At Indiana University, Kafi Kumasi was a Laura Bush 21st Century Librarian Fellow through a partnership between the School of Education and the School of Library and Information Science. Her dissertation research, “Seeing White in Black: Examining Racial Identity Among African American Adolescents Through a Culturally Centered Book Club,” was a sociolinguistic ethnographic study that examined racial identity among thirteen African American middle and high school students inside a book club that centered on exploring Black culture and experiences through young adult novels. She was also the principal investigator on a research project within the Indiana School of Library and Information Science. "Stories We Tell: Culture, Race, and Youth Services in the LIS Curriculum," details her qualitative pilot study exploring how a group of pre-service librarians think about multicultural education as it relates to their role serving ethnically diverse youth in library settings. Kumasi also received an IMLS-funded scholarship to obtain her MLIS at Wayne State, while working as a school media specialist, through a partnership between the former Library and Information Science Program and the Detroit Public Schools. Prior to entering graduate school, she was a high school English teacher at Southeastern High School of Technology in Detroit.

• B.S. in Education from the University of Michigan, 1999
• MLIS from Wayne State University, 2003
• Ph.D. in Curriculum and Instruction from Indiana University, 2008

Laura Bush 21^st Century Librarian Fellow

National Center for Institutional Diversity Postdoctoral Fellowship (Semi-Finalist)

NCTE Cultivating New Voices Among Scholars of Color Fellow

School Library Media; Urban Libraries and Education; Multicultural Education; Issues and Trends in Children’s and Young Adult Literature; social and cultural approaches to adolescent literacy.

Carter, S., Damico, J. and Kumasi, K. (2008). The Time is Now!: Talking
with Black Youth about College. Voices from the Middle, 16(2).
 
Kumasi, K. (under contract 2008). Critical Race Theory: Mapping the
Eclectic Roots and Educational Applications. In Levinson. B.A. (Ed.),
Critical Social Theories and Educational Scholarship: Questions and
Possibilities. Boulder, CO: Paradigm Publishers.
 
Kumasi-Johnson,K. (2007) Critical Inquiry: Library Media Specialists as
Change Agents. School Library Media Activities Monthly, 24(7).