Date of Award

6-26-2026

Date Published

July 2026

Degree Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Department

Writing Studies, Rhetoric and Composition

Advisor(s)

Eileen Schell

Second Advisor

Gwendolyn Pough

Keywords

antiracist writing pedagogy;archival research methods;black feminist materialisms;black women's pedagogy;freedmen's schools;settler colonial legacies of education

Abstract

In this archival study of outgoing correspondence from the Superintendent for Freedmen's Schools in Virginia, I developed a Black feminist intervention into New Materialisms in writing studies that names the material conditions of Reconstruction era education beyond the settler colonial narratives of federal archives. In doing so, I aimed to develop a frame of reference for navigating our contemporary teaching conditions as antiracist writing pedagogues. I aimed to address three overarching research questions for this dissertation: (1) What context for our own material conditions can be provided from an examination of Reconstruction era education? (2) What context can be provided for the relationship between education and the Long Struggle for Black Freedom by this examination? (3) Do avenues of action and accountability become visible by having this context? If so, what are they? Both antiracist pedagogues and Black women pedagogy scholars engage the tension between the racism which pervades every aspect of educational systems and undermines socially transformative potential of the classroom. The apparent existential gap between Black women’s and antiracist pedagogy which shapes how we understand our professional responsibility highlights the relationship between racial and settler colonial projects as it plays out in education. Given our paralleled contemporary conditions, understanding how the material conditions of Reconstruction-era education reflected these projects is generative for helping antiracist pedagogues better understand what will be necessary to meet the goals we articulate in our scholarship. Learning about the material conditions of the Freedmen’s schools in a way that aims to hold contemporary pedagogy accountable to the Long Struggle for Black Freedom required an afrafeminist ideology (Royster 2000). I do this by developing a Black feminist intervention into New Materialisms in writing studies that discerning material conditions of a particular space, text, or event that confronts the settler colonial project through academic research in order to work towards sustainable futures. This lens reveals how the colonial erasure and neoliberal funding structures that determine the materials at the center of this study and the rigor demanded by an afrafeminist ideology defined the phases of my project–Learning, Searching, Cataloguing, Recording, Revising Methodology, Analysis (Reading) and Analysis (Writing). I made two analytical observations: First, that the democratic ideals advanced by the Freedmen's Schools are undermined by its home in the War Department and second, that the impact of hierarchical bureaucracy on how land is engaged and deployed creates relational tensions that are counterproductive to Black education. Three avenues of action became visible from this analysis: we should acknowledge and engage wider latitudes for action, utilize Black women teachers' vocabularies, and work against military relationships in education.

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