Creative Social Justice Research: Pushing Methodological Boundaries—Performing Dissertation Research—Liberating Academic Writing

• In Event: Creative Social Justice Research: Pushing Methodological Boundaries—Performing Dissertation Research—Liberating Academic Writing

Abstract

We live in a moment when laws are legislated to “dictate how teachers can discuss current events and the United States’ history of racism, when “conservative parents and advocacy groups threatened school board members over mask mandates, vaccination requirements, and on-line learning,” and banned books on race, social justice, equity, critical thinking, sexual orientations. In this session, a group of multiethnic researchers present their dissertation works-in-progress with radical imagination strategies. These researchers use Black Feminist Methodology/Black Feminist narrative (Evans-Winters, 2019); composite counterstories (Solórzano & Yosso, 2002; Yosso, 2006; also, He & Ross, 2012; He, Ross, & Seay, 2015); speculative essays (Schubert, 1991; also Foy, 2021; Negley, 2021; Schmidt, 2021); speculative/memoir (Barrington, 1997; Birkerts, 2008; Ledoux, 1993; Roorbach, 2008; Zinsser, 1995, 2004); oral histories (Brown, 1988; Leavy, 2011; Ritchie, 2003); Black speculative writing (e.g., science fiction, fantasy, magical realism, and Afrofuturism; Allen & Cherelle, 2019; Cooper, in progress); and ethnography (Clifford, 1977, 1988, 1997; Clifford & Marcus, 1986/2010; Madison, 2020; Marcus, 1998; Spradley, 1979, 1980; Van Maanen, 1988, 1995; Wolcott, 1999/2008) with young children as forms of curriculum inquiry into a wide array of topics such as: developing the culturally responsive/relevant/sustaining third-grade social studies curriculum: an ethnographic inquiry; in the midst but nowhere: cross-cultural narrative inquiry into the educational experience of three women doctoral students with international backgrounds in the United States; toward a curriculum of empowerment, imagination, and wonder: speculative essays; cultivating resilient space for Black women to thrive: a womanist inquiry; pursuit of happiness in life and education through value--creating philosophies and Africana womanism: the emergence of a Black lotus--a memoir; contemporary Chinese parenting anxieties: a multiperspectival cultural analysis of a Chinese telenovela: a love for dilemma; and otherwise futures reimagined: Afrofuturism as liberation for Black women--a Black speculative fiction.

These researchers explore creative ways to push methodological boundaries, perform dissertation writing and liberate academic writing by diving into life, writing into contradictions, and living against oppressions in schools, families, and communities in the U. S. South. Theoretical traditions, forms of inquiry, and modes of expression will be explored. Innovative writings engendered from the inquiries will be demonstrated. Potentials, challenges, and future directions of creative inquiries and modes of representations will be discussed.

Authors

• Ming Fang He, Georgia Southern University

• Peggy Shannon-Baker, Georgia Southern University