Sandra Schmidt
Office Location:
420 Zankel ZankelOffice Hours:
SPRING 2024: Drop-in: Wednesday and Thursday3:00 - 4:50 pmTC Affiliations:
Faculty Expertise:
Educational Background
M.A. University of Michigan
B.A. Swarthmore College
Scholarly Interests
Selected Publications
Journal Articles (Refereed)
Schmidt, S. J. (2023). Merging landscapes: socio-spatial intersections and formations of belonging among African migrant youth in the US. Visual Studies, 38(3-4), 351-365.
Schmidt, S. J. (2022). “We Don’t Live In Jungles”: Mediating Africa as a Transnational Socio-Spatial Field. Teachers College Record, 124(6), 38-61.
Schmidt, S. J. (2021). Un/Scripting Queer Subjectivity. The High School Journal, 105(1), 43-59.
Schmidt, S.J. (2020). Contemplating democratic education in a migratory world. NEUPA
Schmidt, S.J. (2019). Family trees and pajama parties: The (un)intelligibility of gender in single-sex classrooms in the US. Gender, Place, and Culture.
Schmidt, S.J. (2017). Hacked landscapes: Tensions, borders, and positionality in spatial literacy.
Journal of Geography, 116(3), 99-108.
Schmidt, S.J. (2016). Using landscapes to tell spatial stories. The Councilor, 77(2).
Schmidt, S.J. (2015). The queer arrangement of school: A spatial study of inequity. Journal of Curriculum Studies, 47(2), 253-273.
Schmidt, S.J. (2014). Civil rights continued: How history positions young people to contemplate sexuality (in)justice. Equity and Excellence in Education, 47(3), 353-369.
Schmidt, S.J. (2013) Claiming our turf: Students’ civic negotiation of the public space of school. Theory and Research in Social Education, 41(4), 535-551.
Schmidt, S.J. & Babits, C. (2013). Occupy Wall Street as a Curriculum of Space. Journal of Social Studies Research. 38(2), 79-89
Schmidt, S.J. (2013). Fabricating a nation: The function of national museums in non-racial re-presentation and the national imagination. Museum Management and Curatorship, 28(3), 288-306.
Schmidt, S.J. (2012). Am I a woman?: The production of woman in U.S. History. Gender and Education, 24(7), 707-724.
Schmidt, S.J., Chang, S.P., Carolan-Silva, A., Lockhart, J., Anagnostopoulos, D. (2012). Recognition, responsibility, and risk: Pre-service teachers’ framing and reframing of lesbian, gay, and bisexual social justice issues. Teaching and Teacher Education, 28(8), 1175-1184.
Garrett, H.J. & Schmidt, S.J. (2012). Repeating until we can remember: Difficult (public) knowledge in South Africa. Journal of Curriculum Theorizing, 28(1), 191-206.
Schmidt, S.J. (2011). Who lives on the other side of that boundary: A model of geographic thinking. Social Education. 75(5), 250-255.
Schmidt, S.J. & Garrett, H.J. (2011). Reconstituting pessimistic discourses. Critical Arts. 25(3), 423-440.
Schmidt, S.J. (2011). Making space for the citizen in geography education. Journal of Geography, 110(3), 107- 119.
Schmidt, S.J. (2011). Theorizing place: Students’ navigation of place outside the classroom. Journal of Curriculum Theorizing, 27(1), 20-35.
Schmidt, S. J. (2010). Queering social studies: A query of the space for sexual orientation and identity in the social studies. Theory and Research in Social Education, 38(3), 314-335.
Book Chapters
Schmidt, S.J., Estes, E., Gomez, I. (2023). Youth are already queer: Agentive possibilities among queer TikTok creators. In B. Varga, T. Monreal, & R.C. Christ (Eds.), Toward a Stranger and More Posthuman Social Studies (pp. 165-178). Teachers College Press.
Schmidt, S.J. (2022). The spatiality of a pandemic: deconstructing social inequality through social inquiry. In W. Journell (Ed.), Post-Pandemic Social Studies: How COVID-19 Has Changed the World and How we Teach (pp. 94-110). Teachers College Press.
Schmidt, S.J. (2021). AfricanFuturisms. In D. Friedrich, J. Corson, & D. Hollman (Eds.) Pop Culture and Curriculum, Assemble! Exploring the Limits of Curricular Humanism Through Pop Culture. Dio Press Inc.
Schmidt, S.J. (2019). The spatial production and navigation of vulnerable citizens (pp.41-58). In E. Shin & S. Bednarz (Eds.), Spatial citizenship education: Citizenship through geography. Taylor & Francis.
Gaudelli, W.G. & Schmidt, S.J. (2017). Global citizenship education and geography. In I. Davies, Ho, Kiwan, C. Peck, A. Peterson, E. Sant, & Y. Waghid (Eds). The Palgrave Handbook of Global Citizenship and Education.
Schmidt, S.J. (2017). Genderplay and queer mapping: Heterotopia as sites of possibility. In N. Ares, E. Buendia, & R. Helfenbein (Eds.), Deterritorializing/Reterritorializing: Critical geographies of educational reform. Sense Publishers.
Schmidt, S.J. (2016). ‘Within the sound of silence’: Critical examination of LGBQ issues in national history textbooks (pp. 121-141). In J.H. Williams & W.D. Bokhurst-Heng (Eds.), (Re)Constructing memory: Textbooks, identity, nation, and state. Rotterdam: Sense Publishers.
Schmidt, S.J. & Kenreich, T. (2015). Uncovering narratives of race through spatial inquiry. In P. Chandler (Ed.), Doing Race in Social Studies: Critical Perspectives. Information Age Publishing.
Schmidt, S.J. (2014). ‘United in our diversity’: Public museums in the production of a South African nation. In B. Trofanenko & A. Segall (Eds.), Beyond pedagogy: Reconsidering the public purpose of museums (pp. 135-154). Boston: Sense Publishers.
Schmidt, S.J. (2012). Queer geography: A query of norms in the social studies. In T.W. Kenreich (Ed.), Geography and social justice in the classroom (pgs. 129-149). New York: Routledge.
Schmidt, S.J. (2012). Let me in: The impact of divergent discourses on research and curricular (re)formation. In E. Meiners & T. Quinn (Eds.), Sexualities in education. New York: Peter Lang.
Active Professional Organizations
National Council for the Social Studies
American Educational Research Association
Division G - Social Contexts of Education
Queer Studies SIG
Research in Social Studies SIG
Association of American Geographers
Biographical Information
Honors and Awards
2012-3 Provost's Investment Fund "Merging Landscapes"
2012 Kipchoge Neftali Kirkland Social Justice Paper Award
2011 Outstanding Paper Award from the AERA Queer Studies SIG
2011 AAUW American Fellow
2008 Michigan State University Excellence-In-Teaching Citation