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Walter S. Gershon (Ph.D.) is a Philadelphia-based Afro-Caribbean percussionist, saxophonist, and scholar. He is Associate Professor, Critical Foundations of Education at Rowan University. Dr. Gershon’s scholarship focuses on questions of justice, access, and dignity about how young people make sense, the sociocultural processes that inform their everyday sense-making, and the qualitative methods used to study those processes. Walter’s scholarly work includes two award-winning monographs—Curriculum and Students in Classrooms: Everyday Urban Education in an Era of Standardization and Sound Curriculum: Sonic Studies in Educational Theory, Method, and Practice–dozens of journal articles and book chapters, and an additional five edited and co-edited books.
Walter is at home with musics across genres and traditions and has played with a wide variety of musicians and musical traditions including Mansour (Persian pop),Rod Poole, Dana Reason, Badal Roy, and poets Quincy Troupe and Eintou Springer. With Renee Coloumbe and Mark Graham, Walter formed 2000s free/grove collective Erroneous Funk, is a founding member of Imaginary Lines Quartet (Joe Sorbara, Jonathan Kay, Brandon Davis), is a member of R&B group Fat Larry’s Band (Europe), and has recently recorded with modern expressions of Malawian/Norwegian musical traditions that is Kwayela (Rosha Vole, Sunniva Hovde, and Udi Sholomo).
In addition, residing at the intersection of his musical and scholarly works are what Walter calls sonic scholarship (sound art and audio papers). His sonic scholarship has been exhibited at the Akron Art Museum, featured at annual meetings of the American Educational Research Association and American Anthropological Association, and are regularly part of his publications, national and international invited talks, conference presentations, and musical events.