Background

I'd like to begin by sharing with you that I did not have a traditional path that led me to become an academic. I did not receive any academic awards other than attendance until my second year in my doctoral program. Most of the teachers I've had would never believe you if you told them I became a professor. I got here by a series of accidental events.

In the predominately White Catholic junior-high-school I attended, I had a science teacher named Brother Jim. Brother Jim used to belittle me and try to embarrass me frequently in class. To be fair, I did have several White teachers in Catholic school that were very supportive. Brother Jim was not one of them. I mention him because I actually learned a lot from him despite the negative feelings I had toward him. He broke the rule that you have to feel that your teacher cares about you in order to learn from them. Brother Jim could care less about me. He told me so several times. But for some reason, Brother Jim picked up on the fact that I was interested in Egypt while I was getting dressed for mass. I was volunteered as an acolyte. Most likely as penance for wasting his time in class. But on that day, he gave me a book to read that led me to become interested in Egyptology. As a Roman Catholic trained priest, he had religious knowledge about Egypt and directed me and encouraged me to study Egyptology. At that moment, Catholic school became a bearable nuisance instead of punishment. Each page I read about Black Pharaohs and Egyptian rituals animated my spirit and filled my soul with pride for my race.

By some miracle, I made it to college at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. I chalk it up to an ancient spiritual ancestor that directed a teacher named Mr. Thompson to send me for remedial reading classes in a reading van that came on Tuesdays and Thursdays. It was there that I found out that I wasn't stupid and that the reason I wasn't doing well in school was that I was bored. Unknown to me (or anybody else), the reading tutor discovered that I had a higher reading level and a higher reading comprehension level than the grade level I was in. He wound up giving me college prep material that he used for his high-school students when I visited.

In my freshman year in college, I had an instructor named Michael Stitt, who had a Ph.D. in Folklore, an M.A. in Folklore, a B.A. Literature, and a certificate in Medieval Studies. You might be asking yourself, why are his credentials important? Dr. Stitt taught a Viking Literature class, and in it, he talked about how stories travel around the world. One story he shared had been traced from Africa to the Netherlands. By combining his educational training in folklore and literature, he gave us scholarly linguistic proof that Vikings and Africans had contact. We also discussed the similarities of Norse and African deities. Interestingly enough, shipbuilder Thor Heyerdahl constructed a ship made from ancient designs and sailed it from Mesopotamia in the Persian Gulf and across the Indian Ocean for five months to prove that Egypt could have traded across the Atlantic. Dr. Stitt also exposed me to a researcher named Arnold Van Gennep, a folklorist who researched rites of passage in Norway, and Africa.

Also as an undergraduate, I also had a professor, Anthony, Ferri, that taught Communication Studies. Dr. Ferri did research on health communication and the willing suspense of disbelief. Samuel Taylor Coleridge first used the phrase suspension of disbelief in 1817 with the publication of his book Biographia literaria or biographical sketches of my literary life and opinions. The willing suspension of disbelief is an altered state of consciousness. We often suspend our belief in reality and tap into our collective and individual consciousness to learn in ways that are not otherwise possible. This state is arguably an essential element when experiencing any drama or work of fiction. We may know very well that we are watching an actor on a screen or looking at words on a paper when we see a character in our minds. Still, we willfully accept them as real in order to fully experience the story a storyteller is trying to tell.

We must believe in fairies, dragons, dwarfs, elves, and even phonexies to experience the story and to learn the moral that whoever slays the dragon gets the gold. In other words, great risks taken on a journey with friends and sprinkled with just a little luck can have great rewards. We are willing to temporarily buy into a fantastical myth if the frame and structure of the story is presented in a way that we know will have an emotional pay off at the end. But if the Tin Man from the Wizard of Oz showed up in a story about The Hobbit, we would immediately reject the entire story and not buy into it at all, even though both stories are fantasy.

