"You Can't See Me By Looking at Me": Black Girls' Arts-based Practices as Mechanisms for Identity Construction and Resistance

This dissertation explored how eight adolescent Black girls (co-researchers) used arts-based practices in a virtual summer program as mechanisms for identity construction and resistance. Theoretically grounded in Black Feminist Thought, Black Girlhood, and Black Performance Theory, I designed and implemented a virtual summer art program aimed at co-creating a healing-centered space to engage in critical explorations of history, storytelling, and social justice with Black girls. The co-research team participated in the 5-week Black Girls S.O.A.R. (Scholarship, Organizing, Arts, Resistance) program as part of the study. At the end of the program, co-researchers took themes from the sessions and created artwork to present a Community Arts Showcase to their loved ones. I combined performance ethnography (Denzin, 2008; Soyini Madison, 2006) and integrated aspects of youth participatory action research to answer the following research questions: 1) How, if at all, do Black girls use arts-based practices as mechanisms for resistance and identity construction? and 2) What specific attributes of Black girls’ involvement in arts-based programs foster identity construction and acts of resistance? This study employed “two-tiered” (Brown, 2010) qualitative data collection. For the first component, co-researchers and I collected our conversation transcripts from the sessions to create a collaborative artistic production. The second component included my concurrent collection of session observations, field notes, pre-and-post interviews, and artwork to document the co-researchers’ experiences in the program. The data showed that Black girls used arts-based practices to 1) rewrite singular historical narratives of Black history in the standard curriculum; 2) share counter-narratives; 3) heal in and build community out; and 4) dream a better world into existence. Additionally, Black girls named 1) showcasing their work to loved ones; 2) being supported by other Black girls; 3) learning about self and communal care; and 4) reexamining history by centering Black women’s resistance as specific attributes of their involvement in the program that contributed to their identity construction and resistance. This study offers much-needed data on the power and potential of culturally-sustaining, arts-based pedagogy in virtual educational spaces, as well as contributes to the growing body of literature that centers Black girls’ epistemologies in education research

Good Trouble, Necessary Trouble: A Call to Create Identity Affirming Spaces for Black Youth to Grow As Agents of Change in Early Childhood and Elementary School Classrooms

In their early years, youth begin to notice race, develop attitudes related to race, form their own racial identity, and make decisions based on race. Adults can play a critical role in teaching about and affirming Black children’s developing identities. As educators passionate about the success and wellbeing of Black children, we envision spaces where energy is divested from surveilling, suspending, and expelling Black children and energy is invested in working to address educational injustices, particularly through the cultivation of identity affirming spaces for Black youth to grow as agents of change. In this paper, we share how the first author worked virtually with elementary and middle school students during the COVID-19 pandemic. The students in the class read complex texts, asked and answered questioned, and used information gained from the text as well as their lived experiences to better understand and confront injustices in order to imagine future possibilities for Black youth in and outside the classroom. We conclude with a discussion of the possibilities of cultivating identity affirming spaces in early childhood and elementary school classrooms. With young activists at the center, we can dream up spaces where activism is encouraged, sociopolitical identities are formed, and “good trouble, necessary trouble” becomes the foundation for systems-level change