Research and Publications

AJ Rice is an transdisciplinary scholar whose work is located at the nexus of political science, Black studies and urban studies. His research examines the intersections of capitalism, governance, and Black politics in US cities. He is currently working on a book manuscript titled, Fabricating Failure: Race, Governance, and the Unmaking of Detroit Public Schools. Fabricating Failure uncovers the central role that state and corporate institutions play in the discursive production of public school “failure” in Twenty-First century Detroit and situates local resistance to education “reform” within metropolitan Detroit’s longer history of race and class conflict.

Drawing on newspaper articles, government documents, speeches, reports from nonprofit organizations, and a series of interviews with key informants, Fabricating Failure argues that Michigan’s corporate and political elite discursively constructed Detroit Public Schools (DPS) as “failed” in order to justify the implementation of neoliberal “reforms” to create new educational markets in the city.  

Based on a sequential, multi-method research design, this book project uses institutional ethnography, in-depth interviews, and discourse and content analysis to investigate Michigan’s 1999 and 2009 takeovers of DPS, and reveals how the language and practices of elites, as well as grassroots resistance to them, reflect long-standing struggles over race and power in the Motor City.

Broadly, AJ’s scholarship makes important contributions to debates about the nature and efficacy of Black politics during the post-Civil Rights era, and provides critical insights regarding the contemporary role of education “reform” in the larger corporate restructuring of Black urban spaces.

PUBLICATIONS

Rice, AJ. (2021). “Black Landscapes Matter.” Journal of Cultural Geography. (38) 3, 434-435.

Rice, AJ. (2021). “Political Economy and the Tradition of Radical Black Study.” Souls: A Critical Journal of Black Politics, Culture, and Society. (22) 1, 44-55.

Rice, AJ. & Mays, Kyle. (2020). “The Boondocks, Black History, and Black Lives Matter: Or, Why Black Popular Culture Matters for Black Millennials.” The Popular Culture Studies Journal. (8)2, 49-67.

Rice, AJ. & Rice, Phil. (2015). “Two Brothers Reflect on ‘Spirit of Detroit’.” Text and Performance Quarterly. (35)1, 83-86.