Before We Were Whole: (Re)Membering Our Lives in Ghana, West Africa

Session Type: Symposium

Abstract

This session is a reconnection of Black women teacher educators, visual and performing artists, and educational non-profit directors who engaged in collective exploration of education, identity, and ancestral history to nurture their understandings of education as liberation. Panelists share how their travels to Ghana, West Africa, for the “Writing Our Lives” Full Circle Retreat, led by Dr. Cynthia B. Dillard (Nana Mansa II of Mpeasem, Ghana, West Africa), and their continued engagement influence their identities as African ascendent women, liberatory educators, and sisters. Utilizing autoethnography, performance art, and arts-based research methods, panelists center (re)membering (Dillard, 2012) as the impetus for embracing their African identity and conducting research to challenge anti-Blackness across the educational landscape.

Sub Unit

• Division K - Teaching and Teacher Education / Division K - Section 03: Teachers’ and Teacher Educators’ Lives: Lived Experiences, Identities, Socialization and Development

Chair

• Iesha Jackson, University of Nevada - Las Vegas

Papers

• What's Self-Love Got to Do With It? Proudly Owning Blackness in Teacher Education - C. Joyce Price, Dallas College

• Teaching and Learning Lessons on Blackness in Ghana: A Critical Autoethnography - Torie Weiston-Serdan, Youth Mentoring Action Network, Chapman University

• (Re)Membering Liberation - April M. Warren-Grice, University of Pittsburgh

• From Baba Asa to Auntie Cynthia: When (Re)Membering Ghana Brings You Full Circle - Qiana M. Cutts, Mississippi State University

• (Re)Claiming the Academic Self in Ghana, West Africa - Makini Z. Beck, Rochester Institute of Technology

• Using Self-Love to Liberate Teacher Education Programs: An Autoethnography of Returning Home - Shanyce L. Campbell, University of Pittsburgh

Discussant

• Cynthia B. Dillard, Seattle University