Wake & Whirlwinds: (Re)Constructing Global Black Southern Girlhood Stories Amidst Climate Change and Implications for Educational Research

Session Type: Invited Speaker Session

Abstract

In the wake of Hurricanes Katrina (2005), Maria (2017), Irma (2017) and Helene (2024), scholars reflect on these massive storms as teachers, catalysts, and organizers. What do hurricanes teach us about the challenges and possibilities of (re)building and/or (re)creating classrooms and communities? What is the role of memory work in the imagining futures? Building upon Black girls, women and femmes' experiences of hurricanes, this session is a series of interdisciplinary front-porch conversations with 6 scholars from the Global Black South. Drawing on the “constructing” portion of the conference theme, this session calls educators and educational researchers to consider how Black women, girls and femmes in Southern communities reconstruct possibilities for educational futures via activating mutual aid, developing community-based learning, and advancing climate-based policies.

Sub Unit

• AERA Presidential Session

Chair

• Tamara Butler, College of Charleston

Papers

• Surge and Currents: Navigating the Outer Bands - Tiffany O. Harris, College of Charleston; Taryrn T.C. Brown, University of Florida; Bria Harper, Wofford College

• In the Eye(s) of the Storm: Documenting the Groundwork - Kiana González Cedeño, Texas Christian University; Jessica Berry, The O.K.R.A. Soup Foundation; Lauren Elizabeth Reine Johnson, University of Illinois at Chicago

Discussant

• April D. Baker-Bell, University of Michigan