This qualitative multiple case study focused on how three African American women social studies teachers conceptualized and taught notions of citizenship. By using a Black feminist conceptual framework, the author explored how the multiple intersections of the teachers’ identities impacted how they understood and taught notions of citizenship. As a result of their lived experiences and situated knowledge, the participants rejected the dominant narrative of citizenship because it was not inclusive of diverse perspectives or histories. Instead, the participants taught a notion of citizenship that centered on valuing notions of community and working towards racial and community uplift. This study hopes to shed light on how African American women teachers’ alternative notions of citizenship may provide a framework by which reconceptualized views of American citizenship may be presented. / text

Ripples of Hope is a transdisciplinary project combining the social and political history of leisure, Black feminist/womanist thought, and performance and youth development theories. This project investigates the perception, portrayal, and performance of hope from a cultural lens using narrative and performance analysis. Interview and photovoice data were collected from 12 young women in their early 20’s, emerging into adulthood. Each of the participants was born in the United States, identify as Black or African American and participated in an exploratory qualitative study in 2007-2008 entitled The HerDentity Project. Entering into the second decade of the prolific use of Hope Theory, this study illuminates the complexity and intersectionality of race, gender, age, and nationality in understanding five defining dimensions, performative spaces, and portrayals of hope. This project adds to the current body of literature on hope by exploring hope from a cultural context. In addition this project utilizes ethnodrama to highlight the important use of cultural products of performance in youth development and leisure practice.

Living and working abroad is one of the best ways to grow and learn about who you are and who you can become. The purpose of the project is to develop and articulate a radical reflexive praxis within the paradigm of the lived experiences of a Black female expatriate Christian mathematics educator. Grounded in the epistemological tradition of Black feminist thought, this study defines the intersectionality of my identity as a Black woman mathematics educator and explores ways it informs my interaction with students, parents and colleagues and inspires the quality of my instruction delivered in and out of the classroom setting. Through the qualitative practice of autoethnography, the use of personal narratives and field notes tell the story because storytelling adds context and allows the reader to both comprehend and participate in the experience. These narratives of re-reflection are used to explain how each of these identities were parlayed from a place of knowing and being known. Teaching is largely a white female Christian dominated profession and the tendency of the profession to propagate the traditional white male leader prototype confirms the need for more research for and by Black women educators. The rate of Black women yielding a productive gap between living in a culture but not being fully of that culture further confirms the need for more research. Ours is an experience that offers a refreshing sense of agency and opportunity, the characteristics of sound pedagogy and the expected outcomes of robust, dynamic classroom experiences.

In this dissertation, I disentangle the Cynical figure – one who is capable of confronting structures of power by speaking truth to power – within a Westernized, Euro-centric discourse that authorizes the Cynic as an exceptionally powerful political subjectivity. Heeding the words of Sylvia Wynter, "…the Jester's role in the pursuit of human knowledge alternates with the Priest's role—transforming heresies into new orthodoxies, the contingent into modes of the Absolute." I recover the Cynic, once sutured to a distinctly Foucauldian discursive tradition to argue Black and Brown women function as contemporary Cynics using largely a Black Feminist theoretical framework. Drawing on biomythographies written by Black and Brown women, I future a Cynical discursive tradition in which the cynic is known by a different name. / Doctor of Philosophy / In this dissertation, I explore the practice of telling the truth as a political discourse that is reserved only for a select group of people. I look at the Ancient Greek philosophical school of Cynicism to understand how someone is given permission speak truth to power and its effects. Throughout this work, I argue that the Cynical practice of speaking truth to power is exclusive and that it is not worth making space for others to speak their truth in this same practice. Using a Black feminist theoretical framework, through the works of Sylvia Wynter, Katherine McKittrick, Christina Sharpe and others, I disrupt the status quo of how the truth must be spoken in order to be heard in the political realm. Moreover, I develop a different practice of speaking truth to power by contextualizing this practice from the family kitchen table. I think about how Black and Brown women, those who are violently elided from the political realm altogether, develop their own practice of speaking truth to power from the family kitchen table space. From this context, I think about how a person develops a critical consciousness in which they are given permission to speak their truth to power. I propose that Black and Brown women embody a radical political consciousness that has the ability to disrupt the status quo, that they are not only seen and heard, but their disruption leads to political change.

