Making Justice‐Oriented Futures From a Censored Past: Reanimating the Racio‐Religious Specters Haunting a Research–Practice Partnership in English Language Arts

This article explores how eight white teachers engaging in a two‐year anti‐bias, antiracist research–practice partnership with the aims of forwarding justice‐oriented English language arts came to name, recognize, and respond to curricular censorship and community controversy at their pre‐K–8 Catholic school in the Northeastern United States. Braiding theories of hauntology with conceptualizations of white Christian nationalism, we interrogated how racialized specters of oppression both limited and halted the literacy justice work that the partnership attempted to forward. Examining data from both years of the partnership, secondary sources (e.g., newspaper articles, social media posts), and archival materials, our findings highlight the inescapable ghostly presences of white Christian nationalism and the toll of these spirits' demands on the partnership team. In particular, we locate our findings in temporal landscapes, considering how the perceived past, present, and future collide to constrain justice efforts.