“Defining Ourselves for Ourselves”

Black Girls Conceptualize Black Girlhood Online

in Girlhood Studies
Author:
Cierra Kaler-JonesDance and Art Teacher, USA ckalerjones@gmail.com

Search for other papers by Cierra Kaler-Jones in
Current site
Google Scholar
PubMed
Close
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0413-3834
View More View Less
Restricted access

Abstract

Black girls have long created their own subversive and creative forms of curriculum and pedagogy. I explore adolescent Black girls’ suggestions for teaching and learning about Black girlhood online based on a virtual summer arts program called Black Girls S.O.A.R. Through performance ethnography, we contended with our conceptualizations of Black girlhood and identity sense-making. The co-researchers suggested that storytelling, learner-centered pedagogy, and intentional community-building must be central in virtual pedagogy and saw reclaiming girlhood and self-care as two essential topics for teaching Black girlhood content. I also reflect on the tensions and possibilities of co-constructing participatory learning environments with Black girls, particularly as it relates to disrupting power and adultism.

Contributor Notes

Cierra Kaler-Jones (ORCID: 0000-0002-0413-3834) has been teaching dance and art in community spaces for over ten years. Her research interests focus on exploring liberatory and joyful educational spaces while refuting control tactics in schools that deny students opportunities for creativity and critical consciousness-building. Email: ckalerjones@gmail.com

  • Collapse
  • Expand

Girlhood Studies

An Interdisciplinary Journal

  • Adjapong, Edmund S., and Christopher Emdin. 2015. “Rethinking Pedagogy in Urban Spaces: Implementing Hip-hop Pedagogy in the Urban Science Classroom.” Journal of Urban Learning, Teaching, and Research 11: 6677.

    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation
  • Baker-Bell, April, Raven Jones Stanbrough, and Sakeena Everett. 2017. “The Stories They Tell: Mainstream Media, Pedagogies of Healing, and Critical Media Literacy.” English Education 49 (2): 13152.

    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation
  • Brown, Ruth Nicole. 2009. Black Girlhood Celebration: Toward a Hip-Hop Feminist Pedagogy. New York: Peter Lang.

  • Brown, Ruth Nicole. 2013. Hear Our Truths: The Creative Potential of Black Girlhood. Champaign, IL: University of Illinois Press.

  • Butler, Tamara T. 2018. “Black Girl Cartography: Black Girlhood and Place-making in Education Research.” Review of Research in Education 42 (1): 2845. https://doi.org/10.3102/0091732X18762114.

    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation
  • Carney, Christina, Jillian Hernandez, and Anya M. Wallace. 2016. “Sexual Knowledge and Practiced Feminisms: On Moral Panic, Black Girlhoods, and Hip Hop.” Journal of Popular Music Studies 28 (4): 412426. https://doi.org/10.1111/jpms.12191.

    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation
  • Crenshaw, Kimberlé. 1990. “Mapping the Margins: Intersectionality, Identity Politics, and Violence Against Women of Color.” Stan. L. Rev. 43: 12411299. https://doi.org/10.2307/1229039.

    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation
  • Cox, Aimee Meredith. 2015. Shapeshifters: Black girls and the Choreography of Citizenship. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.

  • Denzin, Norman K. 2003. Performance Ethnography: Critical Pedagogy and the Politics of Culture. Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE.

  • Devlin, Rachel. 2018. A Girl Stands at the Door: The Generation of Young Women who Desegregated America's Schools. New York, NY: Basic Books.

    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation
  • Dillard, Cynthia B. 2012. Learning to Remember the Things We've Learned to Forget: Endarkened Feminisms and the Sacred Nature of Research. New York: Peter Lang.

    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation
  • Durham, Aisha. 2010. “Hip Hop Feminist Media Studies.” International Journal of Africana Studies 16 (2): 117135.

  • Endsley, Crystal Leigh. 2018. “Something Good Distracts Us from the Bad”: Girls Cultivating Disruption.” Girlhood Studies: An Interdisciplinary Journal 11 (2): 6378. https://doi.org/10.3167/ghs.2018.110206.

    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation
  • Epstein, Rebecca, Jamilia Blake, and Thalia González. 2017. “Girlhood Interrupted: The Erasure of Black Girls’ Childhood.” Center on Poverty and Inequality. https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3000695.

    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation
  • Fordham, Signithia. 1993. “Those Loud Black Girls”: (Black) Women, Silence, and Gender “Passing” in the Academy.” Anthropology & Education Quarterly 24 (1): 332.

    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation
  • Gaunt, Kyra D. 2006. The Games Black Girls Play: Learning the Ropes from Double-Dutch to Hip-hop. New York: NYU Press.

  • Givens, Jarvis R. 2021. Fugitive Pedagogy: Carter G. Woodson and the Art of Black Teaching. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.

  • Griffin, Autumn A. 2021. “Black Parade: Conceptualizing Black Adolescent Girls’ Multimodal Renderings as Parades.” Urban Education. https://doi.org/10.1177/00420859211003944.

