Dr. Venus E. Evans-Winters Keynote at TQR 2021 Conference

Dr. Venus E. Evans-Winters is a Senior Researcher at the African American Policy Forum, a former Professor of Education, and founder of Planet Venus Institute. She is also a clinical psychotherapist in private practice. Her research interests are educational policy analysis, racial trauma inside and outside of schools, and Black girls’ and women’s psychosocial development across the African Diaspora. Dr. Evans-Winters is the author of “Black Feminism in Qualitative Inquiry: A Mosaic for Writing Our Daughter’s Body” and “Teaching Black Girls: Resilience in Urban Schools”. She is co-editor of the books, “Black Feminism in Education: Black Women Speak Up, Back, & Out”, “Celebrating Twenty Years of Black Girlhood: The Lauryn Hill Reader”, and “(Re)Teaching Trayvon: Education for Racial Justice and Human Freedom”. She is also the author of numerous academic journal articles and book chapters. This invitee to President Obama’s special convening on “The State of Research on Girls and Women”, has served youth and young adults in the U.S., Ghana, West Africa, and South Africa.
Keynote
Black Feminism in Qualitative Inquiry: Rites, Rituals, and Meaning-Making in Front Porch Politics
In this presentation, Dr. Venus Evans-Winters raises the question, "Research for who and research for what?" and "Who gets to be the knower and who gets to be known?" Dr. Evans-Winters will discuss how daughters of the Diaspora make-meaning out of our scientific pursuits in a social-political economy that actively ignores and erases the knowledge claims of Black people and women. During a moment when people are socialized to engage in and be complicit in the commodification of knowledge, Black women, Indigenous women, and other racially minoritized women are beginning to question, expose, and resist racial and gender epistemicide. In this conversation, Dr. Evans-Winters discusses her own coming to consciousness about epistemological apartheid. Furthermore, she discusses how daughtering unveils the possibilities of qualitative research as a rite of passage and as ritual work when pursued as both a racial justice endeavor and a cultural imperative. Throughout the presentation, Dr. Evans-Winters creates a mosaic for understanding how Black women's and girls' individual agency and shared collective wisdom serve as tools of resistance against historical and contemporary forms of epistemological (and psychological) erasure.