Faculty Directory
Eliana Castro
Assistant Professor
Eliana Castro
Contact
Telephone: 617-552-4180
Email: eliana.castro@bc.edu
ORCID 0000-0002-6694-5993
Education
- Ph.D., Michigan State University
- M.A.T., Brown University
- BA, Brown University
Research Interests
My research agenda aims to complicate notions of race and ethnicity in social studies/history curriculum and instruction to promote nuanced teaching of intersectional identities. My scholarship poses questions about how educators and learners bring their whole selves into learning spaces to make meaning of the world we inhabit, as well as how they experience self-actualization or barriers to the same. My lens is currently trained on the experiences of Black, Latinx, and AfroLatinx students and teachers in the process of learning and teaching about race, racism, and the racialization of communities of color (I use the term BIPOC) in U.S. and world history.
Expertise
- Curriculum & Instruction
- Teaching & Teacher Education
- Urban Education
Department
Biography
Dr. Eliana Castro is Assistant Professor of History/Social Studies Education in the Department of Teaching, Curriculum, and Society. She was born in the Dominican Republic and was the first in her family to attend college. "Profe," as students have called her for over a decade, draws on her years as a high school history/social studies teacher to prepare future educators to enter the profession full of knowledge, skills, and heart. Her research focuses on how curriculum and instruction engage the construct of race, the system of racism, and the process of racialization, or "making things racial." It highlights the complexity of historical narratives and how youth make sense of them as they develop their own racial identities. Eliana is also a Co-Investigator on New American Youth on the Rise, a transdisciplinary project formerly funded by the National Institutes of Health that supports New American girls and their families as they explore and pursue careers in the health sciences. She is a Black Latina, mother-scholar, and proud lifelong Eagles fan.
Honors & Awards
2024 Nominee John Dewey Award for Excellence in Teaching College of Education & Social Services
Patricia Prelock Online Teaching Award, University of Vermont
2023 Nominee John Dewey Award for Excellence in Teaching, College of Education & Social Services
Patricia Prelock Online Teaching Award, University of Vermont
2020 Winner Article of the Year, Journal of Research on Leadership Education
Select Publications
Castro, E., & Cortes, K. (2025). (Re)mediating/remediando Latinx blackness: Everyday AfroIndigenous spiritual practice as history pedagogy. In M. Santiago & T. Dozono (Ed.). Centering Students’ Racialized Experiences: Shifting Paradigms in History Education. Harvard Education Press.
Williams, B. M. & Castro, E. (2025). Plantation U: Black women HESA administrators negotiating legacies of trauma. Journal of College Student Development. Accepted 9 September 2024.
Castro, E. (2024). The wisdom of youth: Reconsidering secondary students’ racial literacy. The High School Journal, 107(2), 103-125.
Castro, E. (2023). “I can't just keep talking about the men:” Black girl resistance in a secondary history classroom. Race Ethnicity and Education. DOI:10.1080/13613324.2023.2239715.
Castro, E. (2022). “How every Black man should be”: Historical narrative construction as identity rearticulation. The Journal of Social Studies Research, 47(1). DOI:10.1016/j.jssr.2022.01.006.
Santiago, M., & Castro, E. (2022). “Movin’ on up”: The growing role of Latinx social studies topics through the grade levels. In L. J. King (Ed.). Racial Literacies and Social Studies: Curriculum, Instruction, & Learning (pp. 19-37). Research and Practice in Social Studies Series. Teachers College Press.
Castro, E. (2021). The case for leveraging multiple resource pedagogies: Teaching about racism in a secondary history classroom. Teaching and Teacher Education, 109. DOI:10.1016/j.tate.2021.103567.
Carter Andrews, D., Brown, T., Castro, E., & Id-Deen, E. (2019). The impossibility of being “perfect and white”: Black girls’ racialized and gendered schooling experiences. American Educational Research Journal, 56(6), 2531– 2572. DOI:10.3102/0002831219849392.
Castro, E., Presberry, C. B., & Venzant Chambers, T. T. (2019). Twelve years unslaved: Lessons from Reconstruction and Brown for contemporary school leaders. Journal of Research on Leadership Education, 14(4), 308-330. DOI:10.1177/1942775119878465.
Santiago, M., & Castro, E. (2019). Teaching anti-essentialist historical inquiry. The Social Studies, 110(4), 170-179. DOI: 10.1080/00377996.2019.1600463.