Charity Anderson is a Senior Research Associate at the Joseph C. Cornwall Center for Metropolitan Studies and Academic Director of the Clemente Veterans’ Initiative Newark, a humanities course focused on themes of war and reconciliation for veterans and military-connected civilians. Charity is a former New York City Teaching Fellow and high school teacher; she taught in Title I high schools in Brooklyn and Queens and at a residential psychiatric treatment facility for youth in Manhattan. She has also worked as an evaluator of first-year teachers in the Chicago Teaching Fellows Program. Her research interests include urban education, poverty and inequality, and transformative education for disenfranchised adults and youth.
She is particularly interested in courses like the Clemente Course in the Humanities, a free, college credit-bearing course for low-income adults, which she studied for two years as part of her dissertation research. Across the US, Clemente brings nontraditional adult learners together to tackle philosophy, literature, art and US history, and critical thinking and writing taught by college professors. Clemente graduates overwhelmingly report positive experiences in the course and describe feeling empowered as citizens and parents as a result of their participation. Charity holds master’s degrees in art history, education, and social work, and she earned a Ph.D. in social work from the University of Chicago.
Selected Publications
Books
Irby, D. J., Anderson, C., & Payne, C. M. (Eds.) (2022). Dignity-affirming education: Cultivating the somebodiness of students and educators. Teachers College Press.
Chapters
Anderson, C., & Payne, C. M. (2022). The radical affirmation of dignity: Septima Clark, Ella Baker, and educating the disenfranchised. In D. J. Irby, C. Anderson, & C. M. Payne (Eds.), Dignity-affirming education: Cultivating the somebodiness of students and educators. Teachers College Press.
Anderson, C. (2022). “You’re gonna get respected, listened to, and your opinion will be respected”: Dignity affirmation in the Clemente Course in the Humanities. In D. J. Irby, C. Anderson, & C. M. Payne (Eds.), Dignity-affirming education: Cultivating the somebodiness of students and educators. Teachers College Press.
Anderson, C. (2022). The challenge of global school segregation. In G. Muschert, K. M., Budd, H. Dillaway, D. C. Lane, M. Nair, & J. A. Smith (Eds.), Global agenda for social justice: Solutions 2022. Policy Press. https://doi.org/10.51952/9781447367420.ch001
Broege, N. C. R., & Anderson, C. (2020). Inequality in isolation: Educating students with disabilities during COVID-19. In G. Muschert, K. Budd, M. Christian, D. Lane, & J. Smith (Eds.), Social problems in the age of COVID-19. Policy Press. https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctv15d81tx
Papers
Anderson, C. (2021). “We went through a pandemic together”: Strategies for facilitating transformative learning among nontraditional adult learners during a crisis. Journal of Transformative Education, 8(1), 110-114. https://jotl.uco.edu/index.php/jotl/issue/view/32
Anderson, C., & Henry, M. (2020). “Listen and let it flow”: A researcher and participant reflect on the qualitative research experience. The Qualitative Report, 25(5), 1145-1195. https://doi.org/10.46743/2160-3715/2020.3673
Anderson, C. (2019). “His sense of humor carried the day”: Using humor with nontraditional adult learners. Adult Learning, 31(1), 3-5. https://doi.org/10.1177/1045159519891254
Anderson, C. (2019). Place-based scholarship programs: A review of the literature. Educational Review, 73(5), 638-661. https://doi.org/10.1080/00131911.2019.1619520
Heath, R. D., Anderson, C., Turner, A. C., & Payne, C. M. (2018). Extracurricular activities and disadvantaged youth: A complicated – but promising – story. Urban Education. https://doi.org/10.1177/0042085918805797
Anderson, C., Turner, A. C., Heath, R. D., & Payne, C. M. (2016). On the meaning of grit. The Urban Review, 48(2), 198-219. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11256-016-0351-3