Unforgetting Epistemologies: Black Feminisms, Epistemic Exclusion, and the Intellectual Labor of Black Women Scholars

• In Event: Black Educational Futurism as Praxis: Re/membering Through the Curation of Black Intellectual Lineage

Abstract

This paper examines how Black women scholars—both doctoral students and faculty—resist hegemonic academic norms and assert non-dominant epistemologies in their research and scholarly engagement. Prompted by a dissertation defense exchange with a Black woman doctoral candidate, the paper interrogates how Westernized epistemological frameworks constrain Black feminist inquiry and how Black women navigate, challenge, and transform these constraints. This work aims to illuminate the subtle yet pervasive mechanisms of epistemic exclusion and to advocate for liberatory, culturally affirming academic environments.

This paper is grounded in Black feminisms and the concept of epistemic exclusion. Black feminisms provide a lens through which to understand the lived experiences, intellectual traditions, and resistance strategies of Black women in the academy (Combahee River Collective, 1986; Collins, 2008; hooks, 2015). Epistemic exclusion, as conceptualized by Dotson (2014), highlights how knowledge produced by minoritized scholars is often devalued or rendered invisible within dominant academic structures. Together, these frameworks guide the analysis of how Black women scholars assert their intellectual agency and challenge the boundaries of what counts as legitimate knowledge.

This paper draws on two qualitative studies:
● Study One: In-depth interviews with Black women doctoral students who resisted faculty pressures to conform to dominant research paradigms and who critiqued the absence of curricula that centered racially minoritized communities.
● Study Two: Narrative interviews with Black women faculty who described institutional and disciplinary resistance to their research agendas, often framed as lacking objectivity or rigor.
Additionally, the paper includes autoethnographic reflections from the author’s own experiences mentoring and teaching Black women scholars, positioning pedagogy as both a political and scholarly act.

Findings, across the two studies and autoethnographic reflections, reveal that Black women scholars often experience epistemic exclusion through subtle institutional practices, such as committee dynamics, curriculum design, and methodological gatekeeping (Dotson, 2014). Despite these barriers, participants employed strategies of resistance—including intellectual activism, community-based methodologies, and mentorship—to assert their epistemological authority. The findings also highlight the emotional and intellectual labor required to sustain these efforts, as well as the transformative potential of culturally grounded mentorship and pedagogy.

This paper contributes to critical conversations in higher education, Black feminist thought, and qualitative research methodology. It challenges the dominance of Western epistemologies in academic training and calls for a reimagining of scholarly rigor that includes and uplifts Black women’s ways of knowing. As early as 1892, Dr. Anna Julia Cooper critiqued the limited intellectual training afforded to Black women and affirmed their role in advancing the Black community through intellectual activism (Cooper, 1892; Sulé, 2014). Following Cooper’s example, educators must defy institutional norms to cultivate rigorous, culturally affirming academic environments. As hooks (1994) asserts, we must stop “deny[ing] the power of liberatory education for critical consciousness” (p. 69). By centering the voices and experiences of Black women scholars, this paper affirms the necessity of liberatory education and the preservation of the Black intellectual tradition.

Author

• Tonisha B. Lane, Virginia Tech