1st Edition
Black Feminist Sociology Perspectives and Praxis
Black Feminist Sociology offers new writings by established and emerging scholars working in a Black feminist tradition. The book centers Black feminist sociology (BFS) within the sociology canon and widens is to feature Black feminist sociologists both outside the US and the academy. Inspired by a BFS lens, the essays are critical, personal, political and oriented toward social justice. Key themes include the origins of BFS, expositions of BFS orientations to research that extend disciplinary norms, and contradictions of the pleasures and costs of such an approach both academically and personally. Authors explore their own sociological legacy of intellectual development to raise critical questions of intellectual thought and self-reflexivity. The book highlights the dynamism of BFS so future generations of scholars can expand upon and beyond the book’s key themes.
Introduction: Black Feminist Sociology is the Past, Present, and Future of Sociology. Period.
Zakiya Luna and Whitney Pirtle
Part 1: Revisiting Legacies of Black Feminist Sociology and How They Ground Us
1. Black Feminist Sociology: An Interview with Patricia Hill Collins
Patricia Hill Collins
2. The Black Feminist Roots of Scholar-Activism: Lessons from Ida B. Wells-Barnett
Shaonta’ E. Allen
3. The Radical Black Feminist Project: Reimagining a Critical Sociology
Rose M. Brewer
4. The Language Through Which Black Feminist Theory Speaks: A Conversation with Jennifer C. Nash
Mali Collins-White and Jennifer C. Nash
Part 2: Black Feminist Sociological Communities and How They Speak to Us
5. Reflections on Re-Creating Biological Race and the Entrapment of Black People
Dorothy Roberts
6. Centering Us: What Doing Black Feminist Sociology Really Looks Like
Lori Martin
7. Nothing About Us, Without Us: Reinscribing Black Feminism in Sociology
Endia Louise Hayes, Ashley Hollingshead, Jomaira Salas, and Brooklynn Hitchens
8. #BlackGirlMagic and its Complexities
Maria S. Johnson
9. Learning, Teaching, Re-Membering, and Enacting Black Feminist Sociology at a Black Women’s College: A Love Letter to One Another
LeConté J. Dill, Mercedez Dunn, Mona Taylor Phillips, Nzali Scales, Cynthia Neal Spence
Part 3: Black Feminist Sociology Epistemologies and What They Reveal to Us
10. Black Feminist Sociology and The Politic of Space and Place at the Intersection of Race, Class, Gender, and Sexuality
Carolette Norwood
11. Global Health and BFS: Diasporic Research and Interventions Rooted in Advocacy
Alicia D. Bonaparte
12. Family Background and the Meanings of Economic Autonomy for Black Lesbian Women
Mignon R. Moore
13. ‘Kantsaywhere’: Black African Women inside the Australian Racial Crucible
Mandisi Majavu
14. Black Feminist Piety: A Framework for Engaging Islam in Black Feminist Sociology
Ashley Garner
Part 4: Black Feminist Sociological Methodologies and What They Teach Us
15. Love, Loss and Loyalty: A Black Feminist Reading of Black Girlhood
Kenly Brown
16. Black Feminist Epistemological Methodology: Bridging Theory and Methods to Research Health and Illness
Jennifer E. James
17. Employing Community-based Participatory Research to Create Oppositional Knowledge as a Black Feminist
Assata Richards
18. Doing it for Ourselves: Research Justice and Black Feminist Sociology
Julia Chinyere Oparah
19. For a Black Feminist Digital Sociology
Melissa Brown
Part 5: Imagining Black Feminist Sociological Futures and What They Create for Us
20. Allyship in the Time of Aggrievement: The Case of Black Feminism and the New Black Masculinities
Freeden Blume Oeur and Saida Grundy
21. Theorizing Embodied Carcerality: A Black Feminist Sociology of Punishment
Brittany Friedman and Brooklynn Hitchens
22. Too Intersectional: What Black Feminism and Disability Studies Can Build Together
Subini Ancy Annamma
23. We Major: Historical Black Trans Feminism Fights Back
Blu Buchanan and Ayotunde Khyree Ikuku
24. Exploring the Black Feminist Imagination
Aisha A. Upton and Jalia Joseph
Biography
Zakiya Luna is Associate Professor of Sociology and Dean’s Distinguished Professorial Scholar at Washington University in Saint Louis. Her research, teaching and community work are in the areas of social movements, human rights and health. Her research on the reproductive justice movement includes the book Reproductive Rights as Human Rights: Women of Color and the Fight for Reproductive Justice (NYU Press).
Whitney N. Laster Pirtle is Assistant Professor of Sociology and McArthur Foundation Chair in International Justice and Human Rights at the University of California, Merced, where she directs the Sociology of Health and Equity (SHE) Lab. She is a critical race, Black feminist scholar currently studying disparities in COVID-19, racial formation in South Africa and racism on college campuses.
"While reading this book, I sensed the tectonic plates of sociological theorizing shift. The collected essays highlight exciting new directions for Black feminist sociological inquiry. Though grounded in sociology, the vision and relevance of this volume extend beyond those disciplinary borders. This spectacular collection is a must have for anyone teaching about Black feminisms."
Michele Tracy Berger, Department of Women's and Gender Studies, University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill
"Luna and Pirtle have pulled together the definitive volume on Black Feminist sociology of our time. The pieces in this book root Black feminist sociology in its activist and intellectual origins, trace its development, help us to understand the contemporary period, and urge us to look forward. The thinkers and writers represented in this book range from retired founders of Black Feminist Thought and the most influential contemporary scholars in Black feminist sociology to the up and coming next generation of Black feminist intellectuals. This book is a masterpiece and a model for how to do a field-defining edited volume."
Joyce Bell, the University of Chicago
"Intergenerational, interdisciplinary, and all around fierce! Black Feminist Sociology is a collection that is long-overdue but well worth the wait. Luna and Pirtle have given us a treasure of reflection, instruction, and future mandate. Their vision of a foundational Black feminist praxis will make all of our scholarship better and bolder. This text will be referenced for decades to come."
Mary Pattillo, Northwestern University
"Black women’s scholarship has always been theoretically, methodologically, and epistemologically foundational to the discipline of sociology. This collection of essays is a scholarly, communal Black feminist gathering that tends carefully and poignantly to the multiple legacies of Black feminist work in the field. Calling back to Black feminist sociological histories, naming our place and showing our work now, and anticipating Black feminist futures, it offers crucial insight into Black feminist sociological scholarship that is essential reading in the ever-persistent call for the U.S. to 'listen to Black women.'"
Zandria Robinson, Georgetown University
