Date of Award
5-14-2023
Degree Type
Dissertation
Degree Name
Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)
Department
Cultural Foundations of Education
Advisor(s)
Dalia Rodriguez
Keywords
Black feminist, Black women, Graduate Education, Mammy, Plantation Politics, transnational Black Feminism
Abstract
The #NotYourMammyStudy explored the ways Black women are expected to engage in affective work – the production of feelings or affects that prioritize the needs/expectations of others – while learning in and laboring for White Serving Institutions in American higher education. This interdisciplinary qualitative study utilized a Transnational Black Feminist Framework to draw on the experiences of 28 Black women pursuing terminal graduate degrees at White Serving Institutions (WSIs) with a consideration of how the university exploits Black women through the colonial trope of the Mammy figure. The #NotYourMammyStudy offers an incisive critique of the structures of exploitation within American academia and an interrogation of how Black women graduate students enact their own agency throughout the process of degree completion – despite the myriad of ways institutions measure Black women against racist and gendered expectations of who and what Black women intellectuals should be in the Ivory Tower.
Access
Open Access
Recommended Citation
Contreras, Kristian Ashley, "#NotYourMammy: Explicating the Experiences of Black Women Graduate Students as Learners and Laborers in American Academia" (2023). Dissertations - ALL. 1698.
https://surface.syr.edu/etd/1698
