Dive Deeper: Supplemental Research
This section gives the reader a broader palette of research options that lend context to the author’s experience and the social, political and intellectual landscape that shaped her experience.
Hood Feminism by
Solidarity is still for white women -- Gun violence -- Hunger -- Of #FastTailedGirls and freedom -- It's raining patriarchy -- How to write about black women -- Pretty for a ... -- Black girls don't have eating disorders -- The fetishization of fierce -- The hood doesn't hate smart people -- Missing and murdered -- Fear and feminism -- Race, poverty, and politics -- Education -- Housing -- Reproductive justice, eugenics, and maternal mortality -- Parenting while marginalized -- Allies, anger, and accomplices.
ISBN: 9780525560555Publication Date: 2020-02-25
This Will Be My Undoing by
In her collection of linked essays, Jerkins takes on perhaps one of the most provocative contemporary topics: What does it mean to "be"--To live as, to exist as-- a black woman today? Doubly disenfranchised by race and gender, often deprived of a place within the mostly white mainstream feminist movement, black women are objectified, silenced, and marginalized with devastating consequences, in ways both obvious and subtle, that are rarely acknowledged in our country's larger discussion about inequality. Jerkins exposes the social, cultural, and historical story of black female oppression that influences the black community as well as the white, male-dominated world at large.
Call Number: Main Stacks E185.86 .J47 2018ISBN: 9780062666154Publication Date: 2018-01-30
The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by
Her name was Henrietta Lacks, but scientists know her as HeLa. She was a poor Southern tobacco farmer, yet her cells--taken without her knowledge--became one of the most important tools in medicine. The first "immortal" human cells grown in culture, they are still alive today, though she has been dead for more than sixty years. HeLa cells were vital for developing the polio vaccine; uncovered secrets of cancer and viruses; helped lead to in vitro fertilization, cloning, and gene mapping; and have been bought and sold by the billions. Yet Henrietta Lacks is buried in an unmarked grave. Her family did not learn of her "immortality" until more than twenty years after her death, when scientists began using her husband and children in research without informed consent. The story of the Lacks family is inextricably connected to the dark history of experimentation on African Americans, the birth of bioethics, and the legal battles over whether we control the stuff we are made of.
Call Number: Main Stacks RC265.6.L24 S55 2010ISBN: 9781400052172Publication Date: 2010-02-02
A black women's history of the United States by
Nannie's legacy and the histories of Black women -- Isabel's expedition and freedom, before 1619 -- Angela's exodus out of Africa, 1619-1760 -- Belinda's petition for independence, 1760-1820 -- Millie and Christine's performance and the expansion of slavery, 1820-1860 -- Mary's apron and the demise of slavery, 1860-1876 -- Frances's sex and the dawning of the Black women's era, 1876-1915 -- Augusta Clay, migration, and the Depression, 1915-1940 -- Alice's medals and Black women's war at home, 1940-1950 -- Aurelia's lawsuit against Jim Crow, 1950-1970 -- Shirley's run, Black power, politics, and Black feminism, 1970-2000 -- Patricia's climb and the sisters holding down liberty.
Call Number: Main Stacks E185.86 .B475 2020ISBN: 9780807033562Publication Date: 2020
How We Get Free by
Introduction -- The Combahee River Collective statement -- Barbara Smith -- Beverly Smith -- Demita Frazier -- Alicia Garza
Call Number: Main Stacks HQ1426 .H689 2017ISBN: 9781608468553Publication Date: 2017-12-05
Racism & Discrimination at Loyola Report & Presentation
- Racism & Discrimination at Loyola by Moriah JohnsonA report on the experiences of students of color at Loyola University Chicago in 2020 by Moriah Johnson, MPP, Loyola University Chicago
PhD Student, Loyola's Sociology Department - I Just Don't Belong Here: Examining Experiences of Students of Color at Loyola University ChicagoThe online presentation below features a report written by Moriah Johnson on the experiences of racism and discrimination of students of color at Loyola, followed by a real-time conversation with students about their reactions to the report and their experiences at Loyola. Co-sponsored by the Department of Sociology and the Masters in Urban Affairs and Public Policy (MUAPP) program.
