Awanjo, Amanda
(2022)
Black Girl Futures: Intersections of Black Futurity and Black Girlhood in the 20th Century.
Doctoral Dissertation, University of Pittsburgh.
(Unpublished)
Abstract
My dissertation is an inter-disciplinary investigation of twentieth century Du Boisian Futurity and its costly limitations and silences. In tandem it is also a project centered in shining a light on the ways that Black women and girls were resisting Du Boisian Futurity’s restrictions throughout the century. Taking seriously Fannie B. Williams’ 1902 question, “what becomes of the colored girl?” my research digs through the early twentieth century and late nineteenth century archive to take a closer look into how Black women and girls found ways to critique and dismantle the rigid heteropatriarchal classist narrative of futurity forwarded by Du Bois. My dissertation engages the questions, what is the continued role of the speculative within Black futurity? What can the ways in which Black women and girls are portrayed within these spaces tell us about who the Black future is for and how it is imagined? My approach to the work is to reclaim and reorganize the larger project of Black futures in order to expose the damning ways in which Black women and girls were left aside within the project of early twentieth century futurism. Following the common thread of speculative future-making and the evolution of Black speculative futures, this dissertation follows how Black women creator spoke back to patriarchal paradigms of futurity creating their own feminist speculative Afrofuturism.
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Details
| Item Type: |
University of Pittsburgh ETD
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| Status: |
Unpublished |
| Creators/Authors: |
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| ETD Committee: |
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| Date: |
13 August 2022 |
| Date Type: |
Publication |
| Defense Date: |
26 July 2022 |
| Approval Date: |
19 December 2024 |
| Submission Date: |
5 August 2022 |
| Access Restriction: |
No restriction; Release the ETD for access worldwide immediately. |
| Number of Pages: |
210 |
| Institution: |
University of Pittsburgh |
| Schools and Programs: |
Dietrich School of Arts and Sciences > English |
| Degree: |
PhD - Doctor of Philosophy |
| Thesis Type: |
Doctoral Dissertation |
| Refereed: |
Yes |
| Uncontrolled Keywords: |
Black Girlhood, Black Futurity, Octavia Butler, W.E.B Du Bois, Toni Morrison, Childhood, Black Childhood, Afrofuturism |
| Related URLs: |
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| Date Deposited: |
19 Dec 2024 21:13 |
| Last Modified: |
20 Dec 2024 13:46 |
| URI: |
http://d-scholarship.pitt.edu/id/eprint/43532 |
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