Restorying and spatial reclamation
How children and youth use storytelling, heart maps, walking tours, and play to restory and reclaim thresholds, neighborhoods, and adult-designed spaces.
Assistant Professor of Literacy · SUNY Cortland
Casey M. Pennington, Ph.D.
My work focuses on how children, youth, and their communities use storytelling and collective meaning-making to (re)design spatial and embodied literacy practices, in and out of school contexts.
My research follows young people as they restory the places where they live and learn. I prepare elementary reading and literacy teachers in Science of Reading and teach in the online graduate literacy program at SUNY Cortland.
7
peer-reviewed journal articles
5
publications since 2024, including a Routledge book
19
refereed presentations at AERA, NCTE, LRA, and other venues
40
online graduate students advised
Research
Research overviewEquitable schooling in contested times
How families, educators, and children co-construct equitable schooling amid book banning, censorship, and decisions about school choice.
Community-based literacies
How community members use community-based literacies to resist and restory deficit narratives and to design equitable educational futures.
Recent work
All publicationsCo-authored book · 2026
Cultivating Equity Literacy in Schools and Communities: Stories to Redefine School Quality
Routledge
Uses multigenerational collaborative ethnography to examine school choice, decision-making, and the role literacy plays in advancing equity in schools and communities.
Journal article · 2026
“I have a galaxy hand”: Centering children and youth in spatial reclamation within the nexus of practice
Children's Geographies
Centers children and youth in spatial reclamation within the nexus of practice.
Sole-authored article · 2025
Maps, movement, and meaning: Children restorying thresholds with heart maps and walking tours as acts of spatial reclamation
Education Sciences
Examines how children use heart maps and walking tours to restory thresholds as acts of spatial reclamation.
News
- May 2026 Co-authored book, Cultivating Equity Literacy in Schools and Communities: Stories to Redefine School Quality, published by Routledge. More
- 2026 Article with Amy Walker, “I have a galaxy hand,” published in Children’s Geographies. More
- April 2026 Co-chaired the 10th Annual SUNY Cortland Literacy Department Conference, F(read)om Dreaming: Literacy, Justice, and the Radical Power of Voice. More
- November 2025 Launched the Crown Table Feast, a free community meal and grocery giveaway for Cortland County families. More
- November 2025 Presented storytelling research at the National Council of Teachers of English convention in Denver.
About
Casey M. Pennington is an Assistant Professor in the Literacy Department at SUNY Cortland. Her research examines how children and youth use storytelling, maps, and movement to reclaim the places where they live and learn, and how communities use literacy to design equitable educational futures.
Her work appears in Children's Geographies, Education Sciences, Equity & Excellence in Education, Literacy, Teachers College Record, and English Teaching: Practice & Critique. She is a co-author of Cultivating Equity Literacy in Schools and Communities (Routledge, 2026).
She earned her Ph.D. in Literacy, Culture, and Language Education at Indiana University. Before graduate school, she taught English language arts and English as a New Language in Indianapolis schools for five years.