VTechWorks Repository :: Browsing by Author "Baldwin, Andrea N."

Browsing by Author "Baldwin, Andrea N."

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Black Feminist Liberatory Pedagogy and Ubuntu Solidarity: Toward an Otherwise World of Education
Kaerwer, Karin Louise (Virginia Tech, 2024-11-01)
Since the beginning, U.S. public schools have perpetuated harm towards students that do not fall under the descriptors of male, middle/upper class, cis-gender, heterosexual, able-bodied, neurotypical, and white. Education scholars with varying ideological backgrounds have approached questions of education equity for decades; yet, in asking these questions through the "white gaze" (Wright, 2023), some scholars have perpetuated the harm they seek to demystify. The following series of manuscripts express the dire need for (re)calibrating U.S. public schools so that all children receive just, equitable, and humanizing education. The first manuscript analyzes harmful white supremacist ideological hegemony embedded in education policy, the second manuscript is an ethnographic portrait (Lawrence-Lightfoot and Davis, 1997) that resists the "white gaze" and illuminates the good in a thriving classroom comprised of Black and Brown teachers and students through a lens of Black feminist theory, and the third manuscript interrogates what it takes emotionally and intellectually to do this work as a white woman scholar who seeks ubuntu feminist solidarity. The dissertation concludes with a posture of hope. Hope of an otherwise world (Greene, 1995) of education in which ubuntu feminist scholarship will inform praxis so that students may experience pedagogies that liberate instead of harm.
A Black Feminist's Critique of the Crooked Room of Medicine (CRoM): Innovation of Thick Studies and the Gender, Race, Weight (GRW) Matrix
Strozier, Jariah Li'Shey (Virginia Tech, 2022-07-14)
First described by physician William Dietz in 1995, the "Food Insecurity-Obesity Paradox" (FIOP) attempts to explain the biology and behaviors of people who are simultaneously overweight and food-insecure. I was introduced to this theory as a Behavioral Health graduate student and, in that context, was taught to understand it as a fact. My personal experiences as a Black woman, however, alongside ongoing engagement with Black feminist thought and critical medical sociology, have taught me otherwise. This disssertation takes Dietz's theory as a starting point in order to argue that Black women in the US experience fatphobic and racial discrimination while being "cared for" by western institutional medicine. I argue that discourses like the FIOP, though framed as benevolent clinical theories, do more harm than good: not only do they multiply pathologize so-called "fat" Black women by drawing on disparaging stereotypes, but they simultaneously ignore the specific health and wellness needs that emerge at the intersection of weight, size, skin color, gender, ability, and economic class. My broader dissertation project is an interdisciplinary critique of pathologizing discourses about Black women, including medically "legitimate" ones like the FIOP. Via critical analysis of these discourses, and employing Black feminist and medical sociological perspectives, I explore how stereotypes of Black women correlate with how these women are perceived and treated by physicians and other health professionals. These racialized perceptions and forms of discriminatory medical treatment are instances of what has been labeled, variously, as a racial formation (Omi and Winant, 1997), a matrix of domination (Patricia Hill Collins, 1990) and a racial ideology (Feagin, 2006). These processes are further extended by physicians who use these pathologizing discourses and practices to advance their own careers. Black feminist theorists have described the multiple marginalizations experienced by contemporary Black women in the US and my project places weight and body size within this marginalizing dynamic. After tracing the long history of medical "othering" of Black women by science, I show the persistence of these ideologies in contemporary medical practice. My interviews with Black women investigate their lived experiences of these ideologies and practices, and allow women to speak for themselves in a space that so often speaks for them.
Caribbean Women and Reparatory Justice: Reclaiming, Rebuilding and Restoring Communities Through Migration
Baldwin, Andrea N. (Virginia Tech. University Libraries, 2019-10-08)
The women and gender in international development discussion series is organized by the center for international research, education, and development (CIRED) and is an inclusive VT initiative of outreach and international affairs (OIA). The series offers an opportunity for scholars and development practitioners to share their research and knowledge surrounding gender and international development with the Virginia Tech community and beyond.
