Black women improvisations: shifting methodological (mis)understandings within and across boundaries

Abstract

In this special issue, entitled “Black women Improvisations: Shifting Methodological (Mis)understandings within and Across Boundaries,” we feature five articles that demonstrate how Black women as researchers, theorists, and/or research participants (re)locate themselves as outsiders-within qualitative research traditions. Authors ponder Black women's interconnectivity as a methodological framing to illuminate how dominant qualitative research at times has been incommensurable, insufficient, and hostile to Black women and women of color. Often performing improvisations, free-styles, and cyphers, Black women's interconnectivity opens ways of knowing and understanding the (im)possibilities of qualitative methodologies that have remained underexplored or dismissed as non-scholarly.

Keywords:

• Black women
• improvisation
• interconnectivity
• Black feminism

Disclosure statement

No potentialconflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Venus E. Evans-Winters

Dr. Venus E. Evans-Winters is a Senior Researcher at the African American Policy Forum, and Director of Planet Venus Institute.