Intimate Scholarship: Ways of Knowing Through Black Feminist Forms
Autor Adena Rivera-Dundasen Limba Engleză Paperback – 22 oct 2026
Refocuses critical attention on how Black feminist scholars experiment with form and embodiment to connect with readers and critique structures of power.
In recent years, scholars have turned to experimentations with form to imbue critiques of power with critiques of genre, discipline, and public accessibility. Yet these forays remain undertheorized. In Intimate Scholarship, Adena Rivera-Dundas proposes that experimental scholarship can perform a kind of intimacy that is enacted through the written form. Drawing on writing that brings together embodied epistemologies and experiential knowledge, she constructs an archive of intimate texts—a kaleidoscopic array of Black feminist output that blends scholarship and creative writing. Writers such as Saidiya Hartman, Claudia Rankine, and Jesmyn Ward articulate political and ethical relationships to privacy and intimacy, thinking through the role their bodies play in making sense of the world and connecting with readers in ways that are both intimate and resistive. Intimacy, defined here as a construction of connection made through the exchange of ideas, is necessary for envisioning a world that centers and celebrates Black life. Inviting readers to reflect and engage in pedagogical exercises throughout, Intimate Scholarship provides a sweeping historical framework for rethinking and reembracing contemporary scholarship.
In recent years, scholars have turned to experimentations with form to imbue critiques of power with critiques of genre, discipline, and public accessibility. Yet these forays remain undertheorized. In Intimate Scholarship, Adena Rivera-Dundas proposes that experimental scholarship can perform a kind of intimacy that is enacted through the written form. Drawing on writing that brings together embodied epistemologies and experiential knowledge, she constructs an archive of intimate texts—a kaleidoscopic array of Black feminist output that blends scholarship and creative writing. Writers such as Saidiya Hartman, Claudia Rankine, and Jesmyn Ward articulate political and ethical relationships to privacy and intimacy, thinking through the role their bodies play in making sense of the world and connecting with readers in ways that are both intimate and resistive. Intimacy, defined here as a construction of connection made through the exchange of ideas, is necessary for envisioning a world that centers and celebrates Black life. Inviting readers to reflect and engage in pedagogical exercises throughout, Intimate Scholarship provides a sweeping historical framework for rethinking and reembracing contemporary scholarship.
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Specificații
ISBN-13: 9780814259993
ISBN-10: 0814259995
Pagini: 172
Dimensiuni: 152 x 229 mm
Greutate: 0.45 kg
Editura: Ohio State University Press
Colecția Ohio State University Press
ISBN-10: 0814259995
Pagini: 172
Dimensiuni: 152 x 229 mm
Greutate: 0.45 kg
Editura: Ohio State University Press
Colecția Ohio State University Press
Recenzii
“Formally inventive and intellectually rigorous, Intimate Scholarship not only theorizes intimacy but enacts it—through its structure, voice, and citational practice. Rivera-Dundas’s methodology, rooted in Black feminist epistemology and postcritique, makes a significant contribution to Black feminist theory, pedagogy, and the study of intimacy in scholarship.” —Marquis Bey, author of Cistem Failure: Essays on Blackness and Cisgender
“Intimate Scholarship is a love letter to Black feminist epistemologies. Rivera-Dundas thoughtfully engages with Black feminist texts ranging from the academic to the speculative, from poetic to fantastical, and from classical to contemporary, while also gesturing to non-Black women of color who share the same epistemological and social justice commitments.” —Victoria Reyes, author of Academic Outsider: Stories of Exclusion and Hope
“A rigorous and loving exploration of Black feminists’ experimentation with form, Intimate Scholarship will inaugurate new conversations about Black feminist writing and knowledge production.” —Jennifer C. Nash, author of How We Write Now: Living with Black Feminist Theory
Notă biografică
Adena Rivera-Dundas is Assistant Professor in the Department of English at Utah State University. Her research can be found in Tulsa Studies in Women’s Literature,Angelaki: Journal of the Theoretical Humanities, and Ecozon@: European Journal of Literature, Culture and Environment[EZ1] , among other venues.
Extras
The affective relationship we have with reading is complex and multifaceted, but it is rarely attributed to scholarly texts. Intimate Scholarship: Ways of Knowing Through Black Feminist Forms celebrates the academic writing we fall in love with, the texts that make us cry, and not from frustration. Intimate Scholarship theorizes modes of intimacy as lessons enacted through the written form and as articulated and demonstrated by Black feminist writers.
This project considers the intimate relationship between academic readers and writers, and how form brings that closeness into being. To construct an archive of intimate texts, I look at writing that brings together embodied epistemologies and intimacy to center experiential knowledge. This project articulates a definition of intimacy as a construction of connection made through the exchange of ideas. I argue that intimacy is necessary for envisioning a world that centers and celebrates Black life. These texts at the center of this study are specifically Black feminist ones, texts that are “beautiful” to use Jennifer Nash’s word, ones that through their form construct and celebrate difference, as Mecca Jamilah Sullivan argues. They are the texts that see theory in the everyday, following Barbara Christian; they are the texts that are erotic in the style of Audre Lorde. The writers examined here articulate political and ethical relationships to privacy and intimacy. They think through the role their bodies play in making sense of the world, and in that thinking, connect with their readers in ways that are both intimate and resistive. I consider embodiment a necessary starting place for knowledge production, not to insist on the distinction between mind and body but to entangle the two.
