John Palella is currently working on a project that explores multiple and intersectional LGBTQIAA+ communication strategies and storytelling modalities from the years 1960-1980 (specifically focusing on pre-and post-Stonewall uprising and pre-HIV/AIDS activism lenses). Using pamphlets, publications, letters, diaries, oral histories and multiple LGBTQ-focused media, he explores the communication strategies of the first decade of Gay Liberation, as well as the multiple stories that LGBTQIA people told about themselves in this decade. Dr. Palella focuses on the racial, gendered, classed, and ability-based discourses and interpelations of those discourses in constructing subjectivities and identities.  As an activist, John hopes to decolonize the liberation stories of Queer history that try to silence Trans* and BIPOC members of LGBTQIAA2S communities. More importantly he highlights the ways in which they fought against silencing and erasure. Eventually, Dr. Palella will transform the project into a database of primary sources and curriculum guides for high school teachers and social studies education students to utilize in their classrooms for teaching LGBTQIAA+ histories as well as intersectionality and social justice related courses.

As the director of the MAT Social Studies Cohort within the Department of Education, Professor Palella is excited to work with graduate students who are interested in creating culturally sustaining frameworks for teaching secondary social studies as well as those who want to create curricula for teaching the histories of race, gender and sexuality in social studies classrooms. 

Professor Palella is particually interested in working with students and scholars on projects, theses, programming, and curricula related to history, public health discourses, storytelling, communication in the classroom, communication strategy and civic engagment, the connections between social studies and public speaking; Queer, Gay & Lesbian, Trans* & Transgender, LGBTQIAA2S or LGBTQ+, and intersectional & identity studies.

Co-Editor, "Inclusive Social Studies," Social Education (National Council for the Social Studies)

Call for submissions!

• National Council for the Social Studies
• Organization of American Historians
• Lamba Pi Eta

I teach a wide variety of courses in education, history, and intersectionality studies.  At Brown I teach the graduate courses in social studies methods, student teaching, and teaching students with exceptional learning needs. My foci in my social studies courses are storytelling, communication strategy in the classroom and with all stakeholders, communcation-based-backwarward design, and the connections between public discourse and civics. My undergraduate courses are in histories of education, critical race and ethnic studies, gender and sexuality studies, storytelling in the classroom, and LGBTQ+ history.