Date of Award
2025
Degree Type
Open Access Dissertation
Degree Name
Cultural Studies, PhD
Program
School of Arts and Humanities
Advisor/Supervisor/Committee Chair
Darrell Moore
Dissertation or Thesis Committee Member
Eve Oishi
Dissertation or Thesis Committee Member
Linda Perkins
Terms of Use & License Information
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 License.
Rights Information
© 2025 Shanté NM Morgan
Keywords
Africana studies, Black studies, Communication, Cultural studies, Gender and women studies, Linguistics
Subject Categories
African American Studies | Communication | Women's Studies
Abstract
Black American women intellectuals, activists, and scholars have grappled with womanism in relation to Black women’s presence in the world, particularly in the context of feminist and Black liberation movements. Since womanism was introduced more than four decades ago, both movements claimed Black women were a priority in theory and rhetoric but often excluded them in practice. For this reason, this dissertation examines womanist thought as a source of identity, empowerment, and liberation for Black American women. I employed two methods to investigate womanist thought that align with a qualitative inquiry: genealogy focus and raciolinguistic genealogy analysis. I conducted a content analysis of womanist thought, focusing on Alice Walker, Katie Cannon, and Clenora Hudson-Weems. Walker popularized womanism. Cannon is one of the earliest and most prolific writers on womanist theology. Hudson-Weems, coined the term Africana womanism. After this analysis, I used raciolinguistic genealogy to analyze individual interview data from eight contemporary student-scholars. In exploring womanist thought as a language-based tool that Black American women can and do draw upon and utilize for liberation, empowerment, and identity formation, I argue that womanist thought is under-articulated within the U.S. higher education system. This under-articulation is due to systemic norms that serve to maintain colonized and anti-Black language perspectives, actions, and behaviors. These norms lead scholars to implicitly or explicitly reject womanist thought as a credible representation of Black womanhood and agency. Based on the findings from this study, I invite Black women who utilize feminist and Black feminist thought to reconsider the power of womanist thought as a form of resistance. It’s less about the word and more about what womanism signifies.
ISBN
9798270204549
Recommended Citation
Morgan, Shante Noel Millercent. (2025). The Roots of Womanism as Identity, Empowerment, and Liberation for Black American Women: Raciolinguistic Genealogical Exploration. CGU Theses & Dissertations, 1058. https://scholarship.claremont.edu/cgu_etd/1058.