I also took an experimental psychology class in nonsense (cognition behind understanding things we do not understand) from Raymond Moody, the Chair in Consciousness Studies at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. Dr. Moody has a Ph.D. in Philosophy, a Ph.D. in Psychology, and both an M.D. and B. A. in Theater. In addition to serving as a chair in consciousness studies and teaching psychology courses. Dr. Moody was also a forensic psychiatrist. Forensic psychiatrists intersect the field of psychiatry and criminology and mostly help determine if suspects are mentally capable of standing trial. And although I didn't know it at the time, Raymond Moody coined the phrase Near-Death Experience.

Rituals were an essential part of his lectures. I remember one lecture combined his medical, psychology, and theater degree into a story that recounted a Greek priest who used to sit in a psychomanteum [small enclosed area] to conduct rituals at the Temple of Delphi before he administered surgery. The Temple of Delphi sits high up on a mountain. Thousands of people traveled to hear prophecies by the priestess known as the Oracle of Delphi. She would inhale the sweet smell of the temple and enter a trance-like state to make her predictions. Yes, that's right. Dr. Moody was suggesting that Greek doctor inhaled mind-altering gases before surgery. Temple of Delphi sits over natural gas emitting fissures. But even more interesting, Temple of Delphi. is also known as Isis of the Omphalos.

In class, Dr. Moody taught us a ritual to call a deceased ancestor. Like most rituals, the entire service must include the right theme, setting, and process to awaken a spirit. A ceremony's space has to look right; it has to smell right and even sound right. The participant's preparation for the ritual, finding objects of the deceased that were left behind, and listening to stories about the person from those who knew the deceased are all part of the process. The participant is also instructed to look at a non-reflective surface like a crystal ball to contact the deceased. What we learned in class was that it doesn't matter if there is actual life after death. If the participant believes it, the mind's effects on the body experience it as if it were real. The unconscious projects images on the surface of the crystal. In other words, the willing suspense of reality can trick the body and mind into thinking that experience is authentic. You may be asking yourself, is it the process of the ritual that brings the dead to life? Raed Rady would say it doesn’t matter. The effect on the brain is the same.

Also, as an undergraduate, I went to an Egyptian Aromatherapy seminar lead by Raed Rady. Raed, as he likes to be called, is the founder of Uttati Oils. Raed is a Coptic Christian. The Coptic Church is an ethnoreligious group founded by St. Mark in 42 A.D. who trace their descendants to ancient Egyptians. Raed can trace his family's involvement in the art of essential oils and aromatic medicine to the Pharaohs. In Raed's seminar, I learned that Egyptian priests were scholars, architects, scientists, physicians, as well as aromatherapists and chemists. According to Raed, Egyptian priests were the only ones who could read, so they had multiple roles to fulfill. Raed's presentation also included how to read hidden meanings in hieroglyphics including mathematical equations in Egyptian symbols. Raed revealed that the key to reading hieroglyphics wasn’t just connecting the shapes to words, but by recognizing the story behind the figures. For example, a deity holding an ankh vertical, that is with the loop pointing straight up, is using the ankh as a shield for protection. Pointing an ankh towards another deity is offering a gift. Holding an ankh by the loop with the base facing outwards means that the wielder is using it as a weapon. Even the direction a figure is facing adds clues to the message. So, in a sense the postures and gestures of the figures in a hieroglyph gives added context to the meaning and intention of the creator of the image. And although the Egyptians did create a written language, symbols combined with images are a sophisticated way to convey meaning and represent actions in the same way that we use icons on a desktop or tablet today.

