In the Wake of Our Womanist Foremothers: Resistance as Signif(y)er Among Womanist Scholars in Education

• In Event: Collectivist Curricular Approaches to Construct Communal Ways of Knowing and Belonging

Abstract

The objective of this purposeful sampling qualitative case study was to describe how self-identified womanist scholars who are faculty members in higher education institutions signify resistance in their curriculum and pedagogy. The primary research question was, "How do these scholars signify resistance in the development of curriculum and their teaching style?" The research found that womanist teaching and resistance for these participants began in the body, a radical place of lived-subjectivity. For these Black women, to Be was to resist. Their approaches to curriculum and pedagogy bore witness to a radical Black female subjectivity grounded in spirituality that signified to ontologies, symbols, and political dimensions of Black women resistance in higher education and beyond.

Author

• David Louis Humphrey, University of Michigan