Articles and Scholarship
The Articles and Scholarship section is meant to provide a starting point for conducting secondary research into the issues and ideas ideas found in Thick: And Other Essays.
- Article: Black Feminism and the Combahee River Collective This reprint of Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor's introduction to How We Get Free—Black Feminism and the Combahee River Collective serves as an introduction to both the Combahee River Collective and their seminal statement on black feminism.
- Article: re-thinking intersectionality by Jennifer Nash Intersectionality has become the primary analytic tool that feminist and anti-racist scholars deploy for theorizing identity and oppression. This paper exposes and critically interrogates the assumptions underpinning intersectionality by focusing on four tensions within intersectionality scholarship: the lack of a defined intersectional methodology; the use of black women as quintessential intersectional subjects; the vague definition of intersectionality; and the empirical validity of intersectionality. Ultimately, my project does not seek to undermine intersectionality; instead, I encourage both feminist and anti-racist scholars to grapple with intersectionality's theoretical, political, and methodological murkiness to construct a more complex way of theorizing identity and oppression.
- Article: Toward a Field of Intersectionality Studies: Theory, Applications, and Praxis by Sumi Cho, Kimberlé Williams Crenshaw and Leslie McCall Intersectional insights and frameworks are put into practice in a multitude of highly contested, complex, and unpredictable ways. We group such engagements with intersectionality into three loosely defined sets of practices: applications of an intersectional framework or investigations of intersectional dynamics; debates about the scope and content of intersectionality as a theoretical and methodological paradigm; and political interventions employing an intersectional lens. We propose a template for fusing these three levels of engagement with intersectionality into a field of intersectional studies that emphasizes collaboration and literacy rather than unity. Our objective here is not to offer pat resolutions to all questions about intersectional approaches but to spark further inquiry into the dynamics of intersectionality both as an academic frame and as a practical intervention in a world characterized by extreme inequalities. At the same time, we wish to zero in on some issues that we believe have occupied a privileged place in the field from the very start, as well as on key questions that will define the field in the future. To that end, we foreground the social dynamics and relations that constitute subjects, displacing what often seems like an undue emphasis on the subjects (and categories) themselves as the starting point of inquiry. We also situate the development and contestation of these focal points of intersectional studies within the politics of academic and social movements—which, we argue, are themselves deeply intersectional in nature and therefore must continually be interrogated as part of the intersectional project.
- Article: No guarantees: Symposium on Black Feminist Thought by Patricia Hill Collins In this article, I describe four main ideas of Black Feminist Thought as well as the social and intellectual context that influenced how and why I wrote the book. Building on this foundation, I explore how the articles in the Symposium both connect with these key ideas as well as point to ongoing challenges for black feminism. Because there are no guarantees that Black feminism will persist, the richness of the different ways that these contemporary scholars read Black Feminist Thought provides important guidance for similar knowledge projects that are placed in service to social justice.
- Podcast: Intersectionality Matters! What Slavery Engendered: An Intersectional Look at 1619 In this episode, Kimberlé chops it up with Dorothy Roberts, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania and a leading scholar in race, gender, bioethics, and the law. In a conversation that merges intersectional inquiry with The 1619 Project, which interrogates America’s history of slavery in order to understand racial disparities in 2019, Crenshaw and Roberts shed light on the lasting consequences of slavery, segregation, and White Supremacy, and their impact on Black women specifically. Their timely conversation highlights the relationship between the legacy of slavery and instances of modern oppression against Black women, such as the curbing of welfare, forced sterilization, and mass incarceration.
Black Feminism Reimagined by
A love letter from a critic, or notes on the intersectionality wars -- The politics of reading -- Surrender -- Love in the time of death -- Coda: Some of us are tired.