While I had many professors in graduate school and in my doctoral program, one instructor was especially relevant to my journey that led me to write this book. Dr. Thomas Burkholder introduced me to the African avatar of social consciousness, Elegbara. Also known as the signifying monkey, Elegbara is a character that is found in many cultures around the world. Elegbara is known as Esu Elegbara in Nigeria, Echu-Elegua in Cuba, Legba Fon in Benin, Papa Legba in Haiti, Papa Le Bas, Sun Wukong in China and Sun Hanuman in India. Elegbara is important to consciousness because he magically appears and shares with other what is important by connecting the past to the present. While Burkholder helped me to understand the significance of being able to recognize characters that represent the mental process of understanding, what I most appreciate about Dr. Burkholder is that he knew how the lack of African presence in the formation of knowledge negatively affected Blacks in education. Consequently. in one of his lectures Burkhloder shared that “We know that knowledge comes from Africa. The reason why we always talk about the Greeks when it comes to psychology, philosophy, science, and mathematics is because the Library of Alexandria burned down and most of recorded African knowledge was lost in the fire. The only other ancient scholarly information that was written down was by the Greeks” [I paraphrased by memory]. In other words, he acknowledged the importance and influence of Africa on the world and also explained why scholars focus so much on Greece.

I should also add that I participated in a reading group in my doctoral program with Dr. William Cross Jr. Dr. Cross has a lifetime achievement award from American Psychological Association. Dr. Cross identified as a psychologist and later as a Black psychologist. He is the originator of the Nigrescence, better known as the African American Identity Model which is comprised of four stages, pre-encounter, encounter, immersion-emersion, internalization, and internalization-commitment. Dr. Cross has been an academic researcher for over 40 years. What I most learned from him is that identity formation is often a process of stages. The ability to understand that identity is not a static process but occurs in stages helped me to better understand human development and behavior as a form of continuous self-authorship.

Together, these instructors Stitt, Ferri, Moody, Rady, Burkholder, Cross [and the guy in the reading van] as well as the classes they taught, all directly lead to my identity as a scholar and indirectly to my identity as a Black male. The overarching theme in my origin story is the importance of narrative to convey meaning. These instructors awakened my consciousness and animated my identity through the use of well informed and well delivered stories.

Selected Academic Publications

Fatherhood

Ransaw, T. (2017). Cool papas: How six fathers in mid-Michigan use sports as a tool for engagement, accessibility and responsibility to increase the educational outcomes of their children. Spectrum: A Journal on Black Men, 6(1), 1-31.

Ransaw, T. (2014). The good father: African American fathers who positively influence the educational outcomes of their children. Spectrum: A Journal on Black Men, 2(2), 1-26.

Ransaw, T. (2013). The impact of television portrayals of fatherhood and its influence on Black masculinity: Video clip reflection responses of five African American fathers in southern Nevada. Journal of Black Masculinity 3(1), 147-173.

Black Males

Ransaw, T. (2013). The art of being cool: The pursuit of Black masculinity. African American Images: Chicago.

Ransaw, T., Gause, C. P., & Majors, R. (Eds). (2018). The Handbook of Research on Black Males. East Lansing, Michigan: Michigan State University Press.

Ransaw, T. & Majors, R. (Eds.). (2016). Closing Education Achievement Gaps for African American Males. East Lansing, Michigan: Michigan State University Press.

Ransaw, T., Majors, R., & Moss, M., (2016). Turning negative valences into positive ones: Cool ways to implement successful expectation violations in Black male classrooms. In T. Ransaw and R. Major’s (Eds.), Closing the education achievement gaps for African American males. (pp. 123-142). East Lansing, Michigan: Michigan State University Press.

Ransaw, T. (2016). Male and Black male learning styles. In T. Ransaw and R. Major’s (Eds.), Closing the education achievement gaps for African American males. (pp. 1-10). East Lansing, Michigan: Michigan State University Press.

Ransaw, T., & Green, R., L. (2016). Black males, peer pressure and high expectations. In T. Ransaw’s and R. Major’s (Eds.), Closing the education achievement gaps for African American males. (pp. 11-22). East Lansing, Michigan: Michigan State University Press.

