Abstract
This introductory chapter provides readers with the background for understanding contemporary Black women’s liberatory pedagogies. It examines how teaching, in all of its forms, has historically been an integral part of Black women’s struggle for social justice. Black women pedagogues of today join a river of Black foremothers whose pedagogies not only served as resistance to white supremacist and patriarchal domination, but as healing and empowerment particularly for Black community members. Furthermore, this chapter provides important subtext for decolonizing pedagogy. Reclaiming African ancestral ways of knowing and being, this introduction draws on community, collaboration, and consciousness-raising for audiences within the academy and beyond.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Notes
- 1.
Self-definition and naming are socio-political acts that are critical to this volume. As Steven Biko asserts, “Merely by describing yourself as black you have started on a road towards emancipation, you have committed yourself to fight against all forces that seek to use your blackness as a stamp that marks you out as a subservient being.” Each author answered our very specific call for papers, which required self-identification as a “Black woman.” The term “Black” is a political term that not only speaks to identity, culture , location, and agency , but is also fluid, dynamic, and context-dependent. Given its complexity, to present one definition for “Black” would limit its scope and would contribute to the univocal and sometimes fixed analytic discourse often utilized in the academy. Thus, within their narratives, each author develops and exhibits her own definition of “Black womanness” and specifies the terms she uses to self-identify (i.e. Black, African American, Africana, Afrikan, African Caribbean).
- 2.
There are innumerable examples of these foremothers, such as Maria Stewart, Anna Julia Cooper, Ida B. Wells, Mary McCleod Bethune, Fannie Lou Hamer, Fannie Jackson Coppin, Lucy Moten, Frances Watkins Harper, Margaret Washington, Mary Church Terrell, Septima Poinsette Clark, Ella Baker , Gloria Richardson, Dorothy Height, Geneva Smitherman, JoAnn Robinson, Shirley Chisolm, Barbara Jordan, and many others who are less known.
- 3.
Some of the critiques of this pedagogical literature (i.e. critical pedagogy) are that these pedagogues are perpetuating hegemony and epistemic violence by validating a white male worldview that largely excludes the voices and experiences of people of color and organic intellectuals as knowledge producers. Furthermore, these pedagogues mostly theorize in the abstract and are thus disconnected from the lived experiences of people of color (see, e.g., Orelus & Brock, 2014; Darder, 2011; Grande, 2004; hooks, 1998; Lynn & Jennings, 2009).
- 4.
Stanley (2006) identifies a host of phrases and terms that have been used in the literature to describe the experiences of faculty of color: multiple marginality, multiple oppressions, otherness, living in two worlds, the academy’s new cast, silenced voices, ivy halls and glass walls, individual survivors or institutional transformers, from border to center, visible and invisible barriers, the color of teaching, and navigating between two worlds.
- 5.
See, for example, Benjamin, 1997; Bonner et al., 2015; Ford, 2011; Gregory, 1999; Gutiérrez y Muhs, Niemann, González & Harris, 2012; Harley, 2008; Harlow, 2003; Harris, 2007; Henderson, Hunter & Hildreth, 2010; Hendrix, 2007; Jackson & Johnson, 2011; Johnson & Johnson, 2014; Myers, 2002; Patton, 2004; Pittman, 2010; Stanley, 2006; Thomas & Hollenshead, 2001; Thompson & Louque, 2005; Turner & Myers, 2000; Tusmith & Reddy, 2002; Vargas, 2002.
References
Ani, M. (2000). Yurugu: An African-centered critique of European cultural thought and behavior. Trenton, NJ: Africa World Press.
Antonio, A. L. (2002). Faculty of color reconsidered: Reassessing contributions to scholarship. Journal of Higher Education, 73, 582–602.
Aronowitz, S., & Giroux, H. A. (1993). Education still under siege (2nd ed.). Westport, CT: Bergin & Garvey.
Asante, M. K. (2017). Revolutionary pedagogy: Primer for teachers of Black children. Brooklyn, NY: Universal Write Publications, LLC.
Baker, S. (2011). Pedagogies of protest: African American teachers and the history of the civil rights movement, 1940–1963. Teachers College Record, 113(12), 2777–2803.
Baszile, D. T. (2006). In this place where I don’t quite belong: Claiming the ontoepistemological in-between. In T. R. Berry & N. D. Mizelle (Eds.), From oppression to grace: Women of color and their dilemmas within the academy (pp. 195–208). Sterling, VA: Stylus Publishing.
Bay, M., Griffin, F. J., Jones, M. S., & Savage, B. D. (Eds.). (2015). Toward and intellectual history of Black women. Chapel Hill, NC: The University of North Carolina Press.
