Syracuse University

Faculty Member, Art Education

Chair and Associate Professor of Art Education

College of Visual & Performing Arts/ School of Education

About

James Haywood Rolling, Jr. is Chair of Art Education and a Dual Associate Professor in Art Education and Teaching and Leadership at Syracuse University. Dr. Rolling earned his Ed.D. and Ed.M. in Art Education at Teachers College, Columbia University. In his earlier education, Dr. Rolling completed his M.F.A. in studio arts research at Syracuse University as a Graduate Fellow in the Department of African American Studies, and also earned his B.F.A. in visual arts with a minor in creative writing at The Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art in New York City. As a doctoral student, Dr. Rolling served as the Director of Academic Administration in the Department of Curriculum and Teaching at Teachers College from 1999 to 2003. After completing his doctoral studies, Dr. Rolling served as a lead visual arts teacher and curriculum designer for grades K, 2, 3, and 4 at The School at Columbia University, a brand new elementary school that opened espousing a fully integrated curriculum; he was also an adjunct faculty member at New York University and Teachers College during this time. In 2005, Dr. Rolling became an Assistant Professor of Art Education at the Pennsylvania State University. In 2006, Dr. Rolling was awarded the Narrative and Research Special Interest Group (SIG) Outstanding Dissertation Award from the American Education Research Association (AERA) for his dissertation, Un-Naming the Story: The Poststructuralist Repositioning of African-American Identity in Western Visual Culture. He was also the recipient of the 2006 Roy C. Buck Award from Penn State's College of Arts and Architecture for the best refereed article in a scholarly journal. In 2009, Dr. Rolling was elected to the Board of Directors of his professional organization as Higher Education Division Director-Elect of the National Art Education Association.

Dr. Rolling has published articles, essays, and book reviews in peer-reviewed journals such as Qualitative Inquiry, Studies in Art Education, the Journal of Aesthetic Education, the Journal of Curriculum Studies, the Journal of Curriculum & Pedagogy, and serves as a Review Board Member of the Journal of Cultural Research in Art Education. He is an associate editor of the ‘Visual Arts &Cultural Studies’ section of upcoming SAGE Encyclopedia of Identity. Dr. Rolling is the United States regional editor for Power and Education, a new international research journal intended to push at the boundaries of conventional educational research, with its particular focus on discourse, power and resistance in education and educational research. A founding member of the International Congress of Qualitative Inquiry, Dr. Rolling’s scholarly interests include: arts-based educational research; the intersection of visual culture and identity politics; curriculum theory; semiotics and symbolic interaction; social justice and community-engaged scholarship; and narrative and poetic forms of inquiry in qualitative research. Dr. Rolling is also the author of the new book "Cinderella Story: A Scholarly Sketchbook About Race, Identity, Barack Obama, the Human Spirit, and Other Stuff That Matters" (AltaMira Press). Cinderella Story argues that a poststructural and unexpected identity can be created from the charred embers of self-imagery strewn about an ash heap of stereotypes—reinterpreted atop a pyre of modern identity constructs, authoritative stories, and assigned names.

As a visual artist, Dr. Rolling specializes in mixed media explorations and portraiture. He views narrative and arts practices and the theory that derives from these as essential in the conduct of social research.