How are (ethno)religious nationalist movements around the globe shaping K-12 schooling and curriculum? What do teachers and teacher educators need to learn about these phenomena? How can educators develop curriculum responsive to these times? This paper session shares ongoing research and practice responding to the global phenomenon of rising ethnoreligious nationalisms in public K-12 education. All the work emerges from a transnational perspective on the dangers posed by the global rise of ethnoreligious nationalist movements in education. From this standpoint, ethnoreligious nationalist groups’ conceptualize literacy as a mechanism of social control, reinforcing authoritarianism and hierarchical domination by those within the ruling ethnoreligious (often fundamentalist) sect. Such movements exploit the vulnerabilities created by social upheaval, economic instability, mass global migration, ecological collapse, and other crises; furthermore, they justify violence against those beyond their imagined community of cultural insiders, mobilizing affective rhetoric to reinforce exclusionary and authoritarian ideologies within educational systems.
This paper draws on Octavia Butler’s work to examine the rise of authoritarian political ideologies in public education discourse, which the authors identify as “ethnoreligious nationalism.” Ethnoreligious nationalism is a political and cultural ideology that fuses national identity with religious and linguistic heritage, often positing a particular ethnic or religious group as the true, rightful or indisputable inheritors of a particular nation-state. This paper introduces the concept of "ethnoreligious nationalist literacies," highlighting how ethnoreligious nationalist movements leverage literacy to further their agendas. The authors provide a snapshot of current spectacles of ethnoreligious nationalist activism in the US, Brazil, and Sri Lanka. They argue that ethnoreligious nationalist movements use affective literacy strategies to challenge diversifying principles in public education. By investigating the literacy strategies employed by these movements and advocating for democratic educational practices, researchers, educators, and policymakers can work towards safeguarding public education as a cornerstone of pluralistic, democratic societies.
Across the United States, White Christian Nationalism (WCN) has emerged in public discourse, policy, and practice around literacy education, particularly in school board campaigns where WCN candidates advocate for literacy censorship. In this paper, we examine data from school board candidates (n = 11) endorsed by Ottawa Impact (OI), a political action group in Ottawa County, MI that we interpret as WCN. We contextualize OI rhetoric regarding “book boundaries” (terminology from the data) in the historical and theological foundations of the Dutch Reformed Christian population of Ottawa County. Through this contextualization, we examine how OI candidates’ perspectives on literacy censorship reflect their vision of God’s dominion over the US nation-state and lead to the enactment of policies that forward parents’ sovereignty over the contents of children’s education under the guise of protecting “childhood innocence.” This examination reveals WCN’s influence in literacy education—impacting not only what children read, but also who decides.
Against the backdrop of ethnoreligious nationalist literacies in Israel/Palestine and the US, this paper details challenges confronting teachers tasked to teach Holocaust and genocide texts in US classrooms. The paper explores the broader issue through examination of data from a year-long teacher learning program about Holocaust and Genocide Curriculum for Gen Alpha for Michigan teachers. Interpreted through the lensing of ethnoreligious nationalism, we examine a) diverse challenges English and social studies teachers are experiencing with teaching Holocaust and genocide texts, based on teacher survey data generated in 2025, and b) curricular and instructional innovations teachers are generating to respond to these challenges, based on data collected from teacher presentations to other teachers in the program in spring 2025.