Blackgirl Choreography

• In Event: 72.020 - Education Expanded: Youth Learning Places and Youthspaces

Abstract

In “Blackgirl Choreography,” the fourth panelist describes the ways in which she is burdened by historical tropes and monolithic portrayals of Black femininity, Blackgirls construct complex ways of being within and outside of traditional schooling contexts to ensure their survival. Building upon Aimee Cox’s (2015) usage of choreography to describe Blackgirls’ negotation of everyday living, this panelist calls attention to what she calls Blackgirl choreography. Put differently, how Blackgirls enact citizenship and fashion a sense of collective/individual Blackgirl identity through and against the intersecting realities of their race, gender, class, and sexuality. Offering narratives of six self-identified Blackgirls, this paper illustrates how the crafting of Blackgirl identity should be understood as a dance with and through material and discursive dynamics produced by the complexities of negotiating racegender realities. Ultimately, this panelist places in conversation ideas of citizenship, education, and Blackgirls to stage a necessary and contemporary salient conversation about how Blackgirls actualize their full humanity in and outside schooling contexts in a society, which constantly seeks to deny them of this.

Author

• Dominique Cacine Hill