Abstract
In this essay I argue that Black women who teach Black feminist pedagogy experience “epistemic exclusion” (Buchanan, 2020) while advocating for the intersections between three disparate contexts: their activism in their communities, the women’s movement, and their work as educators in postsecondary settings. The period examined is the 1980s–1990s. I consider the institutional challenges and limitations Black women have undergone as knowledge producers and teachers. While pushing the boundaries erected between university settings and the Black liberation movement taking place in their communities (Joseph, 2003), they were limited to a precarious status as Black women teaching within White-male dominated institutions. The trailblazing theoretical pedagogical insights Black feminists have advanced in their work as educators in postsecondary settings is discussed at length. Additionally, connections are made to the present-day struggle among Black feminists for inclusion within contemporary educational contexts (Evans-Winters & Piest, 2014; Mogadime, 2002, 2003; Wane, 2009, 2011).
Highlights
The theoretical insights and inroads Black women made through their pedagogical practices—referred to as Black feminist pedagogy—during the 1980s and 1990s has been discussed at length, this paper argues that the knowledge basis for such discussion was often discounted and marginalized in the academy and continues today through what researchers refer to as epistemic exclusion
Buchanan (2020) defines epistemic exclusion as: a professionalized version of social exclusion and disregard, in which bodies of knowledge, knowledge production, and the producers of knowledge are excluded from traditional discourse within a scholarly discipline (Dotson, 2012, 2014)
It is appropriate to begin this paper by defining and discussing what is meant by the term Black feminist pedagogy
Summary
The theoretical insights and inroads Black women made through their pedagogical practices—referred to as Black feminist pedagogy—during the 1980s and 1990s has been discussed at length, this paper argues that the knowledge basis for such discussion was often discounted and marginalized in the academy and continues today through what researchers refer to as epistemic exclusion. Buchanan (2020) defines epistemic exclusion as:. Carty’s definition sets the record straight by stating the following: Recently, many women of Color feminists have been “charting the journey” (Mohanty, 1991) of women of Color living both in the West and in the “Third World.” They write of “women of Color” or “Third World women,” not as women who constitute an automatic unitary category based on geographic location or racial identity in opposition to white but as women sharing a common post-colonial struggle based on their differential though intersecting histories of slavery, colonialism, imperialism, racism and genocide in capitalism. A Black feminist pedagogy seeks to facilitate students in the process of deconstructing the existing social order It engages students in challenging the dominant paradigms, knowledge systems, and perspectives that are institutionalized within society (Giroux, 1991). Within the challenges it poses to teaching practices and curriculum content, it manifests and thrives on the feminists’ agenda—that is, praxis (theory and action)—in the life and work of teachers and students alike
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