A SONG FOR HER

My dissertation, A Song For Her: Visions and Tools for a Black Girl Abolitionist Future, has been awarded five dissertation fellowships, including the National Academy of Education/ Spencer Dissertation Fellowship, the American Association of University Women American Dissertation Fellowship, the American Educational Research Association Minority Dissertation Fellowship in Education Research Award, the Haynes Lindley Doctoral Dissertation Fellowship, and the UCLA Center for the Study of Women|Streisand Center Jean Stone Dissertation Research Fellowship. Specifically, my dissertation uses 5 years of ethnographic observations and semi-structured, in-depth interviews with students, administrators, faculty, and staff at a majority-minority middle school in South Central Los Angeles. I examine 1) how Black girlhood in schools offers critical knowledge on oppression at the intersections of race, gender, and age, 2) how carcerality exists in schools even with the implementation of restorative justice and abolitionist programs, and 3) how Black girls, alongside others in the schools, still work to practice abolition. My dissertation contributes to the literature on Black feminist theory, Black girlhood studies, race and schooling, carcerality, and abolition by showing how anti-Black gendered violence creates space for carcerality even in spaces that claim to be rooted in abolition and restorative justice. I use the carceral reality of Black girls in the school also to explore how we can truly rebuild schooling to ensure Black girls' needs are met. The first chapter of my dissertation has been published in Gender & Society and received the American Sociological Association’s Children and Youth Section Outstanding Graduate Student Paper Award.