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Ashley Smith-Purviance

Dr. Ashley Smith Purviance headshot

Ashley Smith-Purviance

Assistant Professor

smith-purviance.1@osu.edu

308C Dulles Hall
230 Annie and John Glenn Avenue
Columbus, OH 43210

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Areas of Expertise

  • Black Girlhood Studies
  • Black Feminisms
  • Antiblackness
  • Critical Theory
  • Community Engaged Work
  • Qualitative Research Models
  • Education Policy

Education

  • Ph.D., University of Wisconsin-Madison, 2020
  • M.S., Syracuse University, 2014
  • B.S., DePaul University, 2012

Biography

Ashley L. Smith-Purviance is an Assistant Professor in the Departments of Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies and African American and African Studies at The Ohio State University. Dr. Smith-Purviance’s scholarship critically analyzes how social structures, educational policies, and institutions shape and reproduce harmful inequalities for Black women and girls. At the intersection of state violence and school discipline, her work examines the various forms of punishment, anti-Blackness, and gender-based violence Black girls experience in schools and society. She is currently working on her first book project, tentatively titled, (Un)Schooling Black Girls: Navigating Suburbia, Anti-Black-Girl Violence & Mechanisms of School Survival. Dr. Smith-Purviance’s research also explores alternative educational spaces, also known as Black girl spaces, created by and for Black girls. As a community-engaged scholar, Dr. Smith-Purviance has co-created various Black girl spaces alongside Black girls and women. Informed by her community-engaged work, her scholarship explores the necessity of Black girl spaces within and outside of schools that center Black girls’ exploration of their identities, moments of joy, and acts of refusal to the harm and violence they often navigate. Her work has been published in peer-reviewed journals such as Feminist Studies and The Journal of Negro Education. She also published her work, “Theorizing Black Girlhood” in The Black Girlhood Studies Collection.  

Dr. Smith-Purviance is also the recipient of the 2022 National Academy of Education/Spencer Foundation Postdoctoral Fellowship. She has received additional grants and awards for her scholarship and community-engaged work from The Nellie Mae Education Foundation, Providence College’s Arts and Sciences Summer Scholars Grant, and the American Educational Research Association’s Division G and Critical Educators for Social Justice Special Interest Group. She currently serves as the Co-Program Chair for the American Educational Research Association’s Critical Educators for Social Justice Special Interest Group.

CV

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Download Dr. Smith-Purviance's current CV

Selected Publications

  • “Masked Violence Against Black Women and Girls.” Feminist Studies, 47(1), 2021, pp. 175-200.
  • “Theorizing Black Girlhood.” In Aria S. Halliday (Ed), The Black Girlhood Studies Collection. Women’s Press, Canadian Scholars’ Press, 2019
  • “#BlackWomenMatter: Neo-Capital Punishment Ideology in the Wake of State Violence.” The Journal of Negro Education, 85(3), 2016, pp. 261-273.