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ABSTRACTThis article engages with three commonly traversed social studies topics—depictions of violence and death from the French Revolution, during the Vietnam War, and regarding U.S. histories of racial segregation—through the lens of Achille Mbembe’s necropolitics(i.e., political and social machinations of power that determine who lives and who dies). In particular, this article theorizes how specific necropolitical concepts (e.g., necropower, the living dead, and slow death) can be a generative and powerful form of analysis for social studies educators and their students that exposes intersecting complexities between life, death, political alliance, and power. While this article argues that social studies curriculum is replete with undertheorized moments of death and underutilized opportunities to engage with death, this scholarship is guided by the questions: “What place is given to life, death, and the human body (in particular the wounded or slain body)? How are they inscribed in the order of power?” The overall aim of a necropolitical engagement is to foster a deeper understanding of why/how death continues to disproportionately come into being again and again for specific, targeted peoples.

ABSTRACTThis article engages Gloria Anzaldúa’s concepts of nepantlaand nepantlerasas a conceptual framework for social studies classrooms that is attuned to the lived experiences of border-crossing—living in-between national, ethnic, racial, and gender worlds—and the grietas y rajaduras(cracks and ruptures) of dominant narratives of colonialism, whiteness, and heteropatriarchy. Nepantleras, those who live, breathe, and challenge the antagonization of people through imposed borders, drive such cracks and ruptures by resisting assimilation and by centering already existing possible worlds. In critically examining social studies education—classroom, field, and educator—through a lens of nepantla, we conceptualize aspiring nepantlerasas our scholarship horizon—the place we navigate toward where we center the undeniable grietas in dominant narratives made visible by the presence of nepantleras in the social studies classroom, as well as the scholarly field. Such work is essential to healing and to the formation of healthy communities that care for and embrace all students.