College of Education and Human Development

Department of Curriculum and Instruction

Nina Asher

  • Pronouns: she, her, hers

  • Professor

  • Office Hours

    Please call (612) 625-9809 to schedule an appointment.

Nina Asher

Areas of interest

Postcolonial and feminist theory, globalization, critical perspectives on multiculturalism, and Asian American studies in relation to education.

Degrees

EdD, Teachers College, Columbia University, 1999

Biography

In the mid-1980s, armed with my master’s degree in social work (from the Tata Institute of Social Sciences in Bombay, India), I began working as a research assistant on intervention projects focused on improving the educational achievement levels of children from socioeconomically disadvantaged, marginalized communities in urban and rural contexts in India. It was through this work that I first encountered Paulo Freire’s Pedagogy of the Oppressed and found my resolve to pursue doctoral studies in education getting ever stronger.

In 1988, I arrived in New York City to do just that at Teachers College, Columbia University. As I began my studies there, I decided to gain some teaching experience in a U.S. elementary classroom to augment my experience teaching K-12 students as part of the intervention projects in India. As the world of scholarship began opening up to me, my interest in the then-emerging area of multicultural education grew out of my engagement with issues related to the education of Asian American students. Reading for my dissertation, I also began drawing on postcolonial theory to inform my analyses of Asian American and multicultural education. This interest in theory led me to Louisiana State University – where the Curriculum Theory Project is located and where I taught from 1999-2011. At LSU, I was honored to have been named the J. Franklin Bayhi Endowed Professor of Education in 2007 and awarded the College of Education Advocate for Diversity Award in 2011. At LSU, I served as Coordinator of the Holmes Elementary Education Program (2007-2011) and Co-Director of the Curriculum Theory Project (2007-2010), and was on the faculty of the Women’s and Gender Studies Program as well as the Program in Comparative Literature.

Since July 2011, I have been honored to join the faculty of the distinguished, highly regarded Department of Curriculum and Instruction (C&I) in the College of Education and Human Development (CEHD) at the University of Minnesota-Twin Cities in the role of Department Chair. This large, vibrant department attracts excellent, dedicated scholars and educators – students, faculty, and visiting international scholars, among others – who are interested in curriculum and teaching, theory, research, policy, practice, and engagement in relation to such areas as: Art Education, Culture and Teaching, Elementary Education, Learning Technology, Literacy Education, Mathematics Education, Science Education, Second Languages and Cultures, Social Studies Education, and STEM Education. I am also an Affiliate Faculty member of the Department of Gender, Women’s and Sexuality Studies at the University of Minnesota-Twin Cities.

My own scholarship focuses on postcolonial and feminist theory, globalization, critical perspectives on multiculturalism, and Asian American Studies in relation to education. I am thrilled to have received a 2014-15 Fulbright-Nehru Academic and Professional Excellence Award (Research) from the J. William Fulbright Foreign Scholarship Board, Council for International Exchange of Scholars, Washington, D.C. for my research project, Examining the Intersections of Globalization, Privatization, and Education after two decades of Economic Liberalization in India.

Over the past decade, I have developed and taught such courses as “Postcolonialism and Feminism in Education,” “Globalization, Multiculturalism, and Education,” and “Gender, Race, and Nation.” My numerous service commitments to the field include serving as Book Review Editor for both the NWSAJ (National Women’s Studies Association Journal, now Feminist Formations) from 2007-2009 and the International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education from 2007- to date, Chair of the Nominations Committee of the Curriculum Studies Division (Division B) of the American Educational Research Association (AERA), 2011-12 and Chair of the Nominating Committee of AERA’s Teaching and Teacher Education Division (Division K), 2013-14.