Green, K., Green, R., L., & Ransaw, T., (2016). Smartphones: A mobile platform for greater learning, equity and access. In T. Ransaw and R. Major’s (Eds.), Closing the education achievement gaps for African American males, (pp. 47-82). East Lansing, Michigan: Michigan State University Press.

Bean, T., & Ransaw, T. (2013). The masculinity and portrayals of African American boys in young adult literature: A critical deconstruction and reconstruction of this genre. In Barbara Guzzetti and Thomas Bean’s (Eds). Adolescent literacies and the gendered self: (Re)constructing identities through multimodal literacy practices. New York: Routledge. Nominated for the Literacy Research Association Edward B. Fry Book Award.

Literacy

Ransaw, T. & Boggs, B. (2018). Literacy diversity and college study skills. In Rona Flippo and T. Bean’s, The Handbook of College Reading and Study Strategy Research. NY: Routledge.

Ransaw, T. (2018). Reading fatherhood differently: The importance of fathers in child literacy development. In B., J, Guzzetti, J. Dunkerly-Bean and T., W., Bean’s Literacies, Sexualities, and Gender: Understanding Identities from preschool to adulthood. (pp.208 - 219). New York: Taylor & Francis.

Ransaw, T. (2017), Understanding the classroom matrix of race, class, gender and cultural competency in analyzing same race students and teacher arguments. In, T. Ransaw and R. Major’s (Eds.), Teaching to Close the Achievement Gap for Students of Color: Understanding the Impact of Factors Outside the Classroom. (pp. 85-118). East Lansing, Michigan: Michigan State University Press.

Ransaw, T. (2015). Hip-Hop music and culture. In S. Thompson’s (Ed.), Encyclopedia for Diversity and Social Justice (pp. 393-397). Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield.

Ransaw, T. (2012). Ver y ser visto: To see and be seen in Latin hip-hop. Words. Beats. Life: The Global Journal of Hip-Hop Culture 5(1), 104-18.

Education

Ransaw, T., Hart, A., & Devron, F., D. (2020). More Than Cultural Competency Alone: The Related and Unrelated Relationship of Cultural Competency, Self-identity and Academic identity. In T. Ransaw’s and R. Major’s (Eds.), Teaching to Close the Achievement Gap for Students of Color, (pp. 85-118). East Lansing, Michigan: New York: Routledge.

Ransaw, T. & Boggs, B. (TBD). Emerging Trends in Education Policy: Unapologetic progressive conversations. Information Age Publishing. Charlotte: NC.

Ransaw, T. & Major. (Eds.), (2020). Teaching to Close the Achievement Gap for Students of Color, East Lansing, Michigan: New York: Routledge.

Majors, R., Cranberry, K., & Ransaw, T. (Eds). (2020). The International Handbook of Black Community

Ransaw, T. & Majors, R. (Eds.). (2017). Emerging Trends and Issues in Education. East Lansing, Michigan: Michigan State University Press

Certifications/Training/Workshops

Cognitive Behavioral Therapist Certificate

The Academy of Modern Applied Psychology, 2020

Michigan State University, Campus Police, 2019.

Visible Learning Presenter

Corwin Press, 2015.

Adolescent Critical Reading Intervention ACRI,

Sharon Russell, 2015.

Coaching 101 Certification

Michigan Department of Education, 2013-Life.

Assessments

University of Nevada Las Vegas, 2008, 2009, 2010.

Substitute Teacher’s License

Clark County School District, 2001-2004.

Organizations

EPFP – Education Policy Foundation Program, 2012-Life.

WSSA– Western Association Social Science Association, 2006-Present.

AERA – American Educators and Researchers Association, 2012-Present

LRA – Literacy Research Association, 2012-Present

NBGSA – National Black Graduate Student Association, 2003-2012.

UNLV GPSA – University of Las Vegas Graduate and Professional Student Association, 2006-2012.

AEJMC– Association for Educators in Journalism and Mass Communication, 2005.