How Does It Hurt?: Black Women Leaders in Higher Ed and the Extraordinary Literacies of Rest, Refusal, and Inner Reclamation

• In Event: AERA Roundtable Session Thursday 9:45 am
  In Roundtable Session: Rest as an Extraordinary Literacy: Black Women Educators Reclaiming Power Through Stillness, Silence, Silliness, and Refusal

Abstract

To thrive—rather than merely survive—in higher education leadership, Black women must confront and rewrite inherited scripts of suffering-as-success. This paper explores how extraordinary literacies and intentional rest practices serve as spiritual technologies through which Black women leaders in the academy interrupt over-functioning, reclaim interior sovereignty, and construct new models of sustainable, soul-honoring power. Drawing on Staples-Dixon’s (2023, 2024) theory of extraordinary literacies, this work centers the emotional, spiritual, cultural, and somatic logics that guide Black women toward leadership that is attuned, aligned, and divine.

Using Elliott’s (2020) concept of existential kink—unconscious shadow desires or patterns that attract suffering due to familiarity, trauma, or identity formation—this paper examines the deeply embedded narratives that often compel Black women to overachieve at the expense of their well-being. These psychological “kinks” are not only personal but also systemic, shaped by racialized gender expectations and institutional structures that reward exhaustion while punishing stillness.

Through the lens of Black feminist thought (Collins, 2015), embodied leadership (Payne & Jääskeläinen, 2023), and qualitative reflections from Black women in leadership roles, this paper investigates how rest—when taken up as an extraordinary literacy—functions as both refusal and reorientation. Rest becomes not a luxury but a literacy: a sociospiritual and strategic act of resistance grounded in empyreal dialectics that return Black women to the sanctity of their own souls.

The study surfaces how practices such as silence, stillness, intentional absence, play, and sacred pause serve not as withdrawal but as insurgent pedagogies that recalibrate energy and replenish vision. Extraordinary literacies become both armor and compass—tools of survival and instruments of transformation—guiding Black women toward liberatory leadership that honors ancestral wisdom, intergenerational knowledge, and divine instruction.


Collins, P. H. (2015). The social construction of black feminist thought. In Women, knowledge, and reality (pp. 222-248). Routledge.

Elliott, C. (2020). Existential Kink: Unmask Your Shadow and Embrace Your Power (A method for getting what you want by getting off on what you don't). Weiser Books.

Payne, H., & Jääskeläinen, P. (2023). Embodied leadership: A perspective on reciprocal body movement. In Handbook on Leadership in Education (pp. 60-73). Edward Elgar Publishing.

Staples-Dixon, J. M. (2023). Extraordinary literacies & empyreal logics: regarding the everyday praxises of Black girls and women in schools and society. International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education, 36(7), 1207–1211. https://doi.org/10.1080/09518398.2023.2203100

Staples-Dixon, J., Sealey-Ruiz, Y., Griffin, A., & Price-Dennis, D. (2023). Exploring extraordinary literacies and empyreal logics through the t/terror narratives of three Black women in the academy: a roundtable transcript, study notes, and guiding questions. International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education, 36(7), 1285–1297. https://doi.org/10.1080/09518398.2023.2214983

Staples-Dixon, J. M. (2023). How Black girls hurt: noticing and naming the t/terror narratives accumulated in schools and society [or, a call for a third wave new literacies education for all people, based on the dynamic, triumphant literate lives of Black girls and women]. International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education, 36(7), 1298–1318. https://doi.org/10.1080/09518398.2023.2203106

Author

• Nakisha D. Whittington, Stanford University