“Misogynoir”: American Contempt for Black Women and How to Change It

Ateliers are makers studios conceived with a goal of designing something new. CRE2 Ateliers are focused, non-credit bearing spaces designed to make new ideas, craft new meanings, and unpack and repurpose existing frameworks.

The Misogynoir Atelier draws on the path-breaking framework developed by Professor Moya Bailey.  Conceived in the context of media and digital studies, Bailey defines misogynoir as the specific “anti-black racist misogyny that black women experience.”  Our Atelier exports Bailey’s framework into new disciplinary fields to explore the uniquely American contempt for Black women that began with the Atlantic slave trade and continues in various transmuting forms to this day. It will bring together leading scholars who investigate this reality through multiple theoretical perspectives and methodological approaches.  Drawing on contemporary and historical examples, we will offer thick frameworks for understanding they myriad racial violences against Black women, including structural bias, harassment, and their intersections, and contemplate opportunities to disrupt it.

The Atelier will culminate with a virtual event open to the public, a guided conversation offered through the Brown School’s Black History Month Open Classroom on February 25th. Atelier participants will receive an interdisciplinary Syllabus of readings and resources.  Please register for the Atelier’s public event here.

Atelier Participants:

Kenly Brown

Adrienne Davis

Matifadza G. Hlatshwayo

Hedwig Lee

Misogynoir Syllabus:

  1. Bailey, Moya, Misogynoir Transformed: Black women’s digital resistance (NYU Press) (May 2021)
  2. Bailey, Moya, Website (including blog posts on misogynoir)
  3. Bennerji H et al. Unsettling Relations: The university as a Site of Feminist Struggles. South End Press
  4. Blackburn Center, What Is Misogynoir? February 12, 2020
  5. Brown, Kenly. Love, loss, and Loyalty: A Black Feminist Reading of Black Girlhood.” Black   Feminist Sociology: Perspectives and Praxis, eds. Zakiya Luna and Whitney Pirtle. (accepted)
  6. Caldwell, Paulette M. 1991 A Hair Piece: Perspectives on the Intersection of Race and Gender, 1991 Duke Law Journal 365-396
  7. Chang, Robert S. & Davis, Adrienne D. 2010 An Epistolary Exchange: Making Up is Hard to Do: Race/Gender/Sexual Orientation in the Law School Classroom, 33 Harvard Journal of Law & Gender 33: 1-57
  8. Clark-Hine, Darlene. Rape and the Inner Lives of Black Women in the Middle West. 1989. Signs 14: 912-920.
  9. Cox, Aimee Meredith (2015). Shapeshifters: Black girls and the choreography of citizenship. Duke University Press.
  10. Crenshaw, Kimberlé, Demarginalizing the Intersection of Race and Sex: A Black Feminist Critique of Antidiscrimination Doctrine, Feminist Theory and Antiracist Politics, 1989 University of Chicago Legal Forum 139.
  11. Davis, Adrienne D. 2002 “’Don‘t Let Nobody Bother Yo’ Principle’: The Sexual Economy of American SlaveryThe Sexual Economy of American Slavery” Sister Circle: Black Women and Work editor Sharon Harley Rutgers University Press.
  12. Davis, Adrienne D. 2003 “Slavery and the Roots of Sexual Harassment” in Directions in Sexual Harassment, editors Catharine MacKinnon & Reva B. Siegel Yale University Press.
  13. Demeke, HB et al. Unequal Declines in Absolute and Relative Disparities in HIV Diagnoses Among Black Women, United States, 2008-2016. American Journal of Public Health. November 2018
  14. Harris- Perry, Melissa V. 2013. Sister Citizen: Shame, Stereotypes, and Black Women in America. Yale University Press: New Haven, CT.
  15. Hartman, Saidiya. (2019). Wayward lives, beautiful experiments: Intimate histories of riotous Black girls, troublesome women, and queer radicals. WW Norton & Company.
  16. hooks, bell. Ain’t I a Woman: Black Women and Feminism (1981) South End Press.
  17. Irvin Painter, Nell (1995). Soul Murder and Slavery (Charles Edmondson Historical Lectures). Baylor University Press.
  18. Jackson, Sarah J., Bailey, Moya, Foucault Welles, Brooke, #HashtagActivism: Networks of Race and Gender Justice (2020). The MIT Press.
  19. Jones, Nikki (2016). The gender of police violence. Tikkun, 31(1), 25-28.
  20. Kaba, Mariame. (2021). We do this ‘til we free us: Abolitionist Organizing and Transforming Justice. Haymarket Books.
  21. Lee, Hedwig and Christopher Wildeman. 2013. “Things Fall Apart: Health Consequences of Mass Imprisonment for African American Women.” The Review of Black Political Economy 40(1): 39-52.
  22. Lorde, Audre. 2013. Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches (Crossing Press Feminist Series) (Reprint).
  23. Martin, JL. Racial Battle Fatigue: Insights from the Front Lines of Social Justice Advocacy. Psychology. January 2015
  24. McDavid, K et al. Racial and Ethnic Disparities in HIV Diagnoses for Women in the United States. Epidemiology and Social Science. May 2006
  25. MIT News Interview with Moya Bailey
  26. Sewell, Alyasah Ali, Justin Feldman, Rashawn Ray, Keon Gilbert, and Kevin Jefferson, and Hedwig Lee. 2020. “Illness Spillovers of Lethal Police Violence: The Significance of Gendered Marginalization.” Ethnic and Racial Studies. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/01419870.2020.1781913?journalCode=rers20
  27. Shange, S. (2019). Progressive dystopia: Abolition, antiblackness, and schooling in San Francisco. Duke University Press.
  28. Spillers, Hortense. 1987 “Mama’s Baby, Papa’s Maybe: An American Grammar Book.” Diacritics 17: 64–81.
  29. Tillerson, K. Explaining Racial Disparities in HIV/AIDS Incidence Among Womein in the US: A systematic review. Statistics in Medicine. June 2008.  
  30. Wakefield, Sara, Hedwig Lee,and Christopher Wildeman. 2016. “Tough on Crime, Tough on Families? Criminal Justice and Family Life in America.” The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 665: 8-21.

Misogynoir Case Studies:

Kenly Brown: Police Pepper Spray Nine-Year-Old

Adrienne Davis: Talbert v. Jenny

Hedwig Lee: Erica Garner