Chara Bohan

Ph.D., Curriculum and Instruction, The University of Texas at Austin, 1999
M.A.T., Teachers College, Columbia University, 1990
B.A. in History, Cornell University, 1988

She teaches graduate courses in curriculum, research, educational inquiry, education history, and social studies education.

Chara Haeussler Bohan is a professor in the Department of Educational Policy Studies in the College of Education & Human Development at Georgia State University. She is the doctoral program coordinator for Social Foundations. She specializes in educational history with a focus on gender and race, curriculum and instruction, and social studies education. She has diverse teaching experiences in urban high-needs schools as well as elite private secondary schools.

She has approximately 100 publications, which include book chapters and research articles in leading journals such as Action in Teacher Education, Curriculum and Teaching Dialogue, Educational Foundations, Journal of Excellence in College Teaching, Journal of Curriculum and Supervision, Journal of Social Studies Research, Social Education, Social Studies and the Young Learner, Social Studies Research and Practice, Theory and Research in Social Education and Vitae Scholasticae.

Her recent research focuses on how the lost cause mythology was perpetuated in “Mint Julep” history textbooks and Confederate statues. She is co-author, with historian H. Robert Baker and Black history educator, LaGarrett King of the forthcoming book, Teaching Enslavement in American History: Lesson Plans and Primary Sources (Peter Lang, 2022). She has examined issues of gender in social studies research and the curriculum history of Atlanta Public Schools during the desegregation era. Her chapter on gender and feminist scholarship is part of the Wiley Handbook of Social Studies Research (2017). She authored Go to the Sources: Lucy Maynard Salmon and the Teaching of History (Peter Lang, 2004), and co-edited several books, including Histories of Social Studies and Race (Palgrave, 2012). She is the recipient of two Teaching American History Grants and three grants sponsored by the National Endowment for the Humanities, Summer Institute for Teachers, “Courting Liberty: Slavery and Equality Under the Constitution, 1770-1870.”  The most recent two-week NEH institute for teachers will be held in summer 2022; information can be accessed at the NEH website.

Bohan served as president of the American Association for Teaching and Curriculum in 2014-2015. She is also the current editor of Curriculum and Teaching Dialogue.