Theorizing Digital Homeplace: Black Women’s Strategies for Healing and Communal Care Online

• In Event: Navigating Place and Space in Black Bodies

Abstract

This qualitative study theorizes digital homeplaces by reflecting on how we (the two authors) as Black women scholar-activists create and use digital homeplaces to heal and process in Summer 2023. Our expansion of homeplaces in the digital world honors how our communities are creating new sites of resistance and communal care. We leverage critical race and Black feminist approaches to healing and technology to conceptualize digital homeplace. Three themes emerged from our study: 1) communities of color need places to rest online, 2) healing is an important form of activism that should be valued alongside more conventionalist activist behavior, and 3) we create cultural remedies to resist and disrupt white supremacy.

Authors

• Alexis E. Hunter, University of Colorado - Boulder

• Angel Jones, Virginia Tech