AH: How are cross-disciplinary perspectives or methods important to your current project?

ASP: My research centers the experiences of Black girls in schools and their co-created community spaces, often referred to as Black girl spaces. My forthcoming book, (Un)Schooling Black Girls: Navigating Suburbia, Anti-Black-Girl Violence, and Mechanisms of School Survival, explores Black girls’ experiences in predominantly white middle schools during a period when these schools were implementing practices aimed at equity for Black youth. Yet many of these practices perpetuated anti-Blackness and gendered forms of violence that I call “anti-Black-girl violence.” Understanding what was happening to Black girls required theoretical and methodological perspectives beyond those traditionally available in the field of education. 

Both Black studies and gender studies provide necessary grounding for analyzing how anti-Blackness persists in schools and society, while Black feminist theory helped make sense of the specific experiences Black girls were facing. Youth and childhood studies have also been useful, particularly at the intersection of Black and gender studies, from which the field of Black girlhood studies emerged. Drawing from these fields and others, has been crucial not only to examining the experiences Black girls shared with me in this work, but also to ethically engage them as experts in participatory research and ethnography through an approach that is grounded in Black girlhood methodologies. 

AH: What do you see as the major challenges of conducting cross-disciplinary research? What do you find most rewarding?

ASP: One major challenge of conducting cross-disciplinary research is the rigid disciplinarity of some fields, which can make stepping beyond established methods and frameworks feel daunting. While Black studies destabilizes and resists disciplinary boundaries and supports insurgent knowledge production at the intersection of activism, community practice, lived experience, art, etc., not all academic spaces are receptive to this approach. The emerging and expansive field of Black Girlhood Studies can be rendered illegible within traditional academic structures that struggle to recognize Black girls’ interior lives as sites of knowledge production. 

In fields such as education, an additional challenge is getting scholars and practitioners to recognize the necessity of Black studies and Black girlhood studies as guiding frameworks for transforming both the field and the school environment. Cross-disciplinary work often requires translating across intellectual traditions while refusing to simplify or diminish the necessary radical, political and theoretical grounding. Centering the voices, experiences and expressions of young Black girls is critical to the theorizing and analysis in my scholarship. Therefore, my work is grounded in Black feminist studies, which opens space for it to be done in a theoretically rich, artistic and poetic manner while also grounding community and Black experiences.

The most rewarding part of this work has been my experiences being in and building community with and alongside young Black girls. Additionally, I’ve been especially proud of being a part of the field building of Black Girlhood Studies by centering the practices we engage through Black girlhood research methodologies, community-engaged work and teaching through curricula that center Black girlhood. This has been both my scholarly commitment and political practice. This work reflects our knowledge production while sustaining and nurturing spaces where Black girls’ lives and imaginations are treated as theory, method, archive and possibility. 

AH: What ethical considerations drive your interests in education’s treatment of and educational spaces for Black girls and women?

AS: My commitments are grounded in a deep responsibility to ensure Black girls and women are rightfully understood as thinkers, creators, organizers, meaning-makers and co-theorizers. Central to my work is ensuring that Black girls are given the space to speak for themselves and to be honest about their experiences. This means not only centering their voices but also their analyses, recommendations and visions for any spaces they will exist within and/or that will be created for them. 

I am also committed to creating spaces where Black girls can just be, spaces that are not tethered to research extraction or performance. For me, ethical engagement requires resisting the demands to use their narratives solely to produce scholarship. Black girls deserve far more from us. Their lives carry meaning beyond what can be documented, cited or theorized, especially when that theorizing is done on their behalf rather than alongside them. 

At the same time, I believe in being honest about Black girls’ experiences within schools and society, even when that honestly makes others uncomfortable. Attempting to avoid difficult truths only further reproduces the harms they already face. Therefore, naming structural violence while also centering how Black girls describe themselves and how they wish to be seen is necessary. Finally, I approach the work with the perspective that Black girls themselves are theorists. Their storytelling, critique and imaginative world-building warrant our attention and acknowledgement. Ultimately, my commitments are driven by a desire to create other and better worlds for Black women and girls, and for all marginalized communities.