Culinary Man
Fallon, Jordan Keats (Virginia Tech, 2023-03-27)
This dissertation offers an exploration of the field of normative subjectivity circulated within western fine dining traditions. I use the notion of "normative subjectivity" which derives from the work of Michel Foucault. Foucault's emphasis on the use of disciplinary repetition to mold, circumscribe, and modulate the conduct of subjects informs my own argument that fine dining spaces feature a normative regime of subjectivity centered on the hegemonic governance of a figure which I call "Culinary Man." This phrase follows from Sylvia Wynter's account of "the overrepresentation of Man," which describes the colonial field of subjectivity which revolves around a normatively white, male, and European figure of authority. Drawing from these sources, this dissertation seeks to give a theoretical analysis of the governing relationship between the chef (who embodies Culinary Man) and the fine dining brigade (the organizational unit of labor within commercial kitchens). As I argue, Culinary Man deploys a heterogeneous set of disciplinary discourses and practices which have the effect of consolidating monopolies on epistemic authority and governance. Each position within the brigade's hierarchy is subject to distinct, though related, disciplinary practices. Thus, several chapters seek to identify the specific practices pertinent to each brigade subject, while also illuminating how they fit together as a coherent hegemonic project. Additionally, a genealogy, in the style of Sylvia Wynter, is carried out to illuminate points of variance as well as continuity within the figure of Culinary Man. While the bulk of the dissertation seeks to carry out a discursive analysis of Culinary Man's disciplinary regime, there are also moves toward alternative projects which do not replicate the brigade form. The concluding chapters seek to identify where extant modes of resistance or alternative forms of culinary organization may hold the potential to move beyond the hegemonic overrepresentation of Culinary Man.
Cynical Futurities: A Critical Methodological Intervention Toward a Cynical Geography
Ramnath, Leah A. (Virginia Tech, 2024-05-14)
In this dissertation, I disentangle the Cynical figure – one who is capable of confronting structures of power by speaking truth to power – within a Westernized, Euro-centric discourse that authorizes the Cynic as an exceptionally powerful political subjectivity. Heeding the words of Sylvia Wynter, "…the Jester's role in the pursuit of human knowledge alternates with the Priest's role—transforming heresies into new orthodoxies, the contingent into modes of the Absolute." I recover the Cynic, once sutured to a distinctly Foucauldian discursive tradition to argue Black and Brown women function as contemporary Cynics using largely a Black Feminist theoretical framework. Drawing on biomythographies written by Black and Brown women, I future a Cynical discursive tradition in which the cynic is known by a different name.
Do You See What We Carry?: A Digital Content Analysis of Black Mothering Affective Experiences
Amore, Jenaya (Virginia Tech, 2023-06-09)
This project aims to explore the affective experiences of Black mothering within an anti-black context by analyzing podcast episodes. The project is organized by examining a) socio-historical constructions of race and gender which influenced Black motherhood and mothering experiences during chattel slavery, b) how those meanings have informed contemporary social constructions around Black mothering in opposition to normative mothering and motherhood–defined as white, cisgender, and middle class and c) the ways affect appears in Black mothering strategies today in a country that many argue continues to devalue Black lives The following questions ground this project: 1) How do social constructions around normative motherhood as a raced, gendered, and classed institution continue to impact Black women's mothering experiences, and 2) How do Black mothers narrate their mothering experiences, including their affective experiences of mothering within the U.S.? To capture Black mothers' sentiments around mothering, I used purposive sampling to select 33 podcasts from mothering blogs and a content platform that compiled lists of recommended podcasts of Black mothers speaking on mothering and other related topics. I analyzed the dialogue in 15 episodes of Black mother's reported experiences. I arranged the findings under three categories of affect: the affect of surrender and survival, the affect of agency, and the affect of community which is reflected in the conceptual framework of liberatory parenting.
Escucha Nuestras Voces/Luister Naar Onze Stemmen: Afro-Caribbean Girlhood in the Dutch West Indies
Murrell, Gerlyn (Virginia Tech, 2020-06-10)
The purpose of this project was to examine how Afro-Caribbean girls from the island of Sint Maarten narrate, navigate and negotiate their girlhood experiences. As a Black woman from Sint Maarten, this project is important due to the lack of sociological scholarship surrounding Black girls in the Dutch West Indies. This project utilized a qualitative approach that involved interview participant photography and semi-structured audio and video recorded interviews with 9 Afro-Caribbean girls who were 14-, 16- and 17-years old living in Sint Maarten. I analyzed the interview data and interpreted it using a combination of Black, Caribbean and transnational feminist frameworks which I named Afro-Caribbean transnational feminism. This framework specifically centers the lives and lived experiences of the girls. The findings show that Afro-Caribbean girls in Sint Maarten navigate their social worlds by negotiating different aspects of their lives, including their hair, appearance and food consumption to in various ways resist heteronormative ideas in Sint Maarten. This data serves as an important starting point and experiential reference to understand Afro-Caribbean girlhood in the Caribbean broadly, and specifically in the Dutch West Indies.
