's eyes, and made an exhibition of the photos and snippets of interviews. She was a chaperone for the Rosa and Raymond Parks Institute for Self-Development on their national program called Pathways to Freedom, the program retraces stops on the Underground Railroad throughout the USA.
Jolivette focuses on five shelters (‘places’) of the African American lived experience for her dissertation research work. These ‘shelters of existence’ include: the Family House, the School House, the Church House, the Work-House (labor), and the Play (Leisure) House. She identifies how African Americans lived in ‘Black Spaces’ and has used her wealth of research and knowledge to teach and/or train students, teachers, administrators and the general public. Her concentrations in educational studies (School – Community Relations) and curriculum and instruction (Pedagogy) informs the way she trains teachers to develop their pedagogical skills for teaching about race and culture in their classrooms and to engage with all students when teaching about race and ethnicity via social studies and ethnic studies standards in Indiana, formerly with Freetown Village, Inc and also as a parent volunteer in the West Lafayette School Corporation in Tippecanoe County.
Jolivette has been Guest Faculty for Indiana Voices of Women (IVOW). She is a theater performance artist and voice actor who has narrated for historical projects that have appeared on National Public Radio (NPR) and Public Radio International (PRI).