As scholars enmeshed in the same systems we critique, it is imperative that we acknowledge how generic distinctions and the safeguarding of knowledge production contribute to white supremacy and oppression. This project asks: How does the body reveal knowledge about oppressive structures, and how is that knowledge interpreted? I answer these questions to argue that scholarship incorporating the personal resists academic insistence on distance, generating new ways of knowing informed by a Black feminist mode of interrogation. In this book, I argue for the necessity of constructing genuine connections between readers and writers, connections that will allow us to feel and breathe and think together.
You will notice, however, that I do not do this work myself right away. I will tell you more about myself at the end of this introduction and then again at the end of the book. This partial obscuring of the self, even as I write about the necessity of personal disclosure, is a deliberate choice. I’m invested in centering the words of the writers in my study, and don’t want you to have to read through me to get to them. Even this aside is more than I would like to include, but complete silence about my own embodiment may itself become a distraction as I write about the interior, personal lives of others. I also want to bring to the fore our assumptions about writers through their language, and to invite into your reading practice the questions of who we listen to, why we listen, and what we expect from those voices. Ultimately what I plan to argue here is that the exchange of ideas, the trust that connects people through language, is intimate. I want to hold you close and whisper in your ear and tell you a story about how I see the world.
This project considers the intimate relationship between academic readers and writers, and how form brings that closeness into being. To construct an archive of intimate texts, I look at writing that brings together embodied epistemologies and intimacy to center experiential knowledge. This project articulates a definition of intimacy as a construction of connection made through the exchange of ideas. I argue that intimacy is necessary for envisioning a world that centers and celebrates Black life. These texts at the center of this study are specifically Black feminist ones, texts that are “beautiful” to use Jennifer Nash’s word, ones that through their form construct and celebrate difference, as Mecca Jamilah Sullivan argues. They are the texts that see theory in the everyday, following Barbara Christian; they are the texts that are erotic in the style of Audre Lorde. The writers examined here articulate political and ethical relationships to privacy and intimacy. They think through the role their bodies play in making sense of the world, and in that thinking, connect with their readers in ways that are both intimate and resistive. I consider embodiment a necessary starting place for knowledge production, not to insist on the distinction between mind and body but to entangle the two.
As scholars enmeshed in the same systems we critique, it is imperative that we acknowledge how generic distinctions and the safeguarding of knowledge production contribute to white supremacy and oppression. This project asks: How does the body reveal knowledge about oppressive structures, and how is that knowledge interpreted? I answer these questions to argue that scholarship incorporating the personal resists academic insistence on distance, generating new ways of knowing informed by a Black feminist mode of interrogation. In this book, I argue for the necessity of constructing genuine connections between readers and writers, connections that will allow us to feel and breathe and think together.
You will notice, however, that I do not do this work myself right away. I will tell you more about myself at the end of this introduction and then again at the end of the book. This partial obscuring of the self, even as I write about the necessity of personal disclosure, is a deliberate choice. I’m invested in centering the words of the writers in my study, and don’t want you to have to read through me to get to them. Even this aside is more than I would like to include, but complete silence about my own embodiment may itself become a distraction as I write about the interior, personal lives of others. I also want to bring to the fore our assumptions about writers through their language, and to invite into your reading practice the questions of who we listen to, why we listen, and what we expect from those voices. Ultimately what I plan to argue here is that the exchange of ideas, the trust that connects people through language, is intimate. I want to hold you close and whisper in your ear and tell you a story about how I see the world.
Cuprins
Contents
Introduction Intimate Scholarship and Embodied Epistemologies
Chapter 1 I—Silences That Bend: Jesmyn Ward, Saidiya Hartman, and Rearticulating Silences in Black Feminist Nonfiction
Interstitial Pause 1
Chapter 2 You—“Who do you think you are, saying I to me?”: The Second Person in Kiese Laymon and Claudia Rankine
Interstitial Pause 2
Chapter 3 She/He/They—Black Feminist Fantasy: Patricia Williams’s and Alexis Pauline Gumbs’s Speculative Theory
Interstitial Pause 3
Chapter 4 We— “A ring of women like warm bubbles”: Audre Lorde, Community, and Legacy
Interstitial Pause 4
Coda Me
Acknowledgments
Works Cited
Index
Introduction Intimate Scholarship and Embodied Epistemologies
Chapter 1 I—Silences That Bend: Jesmyn Ward, Saidiya Hartman, and Rearticulating Silences in Black Feminist Nonfiction
Interstitial Pause 1
Chapter 2 You—“Who do you think you are, saying I to me?”: The Second Person in Kiese Laymon and Claudia Rankine
Interstitial Pause 2
Chapter 3 She/He/They—Black Feminist Fantasy: Patricia Williams’s and Alexis Pauline Gumbs’s Speculative Theory
Interstitial Pause 3
Chapter 4 We— “A ring of women like warm bubbles”: Audre Lorde, Community, and Legacy
Interstitial Pause 4
Coda Me
Acknowledgments
Works Cited
Index