Editorships

Book Review Editor – International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education (QSE) (2007-)

International Editorial Board/ Editorial Board/Advisory Board Member:

Journal of Curriculum Theorizing (2003-)*Teachers College Record (2005-)*Postcolonial Directions in Education (2009-)*Journal of Curriculum and Pedagogy (2014-)*Curriculum Inquiry (2014-)*

Selected Awards

Fulbright Specialist (February 2019- 2022) – Approved to be on the roster of Fulbright Specialists for international exchange projects and lectures for a 3-year term. https://fulbrightspecialist.worldlearning.org2014-15 Fulbright-Nehru Academic and Professional Excellence Award (Research) – J. William Fulbright Foreign Scholarship Board, Council for International Exchange of Scholars, Washington, D.C. Grant for research project, Examining the Intersections of Globalization, Privatization, and Education after two decades of Economic Liberalization in India.College of Education Advocate for Diversity Award (2011)-Peabody College of Education

Associations/Memberships

AERA, American Educational Research Association (IAACS), International Association for the Advancement of Curriculum Studies (AAACS), American Association for the Advancement of Curriculum Studies Fulbright Association Professors of CurriculumGlobal Curriculum Network, International Bureau of Education 

Publications

Selected Book Chapters

Asher, N. (invited, under review). Identities and cultures in globalized, postcolonial India: Considerations for decolonizing education work in transnational contexts. In L. D. Hill & F. J. Levine (Eds.), WERA Yearbook.

Asher, N. (invited, in preparation). Considerations for school reform in globalized, postcolonial India. In W. T. Pink (Ed.), Oxford research encyclopedia of education (online)/Oxford encyclopedia of school reform (print). New York, NY: Oxford University Press.

Asher, N. (invited, in preparation). Curriculum: Local, national, transnational, and global.” In M. F. He & W. H. Schubert (Eds.), Oxford encyclopedia of curriculum studies.  New York, NY: Oxford University Press.

Asher, N. (in preparation). Globalization, decolonization, and education: Implicatedness and agency in transnational contexts. In N. Asher, C. L. Kolb, & J. Grinage (Eds.), Postcolonialism, globalization, and education: Engaging identities, cultures, and curriculum. New York, NY: Routledge.

Asher, N. (2017). Engaging identities and cultures in a globalized, postcolonial India: Implications for decolonizing curriculum and pedagogy. In W. T. Pink & G. W. Noblit (Eds.), Second international handbook of urban education (pp. 97-112). Cham, Switzerland: Springer International Publishing.

Asher, N., & Kolb, C. L. (2015). Global, transnational, and local curriculum. In M. F. He, B. D. Schultz, & W. H. Schubert (Eds.), Guide to curriculum in education (pp. 432-439). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.

Selected Journal Articles

Asher, N. (in press). Beyond dualisms: Interdependence and possibilities in education today. Journal of Curriculum Theorizing.

Asher, N. (2009). Writing home/decolonizing text(s). Discourse: Studies in the Cultural Politics of Education, 30(1), 1-13.

Asher, N. (2008). Listening to hyphenated Americans: Hybrid identities of youth from immigrant families. Theory into Practice, 47(1), 12-19. (Invited contribution to special, themed issue on “immigrant families and U.S. schools.”)

Asher, N. (2007). Made in the (multicultural) U.S.A.: Unpacking tensions of race, culture, gender, and sexuality in education. Educational Researcher, 36(2), 65-73.

Asher, N. (2005). At the interstices: Engaging postcolonial and feminist perspectives for a multicultural education pedagogy in the South. Teachers College Record, 107(5), 1079-1106.

Presentations

Asher, N. (April, 2019). Curriculum ignor(ance)e(s): Pan-Asian identities in the educational industrial complex. Invited speaker session (#GetFreewithDivB) organized by AERA’s Curriculum Studies Division (Division B) presented at the annual meeting of the American Educational Research Association, Toronto, Canada.

Asher, N. (April, 2019). An intimate conversation with scholars: Making meaning with graduate student research. Invited session of AERA’s Teaching and Teacher Education Division (Division K) presented at the annual meeting of the American Educational Research Association, Toronto, Canada.

Asher, N. (March, 2019). The complex work of decolonization. Invited keynote lecture presented at the Annual Graduate Student Education Research Symposium (AGSERS),  Purdue University, West Lafayette, IN.

Presenter: Invited presentation for panel “Talking Back to Dominant Paradigms,” organized by the Epistemology Dialogues Series of the Department of Curriculum and Instruction, University of Minnesota-Twin Cities (February, 2019).