Black Feminist Thought as Methodology

2016 ◽  
Vol 5 (3) ◽  
pp. 55-76 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ashley Patterson ◽  
Valerie Kinloch ◽  
Tanja Burkhard ◽  
Ryann Randall ◽  
Arianna Howard
Keyword(s):  
Black Women ◽  
Black Feminism ◽  
Methodological Approach ◽  
Black Feminist Thought ◽  
Critical Social Theory ◽  
Black Feminist ◽  
Critical Methodology ◽  
Feminist Thought ◽  
Rigorous Research ◽  
Gathering Place

In this essay, we rely on a black feminist lens to challenge and extend what is appraised as rigorous research methodology. Inspired by a diverse, intergenerational group of black women referred to as the Black Women's Gathering Place, we employ black feminist thought (BFT) as critical social theory and embrace a more expansive understanding of BFT as critical methodology to analyze the experiences black women share through narrative. Our theoretical and methodological approach offers a pathway for education and research communities to account for the expansive possibilities that black feminism has for theorizing the lives of black women.

Black Feminist Thought and Qualitative Research in Education

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kristal Moore Clemons
Keyword(s):  
Qualitative Research ◽  
Learning Strategies ◽  
Methodological Approach ◽  
Feminist Pedagogy ◽  
Black Feminist Thought ◽  
Multiple Perspectives ◽  
Black Feminist ◽  
Feminist Thought ◽  
Intellectual Traditions ◽  
Research In Education

Black feminist thought and qualitative research in education is guided by a particular understanding of the learning strategies informed by Black women’s historical experiences with race, gender, and class. Scholars of Black feminist thought remind us of a Black feminist pedagogy that fosters a mindset of intellectual inclusion. Black feminist thought challenges Western intellectual traditions of exclusivity and chauvinism. This article presents a synopsis of the nature and scope of Black feminist thought and qualitative research in education. Further, this article highlights the work of scholars who describe the importance of an Afrocentric methodological approach in the field of education because it offers scholars and practitioners a methodological opportunity to promote equality and multiple perspectives.

The Ekwe Collective

2016 ◽  
Vol 5 (3) ◽  
pp. 77-100 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joëlle M. Cruz ◽  
Oghenetoja Okoh ◽  
Amoaba Gooden ◽  
Kamesha Spates ◽  
Chinasa A. Elue ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Black Women ◽  
Lived Experience ◽  
Black Feminist Thought ◽  
First Century ◽  
Three Dimensions ◽  
Black Feminist ◽  
Communities Of Color ◽  
Feminist Thought ◽  
Feminist Scholar ◽  
Twenty First Century

While making clear that black femininity exists and is located in multiple spaces, this essay brings out the intellectual and cultural presence and voices of black women in both national and international feminist communities. We engage black feminist thought (BFT) by offering the example of our community—the Ekwe Collective—a sisterhood of six feminist scholar–activists and their daughters. This essay offers insights on how BFT translates to the lived experience of communities of color in the twenty-first century. In particular, we draw upon and extend three dimensions of the theory: experience, generation, and space.

“That chart ain’t for us”: How Black women understand “obesity,” health, and physical activity

2021 ◽  
pp. 136345932110468
Author(s):  
Tori Alexis Justin ◽  
Shannon Jette
Keyword(s):  
Physical Activity ◽  
Black Women ◽  
Qualitative Methodology ◽  
Black Feminist Thought ◽  
Black Feminist ◽  
Physically Active ◽  
Feminist Thought ◽  
Obesity Discourse

In this article, we use qualitative methodology to explore how eight physically active Black women, who self-identify as “obese,” understand and experience health and physical activity, as well as how they position themselves in relation to discourses pertaining to “obesity” and Black femininity. Drawing on Foucauldian-informed critical obesity scholarship and Black feminist thought, we explore the ways in which physically active Black women concurrently resist, reproduce, and navigate racialized and gendered obesity discourse. Our findings advance critical obesity scholarship as we indicate that participants simultaneously adapt to, negotiate, and resist obesity discourse by re-defining health, questioning the BMI, and centering their desire for corporeal “thickness” as critical to their identity as Black women.

