Meet Jyoti.
Educator, author, founder.
I create and analyze media that make children and adults culturally visible across educational resources, learning environments, and everyday conversations.
When aspects of our identities—such as physical appearance, language, or cultural background—are treated as different or Other, they often shape how people are perceived, included, or excluded. Drawing from critical pedagogy and multicultural education, and participatory arts practices, I develop frameworks and teaching tools that help educators, media-makers, and organizations think more critically about cultural literacy, child-centered learning, and their emotional well-being.
I invite educators, caregivers, and creators to challenge practices that ignore, normalize, perpetuate, or exploit harmful social beliefs that affect children and youth. By changing the way we teach, communicate, design, and create, we can build more thoughtful, respectful, and joyful learning environments in our homes, schools, media, and communities.
Join Jyoti’s community!
Make art for literacy!
Access a free anti-bias, skin color-related activity for your class, art room, library, or home? Link below.
Ready to Think?
What words, ideas, concepts can help us communicate with children? New ‘Think Class’ coming soon.
Are you an upstander!
Help grow the anti-colorism community. Amplify my work and introduce me to co-conspirators.
Email Jyoti →
Jyoti Gupta is a New York–based scholar-practitioner, author, and educator whose work explores culture as lived social practice rather than static tradition.
Her forthcoming children’s book, Yesterday Nexterday, is grounded in her thesis that children are culture makers, and not passive recipients of culture. Drawing from critical pedagogy, multicultural education, and arts education, her book proactively creates scenarios and settings where children actively interpret, repurpose, and participate in culture-making through play, art, and dialogue.
She is the founder of The Colo(u)rism Project, an interdisciplinary initiative that began as an exploration of colorism, media culture, and representation within South Asian communities. In the last ten years it has expanded into a broader inquiry into childhood, identity formation, and culture.
Gupta has facilitated workshops and public conversations across schools, universities, and cultural organizations in both the U.S. and India. Her first children’s book, Different Differenter, has been included as an educator resource by The New York Times Wirecutter, Rethinking Schools, and McGraw Hill Wonders. She holds dual master’s degrees in Media Studies and Liberal Studies from The New School and CUNY Graduate Center, respectively, and a BFA in Applied Art (Visual Communication) from Delhi College of Art.
Dixon, A. R., & Telles, E. E. (2017). Skin color and colorism: Global research, concepts, and measurement. Annual Review of Sociology, 43(1), 405–424. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-soc-060116-053315
Love, B. L. (2019). We want to do more than survive: Abolitionist teaching and the pursuit of educational freedom. Beacon Press.