The Quilt We Built: Designing and Facilitating Culturally Situated Inquiry for Black Undergraduates in Times of Peril

• In Event: Wayward Fabulation and Black Feminist Imaginaries

Abstract

This essay, grounded in praxis, theorizes how pedagogy rooted in Black feminisms and inquiry-based curricula exploring Black culture and history functioned as protective and imaginative learning spaces for Black undergraduates. Situated within a student success program at a predominantly white institution, the project engaged students in a semester-long exploration of identity, memory, media, and ancestral history through storytelling, museum study, and collaborative artmaking. Drawing from observations, reflections, and student dialogue, I consider how culturally situated inquiry—shaped by care, connection, and critical consciousness—responds to the current sociopolitical landscape of curricular restriction and anti-Black hostility. I offer hush harbor as a conceptual framework for understanding the pedagogical possibilities of culturally rooted co-curricular learning in higher education.

Author

• Amber Pabon, Kutztown University of Pennsylvania