Endarkened Feminist Epistemology
Course Description:
Endarkened Feminist Epistemology (EFE) is an approach to research that honors the wisdom, memory, spirituality, and critical interventions of transnational Black women’s ways of knowing (Dillard, 2016). A framework created by scholar Dr. Cynthia Dillard, it articulates how reality is known from the vantage point of transnational Black women - transnational recognizing the connections between African descended women throughout the diaspora as well as the continent. Through reflecting on course readings, writing, and sacred practice, this class will explore EFE’s claims and methodologies, as well as center other transnational Black women whose work helps us make connections between history, spirituality, and our collective positionality within academia.
Assignments
Tracing Our Spiritual and Cultural Legacies
The purpose of this assignment is for students to utilize class concepts to better understand the spiritual and cultural practices, roots, and assumptions of their families and communities. Students will draw on Dillard’s framework of (re)membering: (re)searching, (re)visioning, (re)cognizing, (re)presenting, and (re)claiming to examine their personal histories and analyze the seductions that have caused them to forget and deny their existence. Find out more
(Re)membering through Creative Practice
This is an opportunity to explore your creativity in a format of your choosing. Drawing inspiration from the themes in Walker’s In Search of Our Mother’s Gardens (1983), students will reflect on several questions as they begin to pull together their own creative pieces, or their own metaphorical gardens. Find out more
Recommended Reading
Aya, E.J. (2023). Incomplete stories: On loss, love, and hope. Aya Media and Publishing, LLC.
Dillard, C.B. (2006). On spiritual strivings: Transforming an African American woman's academic life. State University of New York Press.
Dillard, C.B. (2021). The Spirit of our work: Black women teachers remember. Beacon Press.
Gayles, G.W. (1993). Pushed back to strength: A Black woman’s journey home. Beacon Press.
Perlow, D.I Wheeler, S.L. Bethea, and B.M. Scott (Eds), Black women’s liberatory pedagogies: Resistance, transformation, and healing within and beyond the academy. New York, NY: Palgrave MacMillan
Tinsley, O.N. (2018). Ezili’s mirrors: Imagining Black queer genders. Duke University Press. Walker, A. (1983). In search of our mother’s garden: Womanist prose. Mariner Books.