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Black Women’s Lived Experiences in White Supremacist Feminist Academic Spaces
by Jennifer L. Richardson (Author), Mariam Konaté (Author), Staci Perryman-Clark (Author), Olivia Marie McLaughlin (Author), Keiondra Grace (Author) ©2024, X, 168 PagesSeries: Equity in Higher Education Theory, Policy, and Praxis, Volume 19
The Black Feminist Coup: Black Women’s Lived Experiences in White Supremacist Feminist Academic Spaces is a collective narrative of how three Black women faculty at a large Midwestern PWI, and two of their former students and allies build alliances to collaboratively disrupt white supremacist feminist spaces. Themes of what it means to be a fugitive, to be free, and to be a feminist inform how we envision the future of Black women’s labor in the academy. More specifically, this project explores intersecting narratives of how three Black women faculty fled a racist and microaggressive Gender and Women’s Studies (GWS) department, following the start of the COVID 19 pandemic and the 2020 summer of racial unrest, and moved to an institute that houses African American and African studies. Their stories of misogynoir reflect a brutal irony that GWS departments expect Black women to further all women’s interests while impeding Black women’s ability to thrive. This work demands that institutions bear responsibility in providing Black women with an environment to thrive, and dream of new possibilities and opportunities to develop curricula and initiatives that center Black lives with priority. Bridging at the intersections of feminism, Black Studies, and higher education, this project surveys concepts of survival, trauma, pain, and healing to offer future possibilities for dismantling and challenging systems of white supremacy in the academy.
The Black Feminist Coup is a groundbreaking text. Through courageous counter-stories and brilliant theoretical engagements, the authors spotlight the various intellectual traditions, institutional arrangements, power dynamics, and sociocultural practices that have made academia a persistent site of oppression and violence for Black women. Although such an offering would be more than enough for a single text, the book also provides a clear and accessible pathway toward dismantling White supremacy, nurturing radical resistance, and building safe and productive intellectual spaces for Black women within academia.
—Marc Lamont Hill, Presidential Professor of Urban Education and
Anthropology at CUNY Graduate Center
THE BLACK FEMINIST COUP is a compelling, courageous co-authored monograph that explores the lived experiences of a group of mostly Black women in white supremacist feminist spaces at one university. Grounded in Black feminist history and theory, this pioneering text makes visible – in moving and painful ways-- the impact of racism, sexism, and misogynoir on Black feminists in the academy during various junctures of their journeys, including, perhaps surprisingly, women’s and gender studies spaces. Especially instructive is the book’s exploration of what cross-racial solidarities might mean in feminist academic spaces and what white women in particular might learn from these analyses and blueprints for transformation.
—Beverly Guy-Sheftall, The Anna Julia Cooper Professor of Comparative Women’s Studies at
Spelman College and co-edited WORDS OF FIRE (New Press, 1995)
Dr. Jennifer L. Richardson is Associate Professor of African American and African Studies at Western Michigan University. As a Black feminist sociologist, her work focuses on intergenerational African Ring Shout healing circles as pedagogical and methodological approaches, Africana women’s collective healing as a socio- political path to the recovery of self, and the ways Black women navigate the intersections of media, beauty, and identity.
Dr. Mariam Konaté is a Professor of African American and African Studies and of Gender and Women’s Studies at Western Michigan University. Her research interests include the experiences of Continental African immigrants in the USA, the relevance of father absence to African American women’s heterosexual dating experiences, skin bleaching, comparative literature and cultural studies, African epics, and Post-Colonial Studies.
Dr. Staci M. Perryman- Clark is Interim Dean of Merze Tate College and Professor of English and African American Studies at Western Michigan University. As an experienced administrator, she has led and developed key diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives and has received numerous honors from Western Michigan University, Conference on College Composition and Communication (CCCC) and Conference of Writing Program Administrators. Perryman-Clark is the 2023 chair of CCCC.
Dr. Olivia Marie McLaughlin is Assistant Professor of Sociology and Criminology at the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater. Her research focuses on the ways white women make sense of, and act on, their ideas about race, racism, and antiracism within feminism. She has published works on genocide studies, heuristics, and alternative pedagogies for undergraduate education.
Dr. Keiondra Grace is the Director of Research at Mothering Justice, a grassroots policy advocacy organization providing mothers of color with resources and tools to use their power to make equitable changes in policy. As a Black feminist scholar, she uses a blend of theory and practice to bolster services and supports aimed at alleviating inequalities and empowering people. Her research aims to generate knowledge that advocates for social action and policy reform on behalf of those historically placed at the margins.
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