Jessica Lee Stovall

Jessica Lee Stovall is assistant professor in the Department of African American Studies at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. Her research sits at the intersection of Black Studies and education, examining how Black teachers co-construct Black-affirming spaces and how these spaces sustain and rehumanize educators and students. Drawing on theories of educational fugitivity, her work theorizes how Black teachers create classrooms of liberated learning. Her dissertation on Black teachers received the Critical Educators for Social Justice Dissertation Award at the 2024 American Educational Research Association annual meeting. She was formerly a middle and high school English language arts teacher in the Chicagoland area. Stovall received her BA in secondary education and English from the University of Wisconsin–Madison, her MA in literature from Northwestern University, and her PhD in education from Stanford University.

updated 2026