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THESES

AND DISSERTATIONS

A repository for master’s theses and doctoral dissertations by BCSA and NBGN members. NBGN members can enter information about their thesis and upload pdfs, website administrators will approve final postings.

Resistance education: African/ Black women shelter workers’ perspectives.

Abstract 406

The silencing and exclusion of differently located African/Black women shelter workers' voices and experiences in the woman abuse community in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, was the catalyst for this research. This dissertation examines the lived and worked experiences, and resistance of African/Black women shelter workers. It focuses on 18 differently located African/Black women who worked in shelters in Toronto between 1995 and 2005 during governmental cuts and organizational restructuring processes. This study re-centers and re-historicizes these often-missing stories of African/Black women, their indigenous feminist knowledges, and their activism. The purpose of this study was to examine intersectional violence and resistance in woman abuse shelters. African/Black feminist, anti-colonial theorization and praxis are critical for resistance against intersectional forms of violence including racism, sexism, heterosexism, classism, ableism, ageism, and other interlocking oppressions. "Resistance Education", a qualitative methodology developed and utilized in this study, provided an integrated, feminist/womanist, anti-colonial, anti-racist, analysis and praxis. The seven features of this methodological approach challenge traditional notions of Eurocentric "objective" research by re-centering the standpoint of African/Black women's voices, as well as the voices of other oppressed groups, in both research and education. This methodology, incorporating art-based strategies of resistance and activism, formulates and utilizes a method called "Creative Resistance". Collective witnessing, consciousness raising/sharing, and collective action provided individual and collective locations, identities, and agency, which supported revolutionary social change and transnational feminist actions. The "Identity Trichotomy" discussed in this study reveals the complexities of essentialized derogatory sameness, heterogeneous identities, and collective resistance. This research study contributes to feminist historical analysis of the larger violence against women communities as it provides the missing voices and stories of African/Black women shelter workers. It also adds innovation to qualitative methodology by providing another approach to doing feminist, anti-colonial, anti-racist, art-based research and resistance. This dissertation in itself is an act of resistance and revolutionary agency.

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DOCUMENT INFORMATION

Author

Timothy, Roberta

Title

Resistance education: African/ Black women shelter workers’ perspectives.

Subjects

Black Feminisms, Black Women Shelter Workers, Resistance Education

Document Type

Academic Journal

Source

University of Toronto

Language

English

Publication Date

2009