Antiblackness, Black Suffering, and the Future of First-Year Seminars at Historically Black Colleges and Universities

Abstract:This futuristic research illuminates pressing challenges historically Black college and university (HBCU) faculty encounter in supporting the unique social, cultural, and pedagogical needs of their first-year students. Using a BlackCrit framework, the author examines the ways in which Black students are positioned as a problem and in need of intervention and the Black suffering that this entails. This framework is particularly pressing because it highlights the subtle dehumanizing student development theories that frame the prevailing first-year seminar models. The author employed an emancipatory action and narrative research methodology to propose a re-imagining of first-year seminars at HBCUs; a futuristic first-year seminar that builds on the rich legacy of HBCU faculty and a critical humanizing sociocultural knowledge of antiblackness and Black suffering.