Writing Ourselves into Existence

2021 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 4-27
Author(s):  
Shardé M. Davis ◽  
Frances Ashun ◽  
Alleyha Dannett ◽  
Kayla Edwards ◽  
Victoria Nwaohuocha
Keyword(s):  
Women Students ◽  
Black Women ◽  
Research Team ◽  
Black Feminist Thought ◽  
Feminist Research ◽  
Hostile Environment ◽  
Black Feminist ◽  
New Knowledge ◽  
Critical Autoethnography ◽  
Research Praxis

Academia can be a hostile environment for Black women. Our research team leveraged Black feminist research praxis to produce new knowledge countering conceptions of Black women students and faculty as people who are unintelligent, produce superfluous work, and worthy of being ignored. In order to locate spaces for healing, mentorship, and validation, we engaged in a collaborative autoethnography to co-narrate our experiences while conducting a study for, by, and about Black women. Re-purposing tools from Black feminist thought, critical autoethnography, and collaborative autoethnography enabled us to write ourselves into existence, countering damaging narratives and subverting the harm inflicted by the institution.

(Other)sistering: Black Women Education Leadership Faculty Aligning Identity, Scholarship, and Practice Through Peer Support and Accountability

2022 ◽  
Vol 40 (1) ◽  
pp. 90-113
Author(s):  
Nakia M. Gray-Nicolas ◽  
Marsha E. Modeste ◽  
Angel Miles Nash ◽  
Lolita A. Tabron
Keyword(s):  
Black Women ◽  
Phenomenological Approach ◽  
Black Feminist Thought ◽  
Community Cultural Wealth ◽  
Theoretical Frameworks ◽  
Black Feminist ◽  
Cultural Wealth ◽  
Dynamic Support ◽  
Assistant Professors ◽  
Insight Into

This inquiry offers insight into how Black women assistant professors traverse the challenging journey toward tenure while acknowledging their connection to their students and communities, research, teaching, and service. By employing a phenomenological approach and utilizing Black feminist thought and community cultural wealth as conceptual and theoretical frameworks, this research advances scholarship identifying commonalities across Black women’s experiences. Further, we offer implications for how the academy can support Black women and other professionals from marginalized populations. Findings include how Black women assistant professors develop and create dynamic support systems amongst themselves to combat the multiple marginalizations of their positionality in the academy––a place where they are historically “outsiders.”

scholarly journals Traveling Ever Toward Freedom: A Metaphorical Feminist Study of Colson Whitehead’s the Underground Railroad

2020 ◽  
Vol 17 (1) ◽  
pp. 38-52
Author(s):  
Afsaneh Askar Motlagh
Keyword(s):  
Black Women ◽  
Black Feminist Thought ◽  
Underground Railroad ◽  
Abstract Concepts ◽  
Black Feminist ◽  
Racial Hatred ◽  
Feminist Study ◽  
Cognitive Approaches To Literature ◽  
George Lakoff ◽  
The Face

AbstractThere is a growing interest in cognitive approaches to literature in recent years; undoubtedly conceptual metaphor has become one of the favourite topics for analysis. George Lakoff and Mark Johnson in Metaphors We Live By (1980), assert that metaphor is not just a matter of words; rather it is inherently conceptual and conceptual metaphors help us comprehend abstract concepts in terms of more concrete ones. This article proposes that metaphor is used to overcome the inadequacy of language in the face of indescribable phenomena, such as slavery, racism and multiple oppressions of black women throughout history in Colson Whitehead’s The Underground Railroad (2016). Patricia Collins tries to convey through her work, Black Feminist Thought (2000), which will be used here, that all these oppressions exist even today. The result of this study indicates that Whitehead has picked up and given life to the old slavery story to emotionally engage a global audience at the present time, when racial hatred seems to be a thing of the past.

Black Feminist Philosophy and the Politics of Refusal

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Axelle Karera
Keyword(s):  
Black Women ◽  
Knowledge Production ◽  
Feminist Research ◽  
Feminist Philosophy ◽  
Black Feminist ◽  
Women And Girls ◽  
Research Agendas

This chapter discusses the meaning, possibility, and contributions of Black feminist philosophy. The chapter discusses a politics of refusal that characterizes Black women’s theorizing and develops it as a framework for understanding how Black feminist philosophy is more than mere corrective and subversion of mainstream philosophy. As a framework, Black feminist philosophical “politics of refusal” depicts how Black feminist philosophers doing philosophy for Black women and girls refuse to sell themselves short, refuse institutionally imposed intellectual trajectories, and refuse to respond to philosophy’s call to order in their attempts to lay down uncompromisingly Black feminist research agendas in philosophy. The chapter offers an overview of important contributions to the field and discusses how a politics of refusal operates as critique and knowledge production within the field.

