Maroon Geographies: A Black Methodological Framework Rooted in Fugitive Epistemology

• In Event: Fugitive Spaces and Geographies of Spatial Justice throughout Social Contexts of Education

Abstract

This paper introduces the Maroon Geographies Framework, an original Black methodological intervention grounded in fugitive pedagogy, cosmological geography, and relational sovereignty. Rooted in the Dismal Swamp’s Black-Indigenous resistance histories, the framework offers an epistemological reorientation for historical and contemporary Black scholarship. Through oral histories, abolitionist cartographies, and land-based archival recovery, the study maps a praxis of maroon knowledge that exceeds Western scholarly boundaries. Rather than treating the Dismal Swamp as a case, it is positioned as a living methodological site. This paper contributes to Black Studies, curriculum theory, and critical historiography by centering Black futures through ancestral methodologies of refusal, survival, and sovereignty.

Author

• Meya Elizabeth Hargett, Pepperdine University