Beauboeuf-LaFontant, T. (1999). A movement against and beyond boundaries: Politically relevant teaching among African American teachers. Teachers College Record, 100(4), 702–723.
Benjamin, L. (Ed.). (1997). Black women in the academy: Promises and perils. Gainesville, FL: University Press of Florida.
Berry, R., & Mizelle, N. D. (Eds.). (2006). From oppression to grace: Women of color and their dilemmas within the academy. Sterling, VA: Stylus Publishing.
Biondi, M. (2014). The Black revolution on campus. Berkeley, CA: UC Press.
Bonner, F. A., Marble, F. A., Tuitt, F., Robinson, P. A., Banda, R. M., & Hughes, R. L. (Eds.). (2015). Black faculty in the academy: Narratives for negotiating identity and achieving career success. New York: Routledge.
Boyer, E. L. (1997). Scholarship reconsidered: Priorities of the professoriate. New York: John Wiley & Sons.
Brock, R. (2005). Sista talk: The personal and the pedagogical. New York: Peter Lang.
Butler, J. E. (2000). Reflections on borderlands and the color line. In S. Geok-Lim & M. Herrera-Sobek (Eds.), Power, race and gender in academe: Strangers in the tower? New York: The Modern Language Association.
Carruthers, J. (1999). Intellectual warfare. Chicago, IL: Third World Press.
Collins, P. H. (2009). Black feminist thought: Knowledge, consciousness, and the politics of empowerment. New York: Routledge.
Collins, P. H. (2013). On intellectual activism. Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press.
Cooper, T. L. (2006). The sista network: African-American women faculty successfully negotiating the road to tenure. Bolton, MA: Anker Publishing Company, Inc.
Dei, G. S. (2010). Teaching Africa: Towards a transgressive pedagogy. New York: Springer.
Delpit, L. (1995). Other people’s children: Cultural conflict in the classroom. New York: The New Press.
Dillard, C. B. (2012). Learning to (re)member the things we’ve learned to forget: Endarkened feminisms, spirituality, and the sacred nature of research and teaching. New York: Peter Lang.
Diop, C. A. (1974). The African origin of civilization: Myth or reality. Chicago, IL: Lawrence Hill Books.
Dixson, A. (2003). “Let’s do this!” Black women teachers’ politics and pedagogy. Urban Education, 38(2), 217–235.
DuBois, W. E. B. (1920). Darkwater. New York: Harcourt Brace and Company.
Ellsworth, E. (2005). Places of learning: Media, architecture, pedagogy. New York: Routledge Falmer.
Emeagwali, G. T. (Ed.). (2006). Africa and the academy: Challenging hegemonic discourses on Africa. Trenton, NJ: Africa World Press, Inc.
Evans, S. Y. (2007). Black women in the Ivory tower, 1850–1954: An intellectual history. Gainesville, FL: University Press of Florida.
Evans, S. Y. (2009). Preface. In S. Y. Evans, C. M. Taylor, M. R. Dunlap, & D. S. Miller (Eds.), African Americans and community engagement in higher education: Community service, service-learning, and community-based research (pp. xi–xx). Albany, NY: SUNY Press.
Fairclough, A. (2007). Black teachers in the segregated South: A class of their own. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Fanon, F. (1967). Black skin, White masks. London: Pluto Press.
Ford, K. A. (2011). Race, gender, and bodily (mis)recognitions: Women of color faculty experiences with White students in the college classroom. Journal of Higher Education, 82(4), 444–478.
Freire, P. (1970). Pedagogy of the oppressed. New York: Continuum International.
Gaztambide-Fernàndez, R. (2015). Browning the curriculum: A project of unsettlement. In M. F. He, B. D. Schultz, & W. H. Schubert (Eds.), The SAGE guide to curriculum in education (pp. 416–423). Los Angeles, CA: Sage Publications.
Giddings, P. (1984). When and where I enter: The impact of Black women on race and sex in America. New York: Bantam Books.
Gist, C. (2015). Interrogating critical pedagogy: Teachers of color and the unfinished project of social justice. In P. W. Orelus & R. Brock (Eds.), Interrogating critical pedagogy: The voices of educators of color in the movement (pp. 46–59). New York: Routledge.
Gregory, S. (1999). Black women in the academy: The secrets to success and achievement. Lanham, MD: University Press of America.
Gutiérrez y Muhs, G., Niemann, Y. F., González, C. G., & Harris, A. P. (Eds.). (2012). Presumed incompetent: The intersections of race and class for women in academia. Boulder, CO: University Press of Colorado.
