Term of Award

Spring 2024

Degree Name

Doctor of Education in Curriculum Studies (Ed.D.)

Document Type and Release Option

Dissertation (restricted to Georgia Southern)

Copyright Statement / License for Reuse

Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Department

Department of Curriculum, Foundations, and Reading

Committee Chair

Ming Fang He

Committee Member 1

Sabrina Ross

Committee Member 2

Peggy Shannon-Baker

Committee Member 3

Stephanie Renee Toliver

Abstract

Black women in the United States emerge into adulthood with few historical representations that mirror ourselves. In this work, I examine how historical recovery supports Black women in developing wholeness. I draw upon the theoretical frameworks of Black Feminist (Hull, Scott, & Smith, 1982; Lorde, 1984; Guy-Sheftall, 1995; Collins, 2000), Endarkened Feminist Epistemology (e.g., Dillard, 2006, 2012), and Afrofuturism (e.g., Eshun, 2003; Womack, 2014) to guide my inquiry. I apply Black speculative fiction as methodology (e.g., Bell, 1992; Butler, 1980; Allen & Cherelle, 2018; Toliver, 2022) and in practice, I argue for alternative methods of inquiry. Nine renderings emerged from my inquiry: (1) As Black women create, and participate in healing curricula for Black girls/women, they should ask the following questions: What is worth knowing? What is worth imagining? What is the purpose of knowing? (2) It is important to invent spiritual curriculum milieu for Black women to thrive in being and aliveness as they fight against all forms of racism, sexism, ableism, and heteronormativity. (3) An intersectionality of Black Feminist Thought, Endarked Feminism, and Afrofuturism empowers Black women as they engage in recovery, reconciliation, and revival. (4) Black women illustrate a capability of cultivating spiritual homeplaces/spaces within ourselves so that we can continuously draw upon a source of self-actualization and self-invigoration for healing and caring. (5) Black woman’s self-definition, healing, and agency cannot be defined by humanization of Black women alone; rather, by their personal divination. (6) Black Women’s Resilience Narratives perpetuate stereotypes and diminish the importance of Black women’s struggles for their identities, healings, and agencies. (7) Black women must engage in internal and external deliberations that examine futurities through multiple Black intellectual traditions. (8) Curriculum Studies must continue to evolve to foster creative insubordination strategies that transgress traditional theoretical traditions and methodological boundaries as a social justice project to empower silenced, marginalized, and neglected individuals, groups, and communities. (9) To cultivate our thriving wholeness and emancipatory sisterhoods, Black women must examine our own ignorance, heal the soul of our Black womanhood, and create possibilities to reimagine spaces and places for our infinite futurities.

OCLC Number

1436070151

Research Data and Supplementary Material

No

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