Call Number: Ebook and Main Stacks HQ1197 .N37 2019ISBN: 9781478002253Publication Date: 2018-12-06
Black Feminist Thought by
Book Cover; Title; Contents; Preface to First Edition; Preface to Second Edition; Acknowledgments; The Politics of Black Feminist Thought; Distinguishing Features of Black Feminist Thought; Work, Family, and Black Women's Oppression; Mammies, Matriarchs, and Other Controlling Images; The Power of Self-Definition; The Sexual Politics of Black Womanhood; Black Women's Love Relationships; Black Women and Motherhood; Rethinking Black Women's Activism; U.S. Black Feminism in Transnational Context; Black Feminist Epistemology; Toward a Politics of Empowerment; Notes; Glossary; References; Index.
Call Number: EbookISBN: 9780203900055Publication Date: 2002-06-01
Women, Race and Class by
1. The legacy of slavery: standards for a new womanhood -- 2. The anti-slavery movement and the birth of women's rights -- 3. Class and race in the early women's rights campaign -- 4. Racism in the woman suffrage movement -- 5. The meaning of emancipation according to black women -- 6. Education and liberation: black women's perspective -- 7. Woman suffrage at the turn of the century: the rising influence of racism -- 8. Black women and the club movement -- 9. Working women, black women and the history of the suffrage movement -- 10. Communist women -- 11. Rape, racism and the myth of the black rapist -- 12. Racism, birth control and reproductive rights -- 13. The approaching obsolescence of housework: a working-class perspective.
Call Number: EbookISBN: 9780394713519Publication Date: 1983-02-12
Tressie Recommends
Invisible Visits by
Although the United States spends almost one-fifth of all its resources on funding healthcare, the American system is dogged by persistent inequities in the treatment of racial and ethnic minorities and women. Invisible Visits analyzes how Black women navigate the complexities of dealing with doctors in this environment. It challenges the idea that race and gender discrimination, particularly in healthcare settings, is a thing of the past.
Call Number: Available OnlineISBN: 019084020XPublication Date: 2019-01-31
Not That Bad by
"In this valuable and revealing anthology, cultural critic and bestselling author Roxane Gay collects original and previously published pieces that address what it means to live in a world where women have to measure the harassment, violence, and aggression they face, and where they are "routinely second-guessed, blown off, discredited, denigrated, besmirched, belittled, patronized, mocked, shamed, gaslit, insulted, bullied" for speaking out.
Call Number: IC Popular Reading Collection (1st Floor) HD6060.3 .N68 2018ISBN: 9780062851468Publication Date: 2018-05-01- This Will Be My Undoing by
In her collection of linked essays, Jerkins takes on perhaps one of the most provocative contemporary topics: What does it mean to "be"--To live as, to exist as-- a black woman today? Doubly disenfranchised by race and gender, often deprived of a place within the mostly white mainstream feminist movement, black women are objectified, silenced, and marginalized with devastating consequences, in ways both obvious and subtle, that are rarely acknowledged in our country's larger discussion about inequality. Jerkins exposes the social, cultural, and historical story of black female oppression that influences the black community as well as the white, male-dominated world at large.
Call Number: Main Stacks E185.86 .J47 2018ISBN: 9780062666154Publication Date: 2018-01-30
Wayward Lives, Beautiful Experiments by
"A breathtaking exploration of the lives of young black women in the early twentieth century. In Wayward Lives, Beautiful Experiments, Saidiya Hartman examines the revolution of black intimate life that unfolded in Philadelphia and New York at the beginning of the twentieth century. Free love, common-law and transient marriages, serial partners, cohabitation outside of wedlock, queer relations, and single motherhood were among the sweeping changes that altered the character of everyday life and challenged traditional Victorian beliefs about courtship, love, and marriage."
Call Number: Main Stacks E185.86 .H379 2019ISBN: 9780393285673Publication Date: 2019-02-19
The World According to Fannie Davis by
An homage to the author's mother relates how she cleverly played Detroit's illegal lottery in the 1970s to support the family while creating a loving, joyful home and mothering her children to the highest standards.
Call Number: Main Stacks F574.D453 D38 2019ISBN: 9780316558730Publication Date: 2019-01-29