Remembering Rock and Roll with P. P. Arnold

2021 ◽  
pp. 225-254
Author(s):  
Alexandra M. Apolloni
Keyword(s):  
Black Women ◽  
Popular Music ◽  
Black Feminist Thought ◽  
Rock And Roll ◽  
New Work ◽  
Black Feminist ◽  
Music Production ◽  
Feminist Thought ◽  
The 1960S

This chapter asks how American singer P. P. Arnold’s vocal performances in the 1960s shaped British popular music production and how she renarrates rock history today. The story of Arnold’s music career reveals how the Black feminine vocality exemplified by Arnold’s style of singing shaped 1960s rock, and how Black women singers navigate experiences of marginalization and narratives of authenticity. Arnold’s recordings for Immediate Records and her work with the Small Faces on songs like “Tin Soldier” reveal how this dynamic manifests musically, while the story of her “lost” album The Turning Tide illustrates the effect that it had on her career. The chapter closes with a section on Arnold’s recent live performances, using Black feminist thought to understand the implications of Arnold’s engagement with 1960s stereotypes of rock authenticity and sexual expressivity in her new work.

Issued by Way of “The Issue of Blackness”

2020 ◽  
Vol 7 (3) ◽  
pp. 427-444
Author(s):  
Joshua Aiken ◽  
Jessica Marion Modi ◽  
Olivia R. Polk
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Black Feminism ◽  
Black Feminist Thought ◽  
Special Issue ◽  
Black Feminist ◽  
Feminist Thought ◽  
Trans Studies ◽  
The University

Abstract In 2017, TSQ published its special issue on the convergence of blackness and trans*ness, “The Issue of Blackness.” In their introduction, “We Got Issues,” editors Treva Ellison, Kai M. Green, Matt Richardson, and C. Riley Snorton offer a vision of a black trans* studies that acknowledges twentieth-century black feminist thought as its primary genealogy. For Ellison et al., the move to make black feminism the intellectual center of black trans* studies not only resists black women's persistent erasure from institutional narratives of knowledge making but also opens the contributions of trans* studies onto new fields of possibility for thinking and feeling embodiment, sociality, and memory otherwise. Aiken, Modi, and Polk build on Ellison et al.’s vision for a black trans* studies by bringing the concerns of “The Issue of Blackness” into conversation with recent black feminist critiques of disciplinarity and representation to imagine again how a black trans* studies rooted in black feminism might take shape in the university today.

“Reclaiming Our Time”: Black Women, Resistance, and Rising Inequality: SWS Presidential Lecture

2019 ◽  
Vol 33 (3) ◽  
pp. 345-362 ◽  
Author(s):  
Adia Harvey Wingfield
Keyword(s):  
Black Women ◽  
Essential Role ◽  
Presidential Address ◽  
Social Institutions ◽  
Women's Leadership ◽  
Black Feminist Thought ◽  
Black Feminist ◽  
Media And Politics ◽  
Feminist Thought ◽  
Starting Point

In this presidential address, I use the metaphor of “reclaiming my time” as a framework that highlights the ways black women are playing an essential role transforming workplaces, media, and politics in the current moment. I consider how black feminist thought provides a useful starting point for assessing these efforts, and I examine how black women’s leadership offers a blueprint for how other groups also can restructure social institutions in an era of increasing polarization and inequality.

