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Author ORCID Identifier
N/A
AccessType
Open Access Dissertation
Document Type
dissertation
Degree Name
Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)
Degree Program
Education
Year Degree Awarded
2018
Month Degree Awarded
May
First Advisor
Kysa Nygreen
Second Advisor
Denise Ives
Third Advisor
Claudio Moreira
Subject Categories
Education
Abstract
Blackness and Black womanhood as a mark of one’s inferiority are ideas largely unopposed in American culture and therefore present an immediate challenge to any theory or epistemology that claims the contrary. For this study, I will present and justify Black mother-ethnography as a framework for speaking back to the notion of the inherent inferiority of Black femaleness in the American (and global) academic understanding. As a mother and a researcher, I will examine the intrinsic tensions of investigating the schooling experiences of my teenage son, as well as the experiences of two other Black boys with IEPs, as mother and researcher. I theorize about these overlapping/intersecting issues using the lens of womanism, Black feminism and critical race feminism. I draw from the principles of performance auto/ethnography which align seamlessly with the afore mentioned theoretical frames, and which provides the platform for resistance of white male dominance and the discourse of deficit that is used to generally characterize Black women, Black motherhood and Black scholarship. The mother’s narratives were collected through semi-structured interviews/conversations, journals, educational artifacts and analytical memos. Using mother ethnography as both theory and method, I analyzed the lived experiences of these Black boys and their mothers from the mother’s perspectives, and highlighted the connection and sisterhood shared by Black women for each other and the shared pain and joy of othermothering of each other’s children.
DOI
https://doi.org/10.7275/11931047.0
Recommended Citation
Johnson-Anderson, Sonji, "MOTHER ETHNOGRAPHY: A PERFORMANCE OF POSSIBILITY" (2018). Doctoral Dissertations. 1250.
https://doi.org/10.7275/11931047.0
https://scholarworks.umass.edu/dissertations_2/1250