Elevating Black Girlhood Through Visual Methodology: Arts-Based Research As A Lens for Seeing Black Girls

• In Event: Critical Visual + Multimodal Research for Racial Justice

Abstract

With the hypervisibility that Black girls face in the US, more specifically in their educational experiences, visual methodologies offer a possibility of elevating Black girlhood. Visual methods can offer multiple modalities for girls to express their truths fully. Multimodal research allows for greater expression of complex emotions, experiences, and nuances of structured life opportunities shaped by gendered-racial bias. This chapter unpacks the offerings and importance of embedding visual-based methodologies into research for and with Black girls using three tenets of Ruth Nicole Brown's Creative Potential of Black Girlhood framework. This framework was also used as the analysis of selfies - photographs and drawn self-portraits - by young Black girls. The findings suggest that by offering visual and multimodal space that is coconstructed with Black girls we are able to see their truths, and learn more about their lived experiences. By engaging visuals as a standard part of research practices, Black girls can be the illustrators of their own worlds, which offers a more holistic view of the complexities of Black girlhood. This study calls for an urgency to disrupt traditional research methods and advocates for the use of visual methodologies for a stronger possibility of elevating Black girlhood in educational studies.

Authors

• Reka C. Barton, University of Maryland

• Darielle Blevins, Arizona State University