Basements and Intersections

Hypatia ◽  
2013 ◽  
Vol 28 (4) ◽  
pp. 698-715 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anna Carastathis
Keyword(s):  
Black Women ◽  
Feminist Theory ◽  
Social Hierarchy ◽  
Black Feminist Thought ◽  
Black Feminist ◽  
Feminist Thought ◽  
Antidiscrimination Law

In this paper, I revisit Kimberlé Crenshaw's argument in “Demarginalizing the Intersection of Race and Sex” (1989) to recover a companion metaphor that has been largely forgotten in the “mainstreaming” of intersectionality in (white‐dominated) feminist theory. In addition to the now‐famous intersection metaphor, Crenshaw offers the basement metaphor to show how—by privileging monistic, mutually exclusive, and analogically constituted categories of “race” and “sex” tethered, respectively, to masculinity and whiteness—antidiscrimination law functions to reproduce social hierarchy, rather than to remedy it, denying Black women plaintiffs legal redress. I argue that in leaving the basement behind, deployments of “intersectionality” that deracinate the concept from its origins in Black feminist thought also occlude Crenshaw's account of the socio‐legal reproduction of hierarchical power.

The Nature of Black Women’s Leadership in Community Recreation Sport: An Illustration of Black Feminist Thought

2007 ◽  
Vol 16 (1) ◽  
pp. 3-15 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ketra L. Armstrong
Keyword(s):  
Black Women ◽  
Sense Of Self ◽  
Social Institution ◽  
Black Feminist Thought ◽  
Black Feminist ◽  
Feminist Thought ◽  
Leadership Experiences ◽  
Sport Leadership ◽  
Community Recreation ◽  
Institutional Challenges

Sport is a social institution that is rife with raced and gendered discursive fields, creating structural and power relations that may influence the leadership experiences of Black women there-in. Tins study utilized the tenets of Black Feminist Thought as a foundation for examining the leadership experiences of a case selection of Black women (n=21) in community recreational sports. The results revealed that a personal interest in sport and an ethic of caring motivated the women’s involvement in the leadership of community recreation sports. Although the women reported barriers of gender inequity, racial discrimination, poor communication, lack of resources, and organizational constraints, they appeared to rely on their internal fortitude as a reservoir for resistance to combat the institutional challenges faced and have meaningful sport leadership experiences. The study illuminated the importance of individual consciousness to these women’s sense of self and their ability to resist the domination of the power and ideologies situated in their sport leadership settings.

scholarly journals Black feminist intersectionality is vital to group analysis: Can group analysis allow outsider ideas in?

2021 ◽  
pp. 053331642199776
Author(s):  
Suryia Nayak
Keyword(s):  
Black Women ◽  
Black People ◽  
Black Feminism ◽  
Group Analysis ◽  
Black Feminist ◽  
Online Platform ◽  
Large Group ◽  
Diversity And Inclusion ◽  
Analytical Structure ◽  
The Relationship

This is the transcript of a speech I gave at an Institute of Group Analysis (IGA) event on the 28th November 2020 about intersectionality and groups analysis. This was momentous for group analysis because it was the first IGA event to focus on black feminist intersectionality. Noteworthy, because it is so rare, the large group was convened by two black women, qualified members of the IGA—a deliberate intervention in keeping with my questioning of the relationship between group analysis and power, privilege, and position. This event took place during the Covid-19 pandemic via an online platform called ‘Zoom’. Whilst holding the event online had implications for the embodied visceral experience of the audience, it enabled an international attendance, including members of Group Analysis India. Invitation to the event: ‘Why the black feminist idea of intersectionality is vital to group analysis’ Using black feminist intersectionality, this workshop explores two interconnected issues: • Group analysis is about integration of parts, but how do we do this across difference in power, privilege, and position? • Can group analysis allow outsider ideas in? This question goes to the heart of who/ what we include in group analytic practice—what about black feminism? If there ‘cannot possibly be one single version of the truth so we need to hear as many different versions of it as we can’ (Blackwell, 2003: 462), we need to include as many different situated standpoints as possible. Here is where and why the black feminist idea of intersectionality is vital to group analysis. On equality, diversity and inclusion, intersectionality says that the ‘problems of exclusion cannot be solved simply by including black [people] within an already established analytical structure’ (Crenshaw, 1989: 140). Can group analysis allow the outsider idea of intersectionality in?

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