Harley, D. A. (2008). Maids of academe: African American women faculty at predominately White institutions. Journal of African American Studies, 12, 19–36. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12111-007-9030-5
Harlow, R. (2003). “Race doesn’t matter, but …”: The effect of race on professors’ experiences and emotion management in the undergraduate college classroom. Social Psychology Quarterly, 66(4), 348–363.
Harris, A. P., & González, C. G. (2012). Introduction. In G. Gutiérrez y Muhs, Y. F. Niemann, C. G. González, & A. P. Harris (Eds.), Presumed incompetent: The intersections of race and class for women in academia (pp. 1–14). Boulder, CO: University Press of Colorado.
Harris, T. (2007). Black feminist thought and cultural contracts: Understanding the intersection and negotiation of racial, gendered, and professional identities in the academy. New Directions for Teaching and Learning, 110, 55–64. https://doi.org/10.1002/tl.274
Henderson, T. L., Hunter, A. G., & Hildreth, G. J. (2010). Outsiders within the academy: Strategies for resistance and mentoring African American women. Michigan Family Review, 14(1), 28–41. Retrieved from http://hdl.handle.net/2027/spo.4919087.0014.105
Hendrix, K. G. (2007). Neither White nor male: Female faculty of color. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.
Henry, A. (1998). Taking back control: African Canadian women teachers’ lives and practice. Albany, NY: SUNY Press.
Hilliard, A. G., III. (1995). The maroon within us: Selected essays on African American community socialization. Baltimore, MD: Black Classic Press.
Hilliard, A. G., III. (1998). SBA: The reawakening of the African mind. Gainesville, FL: Makare Publishing.
Hine, D. C., & Thompson, K. (1998). A shining thread of hope: The history of Black women in America. New York: Broadway Books.
hooks, b. (1989). Talking back: Thinking feminist, thinking Black. Cambridge, MA: South End Press.
hooks, b. (1992). Black looks: Race and representation. Boston, MA: South End Press.
hooks, b. (1994). Teaching to transgress: Education as the practice of freedom. New York: Routledge.
Jackson, S., & Johnson, R. G., III (Eds.). (2011). The Black professoriat: Negotiating a habitable space in the academy. New York: Peter Lang Publishing, Inc.
James, J. (1993). African philosophy, theory, and “living thinkers”. In J. James & R. Farmer (Eds.), Spirit, space and survival: African American women in (White) academe (pp. 31–48). New York: Routledge.
John, B. M. (1997). The African American female ontology. In L. Benjamin (Ed.), Black women in the academy (pp. 53–63). Gainesville, FL: University Press of Florida.
Johnson, K. A., Pitre, A., & Johnson, K. L. (Eds.). (2014). African American women educators: A critical examination of their pedagogies, educational ideas, and activism from the nineteenth to the mid-twentieth century. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield.
Karnga, M. (2010). Introduction to Black studies. Los Angeles, CA: University of Sankore Press.
Kendi, I. X. (2012). The Black campus movement: Black students and the racial reconstitution of higher education, 1965–1972. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
King, J. E., & Swartz, E. E. (2014). “Re-membering” history in student and teacher learning: An afrocentric culturally informed praxis. New York: Routledge.
King, J. E., & Swartz, E. E. (2016). The afrocentric praxis of teaching for freedom: Connecting culture to learning. New York: Routledge.
Kynard, C. (2013). Vernacular insurrections: Race, Black protest, and the new century in composition-literacies studies. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press.
Ladson-Billings, G. (2009). The dreamkeepers: Successful teachers of African American children (2nd ed.). San Francisco, CA: John Wiley & Sons.
Laubscher, L. (2006). Color in the interstice, or, what color, this faculty of color. In C. A. Stanley (Ed.), Faculty of color: Teaching in predominantly White colleges and universities (pp. 196–215). Bolton, MA: Anker Publishing Company, Inc.
Levi, J. B. (2012). The intellectual warfare of Dr Jacob H. Carruthers and the battle for ancient Nubia as a foundational paradigm in Africana studies: Thoughts and reflections. The Journal of Pan African Studies, 5(4), 178–195.
McKay, N. Y. (1997). A troubled peace: Black women in the halls of the White academy. In L. Benjamin (Ed.), Black women in the academy: Promises and perils (pp. 11–22). Gainesville, FL: University Press of Florida.
McKay, N. Y. (2000). Charting a personal journey. In F. Howe & M. J. Buhle (Eds.), The politics of women’s studies: Testimony from 30 founding mothers. New York: The Feminist Press.
Mohanty, C. T. (1994). Feminism without borders: Decolonizing theory, practicing solidarity. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
Murrell, P. C. (2002). African-centered pedagogy: Developing schools of achievement for African American children. Albany, NY: SUNY Press.
