BF Theories
This framework describes a critical awareness developed by Black women that centers their lived experiences, collective struggle, and resistance to intersecting systems of oppression.
Black Feminist Consciousness
Grounded in the politics of appearance, which highlights how power operates through hair texture and color, this legislation was passed to prohibit discrimination based on natural hairstyles commonly associated with Black identity.
The Crown Act
This social media platform appears across multiple course readings as a key digital counter-public space where Black feminist discourse, activism, and cultural critique are produced and circulated.
Before Rosa Parks, this 15-year-old refused to give up her seat on a Montgomery bus, making her one of the earliest figures to challenge segregation in public transportation.
This politician became the first Black woman to seek the presidential nomination of a major party, running as “unbought and unbossed” and representing New York in Congress
Shirley Chisholm
This analytical framework explains how overlapping systems of oppression, such as race, gender, and class, interact to shape lived experiences and inequalities.
Black women politicians have found particular electoral success not only locally, but in these districts, where racial demographics create conditions that can support their pathways to political office.
Majority-minority districts
This film producer and studio owner is critically examined in Misogynoir Transformed for his reliance on stereotypical portrayals of Black women, sparking debate about representation and respectability politics.
Tyler Perry
This prominent Black feminist scholar critiqued Beyoncé’s feminist messaging, controversially arguing that aspects of her work could function as a “cultural terrorist” influence on young Black girls.
bell hooks
This voting rights activist and leader in the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party challenged the all-white Mississippi delegation at the 1964 Democratic National Convention, and also brought national attention to racialized medical violence after she was subjected to a forced sterilization
Fannie Lou Hamer
This concept refers to stereotypical representations (e.g., Mammy, Jezebel) that are used to justify and maintain Black women’s oppression.
Controlling images
Scholars like Wendy Smooth argue that Black women reject single-axis frameworks, using this policy area to argue that there are intersecting impacts of race and gender, rather than solely racial-specific outcomes.
Criminal Justice Policy
This artist has been central to discussions of gendered violence, respectability politics, and body politics, particularly in the public response to her experience with violence and her unapologetic expression of sexuality.
Megan Thee Stallion
This influential Black feminist poet, who was medically considered “legally blind”, taught herself to read at the age of four.
Audre Lorde
This legal scholar brought national attention to workplace sexual harassment during her 1991 testimony against Supreme Court nominee Clarence Thomas, reshaping public discourse on gender and sexual harrasment in the workplace.
Anita Hill
This framework describes strategies Black women used to obscure aspects of their private lives in order to resist sexual exploitation, assert respectability, and protect the image of the Black community.
Politics of dissemblance
As Black counter-public spaces, these organizations serve as sites of community, leadership development, and political mobilization, helping to shape the trajectories of figures like Stacey Abrams, Kamala Harris, and Shirley Chisholm.
Divine Nine Sororities
Name a contemporary pop artist whose work engages body politics. Recall and recite a lyric that resonates or responds to this framework..
Megan Trainor
Megan Thee Stallion
India Aire
Beyonce
This birth control advocate, nominated numerous times for the Nobel Peace Prize, remains a controversial figure, with Black feminist scholars critiquing her legacy in relation to reproductive justice and eugenics.
Margaret Sanger
This U.S. congresswoman and former activist has used her own birthing experiences to testify before Congress on the Black maternal health crisis, highlighting systemic racism in healthcare and advocating for policy change.
Cori Bush
this framework describes how race operates as a central organizing framework: a prism through which other social categories like gender, class, and sexuality are understood and given meaning in the United States.
Metalanguage of race
Black feminist scholars critique this 1965 government document, authored by a prominent sociologist and Politician, as an key example of narratives that pathologize Black women and the Black family.
The Moynihan Report
In her analysis of Black sexual politics, Patricia Hill Collins examines this hip hop group to explore tensions around obscenity, censorship, and the protection of Black women and girls.
2 Live Crew
This legal scholar and Black feminist theorist, known for works like Killing the Black Body, has also written about her own family history, raising critical questions about her father’s lifelong research on interracial marriage and whether such relationships themselves can meaningfully disrupt systemic racism..
Dorothy Roberts
Her 1944 abduction and gang rape in Alabama—and the national campaign for justice that followed, helped lay the groundwork for later mass protests, including the Montgomery Bus Boycott.
Recy Taylor