Outmaneuvering Academic Landmines: Gendered Literacies as Survival Maps for Black Women in the Academy

• In Event: The Wages of Blackness: Black Women and Women of Color in the Academy

Abstract

Employing collaborative autoethnography, as a methodology, and ‘the gendered literacy phenomenon’, as a theoretical framework, we—three Black women academics—articulate the role of gendered literacies (i.e., intersectional wisdom for/by Black women) in helping us navigate academic landmines, engineered in the spirit of anti-Black patriarchy. First, we expose academic landmines that we have come across or been warned about: unmarked trails to thriving, the lure of respectability politics, over-indebtedness to institutions, and institutional surveillance. Then, we unpack gendered literacies that have functioned as survival maps in our lives: navigational tools, love of self and community, fire-forged wisdom, and culturally-grounded lessons. We close by dreaming up a liberatory curriculum, designed to disarm academic minefields and encourage wholeness among Black women academics.

Authors

• Shalander L. Samuels, Kean University

• Azaria I. Cunningham, Boston University

• Candice Peters, Appalachian State University