Aesthetic Mentoring, Sisterhood, and Respectability Politics

• In Event: The Sankofa Research Intensive (SRI): A Fugitive Space for Scholars Centering Black Children In Research

Abstract

In this paper, I use frisson and fictive kinship to help think about aesthetic mentoring. Frisson are pleasurable psychophysiological chills that we feel in response to rewarding stimuli (Colver & El-Alayli, 2016). A common example is that some people get goosebumps when they experience something beautiful. Fictive kinship, othermothering, and otherfathering are terms used to describe chosen family relationships as rituals of solidarity in Black communities (see Brooms, 2017). Aesthetic mentoring involves curating conflicting performances of Blackness, womanhood, and academic identity to produce tension, which allows mentors to model styles of cultural conflict resolution. When done well, it is a beautiful thing, and it promotes positive racial identity for mentors and mentees. I will describe what gives me “chills” about Rema’s program facilitation and the Black women participants in the Sankofa Research Intensive (beyond their existence). I will also highlight two features of aesthetic mentoring for further exploration.

Author

• Ashley N. Woodson, Black epiSTEMologies