"But Some of Us Are Brave": Centering Black Women's Voices in the Classroom

• In Event: Teaching Repression from the Civil Rights Era to the Present: Part 2

Abstract

In this particularly poignant moment of blatant misogynoir, centering Black women is not just a pedagogical choice; it is an act of resistance. "Disrupting the Status Quo" demands we question whose knowledge counts in our classrooms? My course, "But Some of Us Are Brave: Centering Black Women's Voices," addresses that question through Black feminist sociology, student-centered pedagogy, and a seminar structure that functions simultaneously as a book club, a methods workshop, and a collaborative research collective.
Through implementing more recent texts, like Black Feminism in Qualitative Inquiry: A Mosaic for Writing Our Daughter’s Body and Black Feminist Sociology: Perspectives and Praxis, read in conversation with Patricia Hill Collins' Black Feminist Thought, students build a foundation for engaging with Black feminist sociological practice. We aren’t just reading about Black women's experiences. We are learning to listen to them directly by conducting virtual interviews with Black women across various fields and backgrounds. Student questions drive the research: their curiosity about media representation, intergenerational family relations, and navigating spaces of belonging shape our collaboratively designed interview guide. Some weeks, students co-lead our book club sessions, bringing in media examples that connect course concepts to their own understandings and allowing their questions to guide our discussions.
The course is scaffolded so students build qualitative research skills throughout the semester. They design and workshop interview guides, conduct interviews, code and analyze transcripts together in class, and ultimately incorporate their findings into final research papers alongside a reflection assignment that centers positionality and power.
This presentation will offer audience members a useful framework to consider transforming their own seminars into spaces where students not only discuss sociology but actively participate as knowledge producers. Instructors will leave with a blueprint for centering historically marginalized voices, and empowering students to pursue research in their own communities.

Author

• Ashley Crooks-Allen, Grinnell College