A Framework for Black Girl Transitions Across Space and Time: Sint Maarten as a Case Study
Murrell, Ocqua Gerlyn (Virginia Tech, 2023-06-22)
The purpose of this project was to examine whether there is a transitional period between Afro-Caribbean girlhood and woman/adulthood that is distinctly different from girlhood and from woman/adulthood. Herein I examine at what point in the lives of Afro-Caribbean girls, do they feel like they have entered adulthood. I also examine what kinds of media the girls find representative of this current stage of their lives. This dissertation is an extension of my master's thesis, which explored the ways in which Afro-Caribbean girls from the island of Sint Maarten narrate, navigate, and negotiate their girlhood experiences. Speaking as a Black woman from Sint Maarten, I affirm that this project is important due to the lack of sociological scholarship surrounding Black girls in the Dutch West Indies. This project utilized a qualitative approach that involved self-selected research participant media and semi-structured audio and video recorded in-depth interviews with 5 out of the 9 girls who originally participated in the master's project. At the time of the interviews presented in this dissertation, the participants were 19 and 20 years old. I developed a transnational Black girlhood feminist framework which I use to analyze and interpret the interview data. This framework draws from and builds upon Black feminist theorizing, girlhood studies, and transnational feminisms. It demonstrates how traditional sociological theory such as life course theory, and studies on emerging adulthood and development do not account for the lives of Black girls from the Caribbean. The data reveal that there is a transitional period between girlhood and womanhood and adulthood, and how the girls experience this period is particular to their own lived experiences. The findings reveal that the overarching themes of this period are "it's complicated," and that the girls are claiming their agency. The research participant media indicate the overarching theme of this period of the girls' lives is what we are coming to know as a "soft girl era". Other primary themes which emerged from this study include attention to and prioritization of self-care, love, and self-affirmations. These data serve as a starting point and experiential reference to understand transitions of Afro-Caribbean girlhood in the Caribbean broadly, and specifically in the Dutch West Indies. Much is left to be explored regarding the life course and transitions Afro-Caribbean girls experience. This research will continue as a longitudinal study where I will continue to engage with the framework I have developed and re-engage with the girls as they continue along their life transitions.
Overrepresented Man: Genre, Violence, and Hegemony
Fallon, Jordan Keats (Virginia Tech, 2019-07-09)
This thesis explores the intersections between practices of epistemic production and distribution and material violence. Following the work of Sylvia Wynter, a framework of "genre" is engaged to provide an account of intersectional social identities, disproportionately distributed hegemonic violence (including both state and non-state actants), and the traditions and technologies of anti-colonial theoretical modeling, material praxis, and political work engendered by the rich, interdisciplinary body of Black Feminist thought. To address the continued practices of social, political, and material violence which sustain the Wynterian onto-epistemological "Overrepresentation of Man," an emergent archipelagic politics of heterogenous coalition-building presents a viable path of becoming for liberatory political projects.
Seeds That We Keep: Grounding Seedkeeping Praxis for Growing Black Food Futures in the Mid-Atlantic
Madden, Justice Makynzee (Virginia Tech, 2024-12-03)
Reform within food justice initiatives calls for emergent strategies and practices that align with pursuits of justice, health equity, ecological sustainability, and collective social change. Examining historical and contemporary Black geographies of the Mid-Atlantic region of the United States offers valuable lessons on what grows and thrives in opposition to plantation logic. As both material and immaterial representations of the genesis of life, seeds serve as catalysts for understanding stories of praxis, where seedkeeping traditions and contemporary experiences radically reimagine and contest the imposition of colonial legacies. Theoretically grounded in Black feminist futurities, this research illuminated the relationship between radical tradition and radical imagination to understand the complex landscapes of Black liberation through stories of past, present, and future relationships to seeds. The everyday stories from Black seedkeepers articulate visions for equitable food systems and provide specific insights into how a seedkeeping praxis manifests and forms of community cultural wealth and self-determination that challenge the ongoing commodification of seeds. Focusing on the Virginia, Maryland, and Washington, D.C. where these geographies are deeply shaped by colonial sites with legacies of slavery, land theft, and a genesis of American agriculture that created the foundation for global capitalism, this project delved into the narratives of 17 Black seedkeepers from. By engaging with seedkeepers' memories and motivations this inquiry also lays the foundation for understanding how narratives articulate collective hopes for food sovereignty through seeds.
