Dr. Zachary A. Casey is Associate Professor of Educational Studies at Rhodes College in Memphis, TN, USA.

After growing up in the suburbs of Seattle, WA, he moved to Tempe, Arizona to attend Arizona State University. Dr. Casey earned his B.A.E. in Secondary Education: Social Studies and his M. A. in Social and Philosophical Foundations of Education from the Mary Lou Fulton College of Education at ASU. He then earned his Ph.D. in Culture and Teaching: Curriculum and Instruction from the University of Minnesota. He joined the faculty at Rhodes College in August 2014, and earned tenure and promotion to Associate Professor in 2020.

Dr. Casey’s research and teaching focuses on critical whiteness studies, teacher education, anticapitalism, and critical pedagogy. He is particularly interested in the ways racial identity and systemic racism intersect in classrooms, schools, and in the lives of teachers and students. Focusing in particular on the ways neoliberal capitalism undermines antiracist praxis and pedagogies, his scholarship seeks to better understand the ways that white racial identity impacts possibilities for a more humanizing education. His work focuses on building critical racial literacy and antiracist pedagogies with practicing and future teachers, as well as the social, cultural, and philosophical contexts of education. His work has been featured in Harvard Educational Review, Race Ethnicity, and Education, and the International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education as well as many other books, presses, and journals. He co-edited Whiteness at the Table with Dr. Shannon K. McManimon and Dr. Christina Berchini (Lexington Press) in 2018 and edited the Encyclopedia of Critical Whiteness Studies in Education (Brill Publishers), in 2020.

Dr. Casey has led dozens of professional development sessions and seminars for practicing teachers focused on racial equity and social justice. This work has seen him work with teachers and schools across the United States to grow their capacity to combat racism. The book Building Pedagogues: White Practicing Teachers and the Struggle for Antiracist Work in Schools, (co-authored with Shannon K. McManimon) documents much of his approach to antiracist professional development and came out on SUNY Press in 2020.  He received the 2019 Rising Alumni Award from the College of Education and Human Development at the University of Minnesota for his work to develop the Educational Studies Department at Rhodes College and his first book, A Pedagogy of Anticapitalist Antiracism, was awarded the 2018 Outstanding Book Award from the Society of Professors of Education. In 2022, Dr. Casey won the Clarence Day Award for Outstanding Faculty Research, the highest faculty honor at Rhodes, for his accomplishments as a scholar.

His newest book, Critical Pedagogy and the Trouble with Consciousness Raising, will be published by Routledge in 2025.

Dr. Casey is a Stage IV Rectal Cancer survivor who lives with his partner, two children, and dog in Memphis, TN.