“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
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.
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.
Contents
ContentsIntroduction 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
