“This Is Possible.” This Is Our Magic.
An Endarkened Narrative Inquiry into the Leading and Worldbuilding of Collegiate Dark Women at Historically and Predominately White Higher Education Institutions
Embedded Files
Breaking News!
Breaking News!
My dissertation has been awarded a Dissertation of the Year Award by the American Association of Blacks in Higher Education (AABHE).
The Dissertation Award recognizes a doctoral candidate who has successfully defended their dissertation or a recent graduate (within the past two academic years) whose program of study led to a teaching or administrative position in higher education and has a research emphasis aligned with the African American or Black community.
AABHE has more than 40 years of experience focused on meeting the educational and professional needs of Blacks in higher education by targeting leadership, access, and vital issues impacting students, faculty, staff, and administrators in higher education. AABHE pursues its mission by collaborating with individuals, institutions, groups, agencies, and corporations to institute, provide, and maintain various avenues associated with leadership development through such programs as the Leadership and Mentoring Institute, Educational Study Tour, Rising Leaders Institute, and the Career Center.
[February. 18. 2024]
(mock cover image)
"This is Possible" is an independent dissertation by Dr. angela gay-audre.
It is an endarkened narrative inquiry into the lives of six women (and their ancestors, elders, sisters, and more). Evoking the narrative tradition of the griots, the study centers a humanizing philosophy to explore the ways endarkened women know themselves, trace their lineage, and seek to be (re)membered as leaders and worldbuilders while students in historically and predominantly white higher education institutions.
The study utilizes an innovative conceptual framework that honors the Combahee River Collective's Black feminist statement as a theory.
Furthermore, the study and its reporting of the findings push the boundaries of typical dissertation studies, employing facilitated workshops and centering profound truth and storytelling as a primary mode of delivering critical data. Throughout this dissertation, the reader will find novelty in the unyielding assertion of the Black radical imagination and the work of Black, Chicana/Latina, Native/Indigenous, and Asian women and feminists.
Through this study, I unpack how endarkened women's voices have been appropriated, silenced, and ignored as a contingency for leadership. As such, I maintain endarkened epistemologies, or ways of knowing, to assert the concept of worldbuilding, a tool for transformation -inherent in endarkened people.
Meet the Ujima! The Six Co-Creators of this Endarkened Narrative Storywork
The artwork shown was created by Dr. ang audre for their dissertation defense. Full profiles of the Ujima can be found in chapter 4.
Rose
Carnation
Orchid
CoCo
Sweetness
Kay
Emergent Data: Major Themes / Guideposts
The reporting of findings occurred across two chapters.
Chapter four reported the findings using the Black diasporic tradition of storywork (Toliver, 2022). Storywork evoked what bell hooks (2014) called talking back. Talking back is a revealing of the personal, an invocation of truth-telling, and diving deep into the heart of Black folx. Thus, this chapter embraced the storytelling tradition of African American griots and implemented an Afrofuturisic literary format that uplifted participants’ voices - making meaning from their individual and collective experiences.
Chapter five was a more traditional qualitative reporting of the findings. This chapter synthesized the voices of individual participants into a collective voice. This collective voice was shaped into four major themes or guideposts. The themes/guideposts included:
Collegiate dark women want to be seen as growing.
Collegiate dark women believe a love ethic is central to worldbuilding.
Collegiate dark women are guided by their knowledge of and their strivings for the self.
Collegiate dark women believe we should always be in and for communal care.
The Implications
The implications of this work encourage us to hold accountability for higher education. Accountability to create more opportunities for endarkened women to self-define, to be actively engaged, and to showcase their ancestral practices and knowledge(s). Additionally, higher education was asked to elevate its standards, requiring its members to foster community, show honesty and integrity, and, most importantly, engage in the action of love.
Page updated
Google Sites
Report abuse