Amelia (Amy) Kraehe, Ph.D.

Dr. Amelia (Amy) Kraehe is Associate Vice President for Equity in the Arts and Co-founder of Racial Justice Studio, a transdisciplinary incubator for the study and practice of intersectional anti-racism in and through the arts. She is Professor of Art and Visual Culture Education in the School of Art and Faculty Affiliate in Human Rights Practice. She is an award-winning scholar recognized for her organizational leadership and research on arts equity through publications, workshops, podcasts, and public lectures that illuminate the roles race, racism, and anti-racism play in arts institutions and the education of arts professionals. 

"There are many reasons why people engage in creative cultural practices. I imagine the earliest humans who made markings on stone walls and reconfigured hard and soft elements to reshape their surroundings grasped the significance of these actions just as we do today. To make a mark is powerful. It affirms for us that we, too, have agency in the world. Mark-making is expansive. It may begin with a bit of pigment, raw material, or just a notion, but that creative gesture, whether we call it Art or something else, has the immanent potential to grow into something world-changing and life-sustaining." 

                                                    –Amy Kraehe, 2019 Manuel Barkan Memorial Award recipient

Her latest research examines how the arts and arts education can challenge, as well as contribute to, systems of inequality. She employs interdisciplinary theories and methodologies that draw from the social sciences, visual and cultural studies, critical race theory, women of color feminisms, and justice studies. She has published numerous books, including A Love Letter to This Bridge Called My Back (2022), Race and Art Education (2021), The Palgrave Handbook on Race and the Arts in Education (2018) and Pedagogies in the Flesh: Case Studies on the Embodiment of Sociocultural Differences in Education (2018). 

Other research is published in edited collections, such as The Other Elephant in the (Class)room White Liberalism and the Persistence of Racism in Education (2023), Intersectionality and Urban Education: Identities, Policies, Spaces and Power (2014) and The Education of Black Males in a Post-Racial World (2012) as well as the peer-reviewed academic journals International Journal of Education and the Arts, Studies in Art Education, The Journal of Museum Education, Race Ethnicity and Education, The Urban Review, Equity and Excellence in Education, Educational Studies, and Teaching Education. 

Amy's teaching and leadership is informed by a breadth of professional experiences.  She regularly consults for national arts councils, art museums, and state arts education agencies. She taught in economically vulnerable public schools and later was a gallery educator in an art museum program designed for underrepresented groups of middle grade students. As a Project Director with the Institute of Community, University, and School Partnerships, she co-developed and administered arts-intensive learning and leadership experiences for Black and Brown youth on the campus of The Univeristy of Texas at Austin.  Before joining the University of Arizona faculty, she earned tenure at the University of North Texas where she also served as a peer-mentor for women of color faculty and was engaged in the community as a consultant for the area's largest school district, helping to reimagine arts-rich education in urban schools.  

She earned her Ph.D. in Curriculum and Instruction with a specialization in Cultural Studies in Education and an M.A. in Art Education from The University of Texas at Austin.  She graduated magna cum laude from Wellesley College in Massachusetts with a B.A. in Studio Art and Economics.