ISD5: Collectively Envisioning Black Girl Futures

Collaborative Goals

Despite fragmented images of Black girls in schools and society, Black girls continue to dream about the futures they want to see for themselves (Turner & Griffin, 2020) and Black women dream alongside them. Thus, as a collective of Black women scholars (two faculty and two graduate students) across Cornell University and Syracuse University, our Working Group has three aims:

1. Reflect and remember our Black girlhoods;
2. Speculate on Black girl futures through the arts; and
3. Engage in readers workshops that center Black women writers.

We will also invite guests from outside the Corridor, to include Black women who work with Black girls in academic and community contexts. By centering the works of Black women artists and authors who speculate on Black imaginations and futures, we desire to foster a space of remembering in order to collectively envision a way forward for Black girls in all spaces. To that end, we will begin this work amongst ourselves (interpersonally) with the intention of inviting middle and high school aged Black girls from Ithaca and Syracuse into the collective space to also engage this work in future years. This work will contribute to the development of our existing community-based Black girl book clubs (The Breedlove Readers in Syracuse and Black Girl Alchemists in Ithaca) situated in Central New York.