    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation
  • hooks, bell. 1990. “Homeplace: A Site of Resistance.” Yearning: Race, Gender and Cultural Politics. Boston, MA: South End Press.

  • hooks, bell. 1994. Teaching to Transgress: Education as the Practice of Freedom Oxfordshire, UK: Routledge.

  • India Arie. 2005. “I Am Not My Hair.” Track 11 on Testimony: Vol. 1, Life & Relationship. CD.

  • Jones, Meta DuEwa. 2011. The Muse is Music: Jazz Poetry from the Harlem Renaissance to Spoken Word Champaign, IL: University of Illinois Press.

    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation
  • Kelly, Lauren Leigh. 2018. “A Snapchat Story: How Black Girls Develop Strategies for Critical Resistance in School.” Learning, Media and Technology 43 (4): 374389. https://doi.org/10.1080/17439884.2018.1498352.

    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation
  • Kynard, Carmen. 2010. “From Candy Girls to Cyber Sista-cipher: Narrating Black Females’ Color-consciousness and Counterstories In and Out of School.” Harvard Educational Review 80 (1): 3053. https://doi.org/10.17763/haer.80.1.4611255014427701.

    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation
  • Kwakye, Chamara Jewel, Dominique C. Hill, and Durell M. Callier. 2017. “10 years of Black Girlhood Celebration: A Pedagogy of Doing.” Departures in Critical Qualitative Research 6 (3): 110. https://doi.org/10.1525/dcqr.2017.6.3.1.

    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation
  • Lorde, Audre. 1982. Learning from the 60s. [Speech transcript]. https://www.blackpast.org/african-american-history/1982-audre-lorde-learning-60s/.

    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation
  • Love, Bettina L. 2012. Hip Hop's Li'l Sistas Speak: Negotiating Hip Hop Identities and Politics in the New South New York, NY: Peter Lang.

    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation
  • Love, Bettina L. 2016. “Complex Personhood of Hip Hop & the Sensibilities of the Culture that Fosters Knowledge of Self & Self-determination.” Equity & Excellence in Education 49 (4): 414427. https://doi.org/10.1080/10665684.2016.1227223.

    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation
  • Madison, D. Soyini. 2011. Critical Ethnography: Method, Ethics, and Performance Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE.

  • Mbilishaka, Afiya. 2018. “PsychoHairapy: Using Hair as an Entry Point into Black Women's Spiritual and Mental Health.” Meridians 16 (2): 382392. https://doi.org/10.2979/meridians.16.2.19.

    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation
  • Mims, Lauren C., Lisa DaVia Rubenstein, and Jenna Thomas. 2022. “Black Brilliance and Creative Problem Solving in Fugitive Spaces: Advancing the BlackCreate Framework Through a Systematic Review.” Review of Research in Education 46 (1): 134165. https://doi.org/10.3102/0091732X221084331.

    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation
  • Monae, Janelle, and Erykah Badu. 2013. “Q.U.E.E.N.” Video. 6:08. Uploaded 14 May. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qf7F4H-vZ7E.

  • Muhammad, Gholnecsar E. 2012. “Creating Spaces for Black Adolescent Girls to “Write it Out!Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy 56 (3): 203211. https://doi.org/10.1002/JAAL.00129.

    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation
  • Neal-Barnett, Angela, Robert Stadulis, Marsheena Murray, Margaret R. Payne, Anisha Thomas, and Bernadette B. Salley. 2011. “Sister Circles as a Culturally Relevant Intervention for Anxious Black Women.” Clinical Psychology: Science and Practice 18 (3): 266273. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-2850.2011.01258.x.

    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation
  • Nyachae, Tiffany M., and Esther O. Ohito. 2019. “No Disrespect: A Womanist Critique of Respectability Discourses in Extracurricular Programming for Black Girls.” Urban Education. Advance online publication. https://doi.org/10.1177/0042085919893733.

    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation
  • Price-Dennis, Detra. 2016. “Developing Curriculum to Support Black Girls’ Literacies in Digital Spaces.” English Education 48 (4): 337361.

    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation
  • Projansky, Sarah. 2014. Spectacular Girls: Media Fascination and Celebrity Culture. New York: New York University Press.

  • Scott, Renee Nishawn. 2022. “Taking on the Light: Ontological Black Girlhood in the Twenty-first Century.” Girlhood Studies: Girlhood Studies: An Interdisciplinary Journal. 15 (1): 116. https://doi.org/10.3167/ghs.2022.150102.

    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation
  • Solange. “Don't Touch My Hair.” Track 9 on A Seat at the Table. CD.

  • Zamora Liu, Rossina. “Humanizing the Practice of Witnessing Trauma Narratives.” 2019. Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy 63 (3): 347350. https://doi.org/10.1002/jaal.1005.

    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation

Metrics

All Time Past Year Past 30 Days
Abstract Views 456 456 19
Full Text Views 83 83 11
PDF Downloads 74 74 14