When Margins Become Centered: Black Queer Women in Front and Outside of the Classroom

Abstract

This article revisits the authors’ experiences as Black queer women teaching undergraduates and receiving graduate education, ultimately reflecting on these from their current professorial positions. It explores how graduate teachers and junior faculty who are Black queer women navigate the process of creating and maintaining feminist pedagogy in the college classroom while simultaneously negotiating universities that have very little space for queer women, Black women, and those at these intersections. The article asserts that feminist classrooms are arenas for discovery, liberation, and resistance of hegemonic structures, and attempts to construct these spaces both in- and outside of women’s studies departments. This task is particularly challenging when the instructor holds the very marginalized identities that exist in the content of the class and their education. Ultimately, the article argues that their unique experience has been under-theorized, even by them, and necessitates specific strategies that would not be addressed by a focus on Black women who are assumed to be straight or queer women who are assumed to be white.

Toward an Understanding of Intersectionality Methodology: A 30-Year Literature Synthesis of Black Women’s Experiences in Higher Education

“…Alternatively, scholars who centered Black women as the subject by situating them as knowledge producers often employed methodological techniques intended to address representational and structural intersectionality by: (a) presenting “powerful alternatives” to stereotypical representations of Black womanhood (Sealey-Ruiz, 2013, p. 6) and (b) exposing how Black women experience multiple intersectional forms of oppression. For instance, Bailey and Miller (2015) used narrative inquiry to critique their experiences navigating the academy as Black queer women faculty:Our unique experience as faculty has been under theorized, even by us, and necessitates specific strategies that would not be addressed by a focus on Black women who are assumed to be straight or queer women who are assumed to be White. (p. 169)…”

“…Still, there is an acknowledgment among these scholars (e.g., Chambers, 2011; Cobb-Roberts, 2011; Griffin, 2016; S. L. Holmes, 2001; Johnson-Bailey & Cervero, 1996; Musser, 2015) that the work of challenging intersectional subordination (i.e., the racist-sexist-ableist-classist-homophobic oppression endemic to higher education, and society alike) is part of a daily struggle for Black women inside and outside of the classroom, who are “simultaneously working to liberate” themselves (Bailey & Miller, 2015, p. 185).…”

Black Girl Cartography: Black Girlhood and Place-Making in Education Research

“…They position schools where zero tolerance policies are implemented as figured worlds built on notions of whiteness and femininity. 6 Such positioning echoes the work of Black Girl cartographers (Bailey & Miller, 2015;Evans-Winters & Esposito, 2010;Halliday, 2017;Hill, 2016;Johnson, 2017;Lane, 2017) who examine schools as heteronormative, patriarchal, racist, sexist, and ableist geopolitical practices that limit Blackgirl ways of being. As a result, these spaces force Black girls "to accept, reject, or negotiate identities of criminalization and misplaced femininity" (Hines-Datiri & Carter Andrews, 2017, p. 14) to not be pushed out of classrooms.…”

How the “neutral” university makes critical feminist pedagogy impossible: intersectional analysis from marginalized faculty on three campuses

“…Those who enter the institution from the margins are thus automatically suspected to be inadequate for deviating from the standard and are required to adapt their own epistemology to that of a white colonizer (Guti errez y Muhs et al 2012; Matthew 2016; Baker 2018). In particular, people who are multiply marginalized struggle to make room for themselves while offering profound critiques of the university as the institution and the actors within lack ready tools to comprehend their experiences (Bailey and Miller 2016).…”