Second Annual Black Feminist Methods and Methodologies Working Symposium: Black Girlhood and Black Girlhood Studies, an Introduction with Selected Abstracts

Abstract

Sponsored by the callie house research center for the Study of Global Black Cultures and Politics, the second annual Black Feminist Methods and Methodologies Working Symposium held at Vanderbilt University in October 2017 focused on black girls and black girlhood. A symposium developed as a space for early to midcareer black women scholars to present their works in progress, the interdisciplinary two-day gathering featured speakers from education, history, and literary and women’s and gender studies. A significant and necessary purpose of the working symposium on black girls and girlhood was to disrupt the disappearing and devaluing of black girls and women within academic research and in program-based settings. Educational researcher Ruth Nicole Brown argues that black girls are the experts on their own lives. The problem is there is often no place for the narratives of black girls to be discussed, documented, and disseminated. In the work engaged by these black women scholars, a cacophony of innovative theories and methodologies were presented and discussed. The work of these scholars is a critical and intentional attempt to broaden the aperture into