When Dr. Khalilah Ali walks into a classroom — or onto a conference stage — she brings a question that cuts to the center of everything: Who does this education serve, and who does it leave out?
That question drives her research, her teaching at Spelman College, and her presence at the Women Who Wow panel at Read Write Rhyme 2027 on Saturday, March 13, 2027 in Atlanta, GA.
Who Is Dr. Khalilah Ali?
Dr. Khalilah Ali is an Assistant Professor of Education at Spelman College in Atlanta, Georgia — one of the nation's most distinguished HBCUs and the only historically Black college for women in the United States. She holds a Ph.D. in Educational Studies with a concentration in Literacy, Pedagogy, and Culture from Emory University.
Her scholarship sits at the intersection of critical feminist theory, hip-hop culture, and classroom practice. She is one of a small but growing number of scholars who have developed what she calls a womanist hip-hop framework — a lens that centers the experiences, voices, and intellectual contributions of Black women and girls within hip-hop pedagogy.
Hip-Hop Based Education Through a Womanist Lens
Hip-Hop Based Education (HHBE) has gained significant traction in literacy and education research over the past two decades. Scholars have documented how hip-hop can serve as a bridge between students' cultural lives and academic literacy skills — close reading, argumentation, narrative writing, and critical analysis.
Dr. Ali's contribution to this field is distinctive: she insists that HHBE cannot be fully realized without centering gender. Hip-hop culture, like many cultural spaces, has historically amplified certain voices while marginalizing others. A womanist hip-hop framework asks educators to examine those dynamics explicitly — to bring the full complexity of hip-hop's cultural landscape into the classroom rather than a sanitized or selectively curated version.
This means examining who gets to speak, whose stories are told, and what kinds of knowledge are treated as legitimate. It means creating classroom conditions where Black girls and young women see themselves as producers of knowledge, not just consumers of curriculum.
Abolitionist Education in Practice
Dr. Ali's work is also grounded in abolitionist education — a framework developed by scholars like Bettina Love that calls for dismantling the systems within schools that replicate the same inequities schools claim to address. Abolitionist educators do not simply advocate for better resources or more culturally relevant texts. They interrogate the structures themselves: grading systems, discipline policies, tracking, and the hidden curricula that communicate to students which of them belong.
For Dr. Ali, hip-hop pedagogy and abolitionist education are not separate projects. They share a commitment to centering the humanity and intellectual capacity of students who have historically been pushed to the margins of schooling. Both ask teachers to do something genuinely difficult: to examine their own assumptions and to build classrooms that do not simply replicate the world as it is.
Preparing Future Teacher Leaders
At Spelman, Dr. Ali teaches future educators — many of whom will go on to teach in Atlanta-area schools and communities across the South. Her courses are designed not just to introduce students to hip-hop pedagogy as a technique, but to develop the critical consciousness that makes that pedagogy meaningful.
She prepares teachers to ask hard questions about their practice: What am I communicating to students about whose knowledge matters? How does the curriculum I'm delivering reflect or contradict the values I say I hold? What would it look like to build a classroom that is genuinely liberatory?
These are the questions she will bring to the Women Who Wow panel at Read Write Rhyme 2027.
Join Dr. Ali in Atlanta
The Women Who Wow panel brings together three leading scholars in hip-hop pedagogy, literacy research, and culturally responsive education for a conversation that is rare at most professional development conferences: honest, rigorous, and grounded in the real conditions of teaching.
Dr. Ali will be joined by Dr. Joycelyn Wilson (Georgia Tech) and Dr. Kimberly White-Glenn (Alabama A&M University) for what promises to be one of the most substantive sessions of the conference.
Read Write Rhyme 2027 takes place on Saturday, March 13, 2027 in Atlanta, GA. The conference is produced by The LaVoulle Group in partnership with Literacy Learners, Inc., a 501(c)(3) nonprofit.[Reserve your seat on Eventbrite →](https://www.eventbrite.com/e/read-write-rhyme-conference-2027-tickets-1982941093189)
