The Work
As a doctoral student, Shapel's life’s work is dedicated to the mission she was assigned by God. She can not ethically shy away from faith and have the authenticity of her work. Her calling is to serve her community through education and liberation practices, spreading radical love and practical knowledge wherever she goes. Her responsibility and duty is to use the wisdom of her Ancestors, the inheritance of knowledge that has been passed down to her to positively impact those around her. Here are some of her love's works to the academic discipline:
01
In Progress
I am currently working on a new project as of April 2024.
02
On Self-Determination: The Black Aesthetics of Political Prisoners
This project is a work in progress. Oftentimes, academia and philosophers work within the binary of theory and practice while political prisoners seamlessly exhibit a symbiotic flow of the two. Political prisoners have epitomized the idea that education should be revolutionary, causing change for the better in spite of the risks. Education for the political prisoner has always been intrinsically related to life itself and how to improve the conditions of the living. In this paper, I briefly introduce the concept of the US Political Prisoner and the distinctiveness of Black US Political Prisoners’ proclivity for self-determination. I will highlight three arguments that support my thesis that US Political Prisoners provide rich pedagogical principles in education, pivoting theory into praxis.
03
Radicalizing Black Excellence: A Educative Conversation between Anna Julia Cooper and Alain Locke around Belief as a Practice
In this paper, I position Anna Julia Cooper and Alain Locke in conversation to highlight
the impassioned quality and profoundness of the practical performance of the scholars as it
pertains to educating as a conscious act. Due to the nature of Africana existential philosophies,
grounded in reflection and experience, I think it is necessary to center their identities and how
those unique identities create a perfect symbiosis for their self, the individual, and the
community. This paper utilizes a critical Hermeneutic phenomenology and operates out of a
Black Feminist Epistemological framework.
04
Raising Shapel with RoseBud’s Mornin’ Musings
a personal, philosophical, and pedagogical assurance examining Black grandmothers’ voices.
This is an essay written by a Black feminist woman in philosophy and education, and I call on readers to engage with scholarship that is intentionally ‘thinking black’ and ‘thinking feminist’ (hooks, 1989, p. 3). And while I jeopardize the normativity of my work within the discipline and reckon that my voice will possibly be critiqued, or shamefully dismissed as non-philosophy, I find it much more authentic and encouraging to the pedagogical goals as a Black woman scholar to elevate a particular voice as a valid avenue to knowledge that is sustainable to a liberatory education that enacts radical change within the institution of education itself (Collins, 2000, p. 254).