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.

Surviving From the Margins: A Conversation About Identity With James Baldwin

2020 ◽  
pp. 194084472094351
Author(s):  
Anjuliet G. Woodruffe
Keyword(s):  
Identity Construction ◽  
American Woman ◽  
James Baldwin ◽  
Black Feminist Thought ◽  
Transnational Identity ◽  
Black Feminist ◽  
Black Experience ◽  
The Past ◽  
Feminist Thought ◽  
Critical Autoethnography

Black feminist thought and Black feminist autoethnography are the theoretical and methodological tools that I use to explore transnational identity construction as a Black, Trinidadian–American woman who has experienced hyper(in)visibility. Three letters capture my epiphanic moments as the outsider-within. I stage an interaction with the late literary-activist–scholar, James Baldwin, to address identity-making through race and transnationality, and to problematize interpersonal, structural, and disciplinary forms of power that shape my identity. My critical autoethnography is a self-story—a story that is always navigating between dual citizenships and culture. I place my epiphanic moments in conversation with those of James Baldwin to highlight Black experience from the past and present to provide new ways of narrating difference.

Young, Shifting, and Black

2016 ◽  
Vol 23 (2) ◽  
pp. 119-129 ◽  
Author(s):  
Karla D. Scott
Keyword(s):  
Black Women ◽  
Predominantly White ◽  
Hip Hop ◽  
Black Feminist Thought ◽  
Black Communities ◽  
Border Crossings ◽  
Black Feminist ◽  
Communicative Practice ◽  
The Gift ◽  
Racial Solidarity

This is the story of a Black woman Baby Boomer who, inspired by the 1969 song Young, Gifted and Black, experienced cultural border crossings early in life. It includes reflections from Black women of the Hip Hop Generation who, decades later, also pursued the “world waiting” for them promised in that song. In our lived experiences across generations, we found strategic language use is part of the “gift” and critical to crossings. We also discovered identity implications as we “shift” across borders into predominantly White environments and back into our Black communities where language is perceived as a marker of racial solidarity. Black feminist thought is used to examine the implications of a communicative practice that has been done for so long and so well it appears effortless. But we know it is not—for both generations, there are benefits, yes, but also detriments, frustration, and fatigue.

scholarly journals “Where We Are, Resistance Lives”: Black Women, Social Media, and Everyday Resistance in Higher Education

JCSCORE ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
pp. 1-31
Author(s):  
Terah J. Stewart
Keyword(s):  
Higher Education ◽  
Black Women ◽  
Civil Rights ◽  
Civil Rights Movement ◽  
Black Feminist Thought ◽  
Black Feminist ◽  
Qualitative Research Design ◽  
Second Wave Feminism ◽  
Everyday Resistance ◽  
Second Wave

The discourse about activism (and problematic conflations with resistance) typically offer comparisons to the 1960’s Civil Rights Movement, examine first and second wave feminism, and situate apathy and fatigue as opposite from resistance. Using a qualitative research design (Merriam, 2009; 2002), Black feminist thought (Collins, 1990), and endarkened feminist epistemology (Dillard, 2006); this study examined the experience of 6 collegiate Black women and their resistance through engagement of the hashtag, #BlackGirlMagic. Specifically, the inquiry explored how and why participants used the hashtag and investigated connections that give nuance to activism and resistance through community building, digital counterspace creation, and connections to higher education broadly. Findings include how participants conceptualize and define resistanceand how #BlackGirlMagic serves as one way they can and do engage in resistance; and the author explores relevant implications for colleges and universities.

Architects of Change in the Ivory Tower

2019 ◽  
pp. 23-52 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nicole M. West ◽  
Tamara Bertrand Jones
Keyword(s):  
Higher Education ◽  
African American ◽  
Black Women ◽  
Student Affairs ◽  
Black Feminist Thought ◽  
Student Affairs Administrators ◽  
Ivory Tower ◽  
Black Feminist ◽  
Collective Movement ◽  
The U.S

Although it is critical to foreground discussions about the historical vestiges of racist and sexist ideologies that are embedded in the experiences of contemporary Black women in the academy, it is equally important to highlight the role these women are playing in challenging the existence of these structures. There are a growing number of Black women student affairs administrators and faculty engaging in professional counterspaces as a strategy to re-architect the reality of their lives in the academy. Two such programs in the U.S., the African American Women's Summit (AAWS) and the Sisters of the Academy Research BootCamp (RBC), were created by, for, and about Black women employed in higher education to redress the problematic environments these women encounter in academia. In this chapter, the authors explore how tenets of Black feminist thought (BFT) and collective movement activism are integral to the AAWS and RBC and clarify the role Black women student affairs administrators and faculty engaged in these professional counterspaces are playing as architects of change in the ivory tower.

“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.

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