Myers, L. W. (2002). A broken silence: Voices of African American women in the academy. Westport, CT: Bergin & Garvey.
Nobles, W. (1998). Foreword. In A. G. Hilliard III (Ed.), SBA: The reawakening of the African mind. Gainesville, FL: Makare Publishing.
Patton, T. O. (2004). Reflections of a Black woman professor: Racism and sexism in academia. The Howard Journal of Communications, 15, 185–200.
Payne, C. M., & Strickland, C. S. (Eds.). (2008). Teach freedom: Education for liberation in the African-American tradition. New York: Teacher’s College Press.
Phillips, L., & McCaskill, B. (1995). Who’s schooling who? Black women and the bringing of the everyday into academe, or why we started the womanist. Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society, 20, 1007–1018.
Pittman, C. T. (2010). Race and gender oppression in the classroom: The experiences of women faculty of color with White male students. Teaching Sociology, 38(3), 183–196.
Ransby, B. (2003). Ella Baker and the Black freedom movement: A radical democratic vision. Chapel Hill, NC: The University of North Carolina Press.
Reagan, T. (2004). Non-Western educational traditions: Indigenous approaches to educational thought and practice (3rd ed.). New York: Routledge.
Roman, L. G., & Eyre, L. (1997). Dangerous territories: Struggles for difference and equality in education. New York: Routledge.
Shockley, M. E. (2013). “I’ll choose which hill I’m going to die on”: African American women scholar-activists in the White academy. Dissertations & Theses, Paper 42. Retrieved from http://aura.antioch.edu/etds/42
Shujaa, M. J. (Ed.). (1994). Too much schooling too little education: A paradox of Black life in White societies. Trenton, NJ: Africa World Press, Inc.
Siddle-Walker, V. (2005). Organized resistance and Black educators’ quest for school equality, 1878–1938. Teachers College Record, 107(3), 355–388.
Stanley, C. A. (Ed.). (2006). Faculty of color: Teaching in predominantly White colleges and universities. Bolton, MA: Anker Publishing Company, Inc.
Thomas, G. D. (2001). The dual role of scholar and social change agent: Reflections from tenured African American and Latina faculty. In R. O. Mabokela & A. L. Green (Eds.), Sisters of the academy: Emergent Black women scholars in higher education (pp. 81–92). Sterling, VA: Stylus.
Thomas, G. D., & Hollenshead, C. (2001). Resisting from the margins: The coping strategies of Black women and other women of color faculty members at a research university. Journal of Negro Education, 70(3), 166–175.
Thompson, G. L., & Louque, A. C. (2005). Exposing the “culture of arrogance” in the academy: A blueprint for increasing Black faculty satisfaction in higher education. Sterling, VA: Stylus Publishing.
Turner, C. S. V., & Myers, S. L. (2000). Faculty of color in academe: Bittersweet success. Boston, MA: Allyn and Bacon.
Tusmith, B., & Reddy, M. T. (Eds.). (2002). Race in the college classroom: Pedagogy and politics. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press.
Tyson, C. (2001). From the classroom to the field. In R. Mabokela & A. L. Green (Eds.), Sisters of the academy (pp. 139–149). Sterling, VA: Stylus.
Vargas, L. (2002). Women faculty of color in the White classroom: Narratives on the pedagogical implications of teacher diversity. New York: Peter Lang.
Wane, N., & Jagire, J. (2013). Introduction. In N. Wane, J. Jagire, & Z. Murad (Eds.), Ruptures: Anti-colonial & anti-racist feminist theorizing. Boston, MA: Sense Publishers.
Watkins, W. H. (2001). White architects of Black education: Ideology and power in America, 1865–1954. New York: Teacher’s College Press.
Watkins, W. H. (2015). The neglected historical milieu. In M. F. He, B. D. Schultz, & W. H. Schubert (Eds.), The SAGE guide to curriculum in education (pp. 303–310). Los Angeles, CA: Sage Publications.
Wink, J. (2011). Critical pedagogy: Notes from the real world (4th ed.). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall.
Woodson, C. G. (1990). The mis-education of the Negro. Trenton, NJ: Africa World Press.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2018 The Author(s)
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Perlow, O.N., Wheeler, D.I., Bethea, S.L., Scott, B.M. (2018). Introduction. In: Perlow, O., Wheeler, D., Bethea, S., Scott, B. (eds) Black Women's Liberatory Pedagogies. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-65789-9_1
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-65789-9_1
Published:
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-319-65788-2
Online ISBN: 978-3-319-65789-9
eBook Packages: EducationEducation (R0)