From Infinity to Infinity: The Plurality of Black Girl Space and Literacies

Session Type: Symposium

Abstract

Rogers and Butler Barnes (2021) define Black girl space as “context[s] that… serve Black girls[, …] designed to intentionally pull them in rather than push them out” (p. 50). Therein, Black girls voice their experiences, allowing them to scaffold kinship networks rooted in relationality, but blossomed by their imaginations. In this session, we amplify the cultivation of Black girl space through disruptive qualitative inquiry methodologies (Brown et al., 2014) that exalt Black girls’ onto-epistemologies. These data collection and analysis methods intrinsically activate Black girl space-making, towards the aim of providing a homeplace (hooks, 1990) for Black girls and Black women educators to express their emotions and literacies through both pedagogical praxis and research, unbounded by misogynoir and adultism.

Sub Unit

• SIG-Research Focus on Black Education

Chair

• ReAnna S. Roby, University of Minnesota

Papers

• “Reclaiming my Time”: The Emittance of Joy from Black Girls’ Storytelling - Dasmen Richards, Michigan State University

• “A Different Energy… That I Love”: Black Girls’ Interpretation of Vibe as a Power Metric - Gabrielle Kubi, Boston College; Mara D. Johnson, University of Michigan; Eden G Harrison, University of Michigan; Hyeri Mel Yang, University of Michigan; Kaila F. Pelton-Flavin, University of Michigan

• Feeling, (Be)Holding, Reading: Black Queer Girls & Femmes’ Spatializing Literacy Practices of Pleasure and Desire - monét cooper, University of Michigan

• Bending Spacetime: Black Queer Girl Agency Across Place and Time - Mara D. Johnson, University of Michigan

Discussants

• Stephanie R. Toliver, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

• Renée Wilmot, Michigan State University