The goal of this study was to understand black women’s perspectives on stay-at-home mothering and examine the ways in which Mocha Moms, Inc. provides support. Twelve African American mothers from three chapters of Mocha Moms, Inc. were interviewed and data were analyzed and coded for themes. Findings indicate that participants did not aspire to stay home with their children. Additionally, participants reject stereotypical ideas of at-home mothering. They also see themselves as the primary educators of their children. Finally, they do not feel respected in the black community or in society.

Controlling images and negative stereotypes have had damaging effects on black men and women. The entertainment industry continues to play a vital role in perpetuating these historically damaging images to people all over the world. Early representations of black men and women within entertainment were performed by white men under the guise of blackface. These representations were offensive and inaccurate portrayals of black life. Early blackface minstrel performances of black women were performed by white men in blackface who were also cross-dressing. Their performances presented black women in stereotypical roles which have become a norm. Recently, there has been a phenomenon of black men cross-dressing as black women portraying negative stereotypes. These depictions done under the guise of comedy further perpetuate controlling images of black women to the world. This research examines how current and former displays of gender minstrelsy manipulate the image of Black womanhood.

The voices of black women have traditionally been excluded from rhetorical scholarship, both as a subject of study and as a methodological approach. Despite the little attention black feminist thought has received, black women have long been articulating the unique intersection of oppressions they face and have been developing critical epistemologies.This study analyzes the National Press Club address given by NOW President Eleanor Smeal utilizing a black feminist methodological approach. The study constructs a black feminist theory for the communication discipline and applies it to a discursive artifact from the women's liberation movement. The implications of the study include the introduction of a new methodological approach to the communication discipline that can expand the liberatory reach of its scholarship.

I am baffled each time someone asks me, “Who is Jessie Fauset?” As I delved into critical work written on Fauset, I found her critics dismissed her work because they read them as bad fairytales that showcase the lives of middle-class Blacks. I respectfully disagree. It is true that her novels concentrate on the Black middle-class; they also focus on the realities of Black women, at a time when they were branching out of their homes and starting careers, not out of financial necessity but arising from their desire for working. They establish the start of what Patricia Hill Collins later coined “Black feminism” through strong female characters that refuse to be defined by society. This thesis seeks to add Jessie Fauset to the canon of Black feminists by using Collins’ theories on Black feminism to analyze Fauset’s first two novels, There Is Confusion and Plum Bun.

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Since the summer of 2020, following the execution of Mr. George Floyd, many institutions of higher education established or strengthened their commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusion. In attempting to create more equitable, diverse, inclusive, and antiracist campuses to foster student success and belonging on campus, another inequity is born. Higher education institutions have failed to center the wellbeing of educators tasked with leading these efforts. This qualitative study used semistructured interviews with 10 Black women leading DEI efforts throughout the California Community College system to explore the impact of racialized stress and trauma on holistic wellbeing. Central questions guided this study: 1) How does racialized stress and trauma impact the wellbeing of Black women community college educators? 2) What are the most common sources of racialized stress and trauma experienced by Black women community college educators? and 3) What coping and healing strategies do Black women community college educators currently leverage to address racialized workplace stressors and trauma? Findings indicate racialized stress and trauma in the workplace negatively impact the physical, mental, and emotional wellbeing of Black women leading diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) efforts. DEI leaders may encounter equity scapegoating and the stigma of equity in their work. On the other hand, Black women leverage many coping mechanisms to buffer the effects of racialized stressors. This study xi supports the need for practitioners and leaders to address systemic issues of racism through critical self-reflection, critical actions, and building sustainable support for DEI leaders.