“Somebody Ought to Testify”: Black Womanist Teaching as Resistance in the Wake of Womanist Foremothers

• In Event: AERA Roundtable Session Wednesday 12:40 pm Four Seasons Ballroom 1
  In Roundtable Session: CERECG SIG Round Table 2: Resistance and Retention of Educators through Black Resistance, Black Love, and Black Futures (Table 2)

Abstract

For the purpose of this study, I take up Christina Sharpe’s call for wake theorizing, for wake work. The purpose of the research study was to describe how self-identified womanist scholars who are faculty members in higher education institutions signify resistance in their curriculum and pedagogy. In other words, how they resist the reality of Black non-being and exclusion in academe through their curriculum and teaching. Four themes emerged from triangulating the case study profiles: womanist teaching is intuitive, womanist teaching is embodied testimony, womanist teaching is centered in an ethic of Black love, and womanist teaching is predisposed towards praxis.

Author

• David L. Humphrey, University of Colorado - Boulder