Carmen Medina

Carmen Medina is a Professor of Literacy, Culture and Language Education in the School of Education at Indiana University Bloomington, having been promoted from Associate Professor to Professor in the Department of Curriculum and Instruction in 2023. Her research examines literacy and biliteracy as decolonial, social, and critical practices, performative pedagogies, and Latinx children's literature. For more than ten years, she has returned to Puerto Rico to engage with children and teachers in critical literacy work, fostering decolonial knowledge production at the intersection of local and transnational social issues. Medina's scholarship emphasizes culturally relevant pedagogies that challenge dominant educational mandates and reclaim literacy education situated in specific cultural contexts, such as Puerto Rico's unique position amid U.S. policies like No Child Left Behind and Race to the Top.

Medina leads the Puerto Rico Critical Literacy Project, launched in 2019 with funding from a U.S. Department of Education Title VI grant through the Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies at Indiana University. In collaboration with Professor Maria del Rocío Costa at the University of Puerto Rico, the project supports pre-service and early-career elementary teachers by developing literacy curricula grounded in Spanish children's literature to address post-Hurricane Maria challenges and promote decolonizing practices. She previously received funding in 2018 for a four-year initiative to enhance teacher skills in critical literacy with young readers and writers. Medina is an affiliate faculty member in the Latino Studies Program and the Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies. Her key publications include the co-authored book with Karen Wohlwend, Literacy, Play and Globalization: Converging Imaginaries in Children's Critical and Cultural Performances (2014), and the co-edited volume with Mia Perry, Methodologies of Embodiment: Reinscribing Bodies in Qualitative Research (2015). She holds office hours by appointment in ED 3020.

Professional Email: cmedina@iu.edu