Politicking With My Sisters: Black Women Using Cohorts as Sites of Institutional Change

• In Event: AERA Roundtable Session 16
  In Roundtable Session: Reclaiming Our Time: Stories of Black Women Resistance in Educational Settings (Table 29)

Abstract

This presentation will discuss the strategies we use(d) to develop our sister-cohort as four cisgender Black women at a Historically White Institution. We highlight a conceptual framework (Figure 1) demonstrating how our sistercohort is a living, evolving being that requires nurturing, care, and resources to see it, and each other, as whole. We couple prose and Black scholarship to elucidate how the mind, heart, body, and soul of our sister-cohort functions. Data collected through sista circle methodology (Johnson, 2015) illustrates how our sisterhood demands institutional change. Together, Black Feminist Thought and Black Critical Theory are lenses for understanding as we seek to answer; How do sister-cohorts serve as sites of both respite and institutional change at Historically White Institutions?

Authors

• Alexis Morgan Young, University of Maryland

• Blake O'Neal Turner, Marquette University

• Mary Johnson, University of Maryland

• Courtney A Douglass, University of Maryland