The Sexual Agency of Adolescent Girls: A Case Study of Trinidad and Tobago
Robertson Foncette, Leslie-Ann C. (Virginia Tech, 2022-04-29)
The purpose of this study is to investigate the attitudes, expectations, and evolution of early experiences of Trinidadian adolescent girls as they navigate physical and emotional intimacy, their capacity to conceptualize and/or enact sexual desire to develop their own sense of agency. Using Trinidad and Tobago (TandT) as a case study, it examines whether attitudes, beliefs, and behaviors pertaining to sexual agency are influenced by socioeconomic factors or key life events, adverse experiences, and the influences of family, community, and broader societal structures. Emerging scholarship on sexuality in the Caribbean explores how women navigate sexual relationships and exercise their agency within the social and economic contexts of the Caribbean. The lived experiences of Caribbean people, particularly women and girls, are important, worthy of exploration, and necessitate permanent documentation. An examination of Caribbean society – a confluence of diverse and complex natural and social environments will enrich scholarship on the worlds shaped by people in this region, particularly by youth who will form the society of the future. Using transnational, Caribbean, and Black feminist frameworks, this study seeks to understand sexual awareness, desire, actions, and motivations in their early stages by conducting interviews with a diverse sample of adolescent girls in TandT.
Standpoints: Black Feminist Knowledges
(Virginia Tech Department of Sociology in association with Virginia Tech Publishing, 2019-12-19)
Standpoints: Black Feminist Knowledges contains essays that explore Black feminist thought through a diverse set of lenses. The essays are divided among sections on localized framing and stereotypes, global perspectives, and the future. The first section of the book analyzes the representations of Black women and the stereotypes that still confine African American women generations after enslavement. Then, the global oppression of Black women is discussed, along with its resistance. Lastly, the book encourages the reader to imagine a new future and engage with activist culture that rejects sexism and racism. This volume is edited by Dr. Andrea Baldwin, Dr. Ashley V. Reichelmann, and Dr. Anthony Kwame Harrison and authored by the students from Baldwin’s inaugural Black Feminisms graduate course in the Virginia Tech Department of Sociology.
Synthetic Solidarities: Theorizing Queer Affectivity and Trans*national/temporal Emulsification as Embodied Resistance to Global Capitalism
Tepper, Madison Jeanette (Virginia Tech, 2024-02-20)
This dissertation theorizes the synthesis of solidarities around queer embodied performativities as a mode of making-resistant the everyday experiences of exploitation under transnational capitalism. These solidarities, I argue, are cultivated around the affective, embodied experiences of what José Esteban Muñoz terms "queer time," which I extend to denote the ephemeral, experiential sensations of being "out of sync" with the structures and norms of capital-space-time power assemblages. I theorize "emulsion" as a heuristic for envisioning synthetic solidarities as making space and time for the importantly distinct experiences of queer spatio-temporalities of those at the various intersections of marginalized/minoritized identities to coagulate and coalesce into something new – at once remaining beautifully fragmented and becoming grotesquely amalgamated beyond distinction. I suggest that such trans-spatial/temporal/material solidarities, formed via antinormative performativities and the curation of "revolting archives," existent and not-yet-formed alike, can and indeed already do resist the totalizing and unplaceable ether of increasingly transnational capitalism across scales. This dissertation takes form and transdisciplinarity to be a part of the praxis/theory of cultivating such synthetic solidarities that confound the structures of capital-space-time. As such, I (gender)fuck with genre, and format throughout, interweaving theoretical and autotheoretical writing with prose, poetics, and altered text to create a visceral sense of disruption of spatiotemporality in not only content, but the affective experience of reading the piece itself. This dissertation thus moves across disciplines via a theoretical constellation of critical scholarship including affect theory, queer theory, (neo)Marxist theory, Black feminist theory, post- and de-colonial theory, disability theory, and transnational feminism.

Browsing by Author "Baldwin, Andrea N."

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