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

Session Type: Symposium

Abstract

Multiethnic researchers share their creative dissertation research programs that aim for “dismantling racial injustice and constructing educational possibilities” in the contested U. S. South. Using Black Feminist methodology/Black Feminist narrative, composite counterstories, speculative essays, speculative memoir, oral histories, Black speculative writing (e.g., science fiction, fantasy, magical realism, and Afrofuturism), and ethnography with young children as forms of inquiry, 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. Innovative writings engendered from the inquiries will be demonstrated. Potentials/challenges/future directions of creative forms of inquiries and modes of expression and representation will be discussed.

Sub Unit

• Division G - Social Context of Education / Division G - Section 5: Inquiry, Transformation, and Communities

Chair

• Ming Fang He, Georgia Southern University

Papers

• Creative Social Justice Research: Pushing Methodological Boundaries—Performing Dissertation Research—Liberating Academic Writing - Ming Fang He, Georgia Southern University; Peggy Shannon-Baker, Georgia Southern University

• Exploring a Culturally Responsive/Relevant/Sustaining Third-Grade Social Studies Curriculum: An Ethnographic Inquiry - Lucia Benzor, Independent Scholar

• In the Midst but Nowhere: Cross-Cultural Narrative Inquiry Into the Educational Experience of Three Women Doctoral Students With International Backgrounds in the U.S. Rural South - Ru Li, Maynard Jackson High School

• Otherwise Futures Reimagined: Afro-Futurism as Liberation for Black Women—A Black Speculative Fiction - Khristian Cooper

Discussants

• William H. Schubert, University of Illinois at Chicago

• Peggy Shannon-Baker, Georgia Southern University