Centering our liberating voice: Black women’s contemplative criticality
Duff, Roslynne ; Tinker Sachs, Gertrude
Citations
Abstract
This article is a creative collaboration, a dialogue between a professor and a doctoral student who dismantle power dynamics in the academy, demonstrating the liberatory voice” (hooks, 1989, p. 29) through (a collective chorus of Black Womens’ contemplative criticality (Canon, 2021; Holmes, 2017; Williams, 2022) and ART, or activism, research, and teaching (Tyson, 2001). Our work, rooted in the SOUL (soulfulness-oriented, unitive, and liberatory) framework (Harrell, 2018), makes a case for re-imaging the intersection of criticality and contemplative pedagogy by centering the historical multi-modality approach to contemplative practices evident in Black Women’s cultural heritage tradition and pedagogy. In our creative collaboration, we use letter writing to express our journey within Black Women’s onto-epistemology that results in memoirs, life writings (Evans, 2022). Traditional boundaries in the academy are disrupted by exploring our roots, soulful practices, intersectionality (Crenshaw, 1991), and culturally relevant and sustaining mentorship in teacher education. The creative collaboration results in a counter-narrative as a method (Milner & Howard, 2013) to develop an integrative, and culturally sustaining (Paris & Aims, 2017) approach to critical contemplative pedagogy (Kaufman, 2017) in teacher education, based on Black Women Educators (BWEs) pedagogy of liberation (spirituality and social justice) in higher education.
