Peer Reviewed Articles by Sherell A McArthur
Media culture is exploitative and damaging. It reinforces both racist and sexist stereotypes, whi... more Media culture is exploitative and damaging. It reinforces both racist and sexist stereotypes, which places Black young women's unique racialized gender in a position to be overidentified in derogatory ways. The bodies of Black young women, as an example, are labeled with social stigmas that make them identifiable to society at large as deficient. Furthermore, their lives have been devalued and dehumanized in the public eye as their stories are often left untold, falsely reported, or overlooked in the wider media landscape. Using qualitative interview methods, we examine the current state of Black girlhood and womanhood and the racism that pervades their lives in the United States. With this backdrop, we also investigate the ways in which Black young women have responded with their writings when we, as Black women researchers, created spaces for them to use language to fight back and resist assaults against their humanity. Specifically, we illustrate the historical literacy practice of (re)claiming print authority through writing and how Black young women used their pens as a means to claim authority of language in ways to assert their voices, ideals, and truths. We conclude with a discussion of how educators can advance print authority within learning spaces for identity meaning making and empowerment so that Black girls and young women have an expressed voice in our current social and political context.
Urban Education , 2020
Media culture is exploitative and damaging. It reinforces both racist and sexist stereotypes, whi... more Media culture is exploitative and damaging. It reinforces both racist and sexist stereotypes, which places Black young women's unique racialized gender in a position to be overidentified in derogatory ways. The bodies of Black young women, as an example, are labeled with social stigmas that make them identifiable to society at large as deficient. Furthermore, their lives have been devalued and dehumanized in the public eye as their stories are often left untold, falsely reported, or overlooked in the wider media landscape. Using qualitative interview methods, we examine the current state of Black girlhood and womanhood and the racism that pervades their lives in the United States. With this backdrop, we also investigate the ways in which Black young women have responded with their writings when we, as Black women researchers, created spaces for them to use language to fight back and resist assaults against their humanity. Specifically, we illustrate the historical literacy practice of (re)claiming print authority through writing and how Black young women used their pens as a means to claim authority of language in ways to assert their voices, ideals, and truths. We conclude with a discussion of how educators can advance print authority within learning spaces for identity meaning making and empowerment so
The International Journal of Critical Media Literacy , 2019
In the current sociopolitical climate, children, often, bear witness to the levels of vitriol in ... more In the current sociopolitical climate, children, often, bear witness to the levels of vitriol in this country. It has become more imperative that elementary classroom teachers disrupt normative discourses. Therefore, the author suggests critical media literacy as a significant pedagogical practice to utilize in order to do so. In this article, the author articulates the importance of employing critical media literacy in the elementary classroom to deconstruct the diversity of tense relations in the u.s. and provide a language for students to articulate their identities and experiences. Through her experiences in elementary classrooms, as a teacher and a teacher-educator, the author provides practical examples of how to disrupt normative discourses by utilizing critical media literacy.
Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy , 2019
Writing alongside 12 African American Muslim girls, we led a summer literacy program in an effort... more Writing alongside 12 African American Muslim girls, we led a summer literacy program in an effort to understand how Black Muslim adolescent girls write about their identities and ideas. The 4-week
literacy program was designed to engage and support Black Muslim girls, aged 12–17 years old, in reading, writing, and understanding the multiple contexts that inform their worlds. The girls received
writing instruction connected to their experiences and identities in an environment that afforded them time to represent their situated worlds of being Black, Muslim, and girls in the United States. In this qualitative inquiry, we investigated the following research question: How would Black Muslim girls write to encourage a future generation to navigate multiple identities? The participants penned letters to a future generation of African American Muslim girls. Drawing upon methods of thematic
analysis, we found that themes of sisterhood and unity, shattering misrepresentations, empowerment, strength through faith, knowledge (education), and speaking up and fighting for rights emerged. These
themes indicate the messages Muslim girls write are indicative of the multiple identities they navigate and speaks to how they would encourage youth who share their complex racialized-gender religious
identities, as well as the need to open the conversation on Black education to center both Black girls and Black Muslim girls.
Price-Dennis, D., Muhammad, G. E., Womack, E., McArthur, S.A. & Haddix, M. (2017). The multiple identities and literacies of Black girlhood: A conversation about creating spaces for Black girl voices. Journal of Language and Literacy Education, 13(2), 1-18. In light of the current assaults on Black girls in and out of schools across the nation, K-12 edu... more In light of the current assaults on Black girls in and out of schools across the nation, K-12 educators need to understand a more complete vision of the identities these girls create for themselves and the literacies and practices needed to best teach them. In this article a collective of Black female scholars addresses how gender construction and the literacy experiences of Black adolescent females are supported by their interactions with and engagements in community-and school-based programs that center on the literacy needs and interests of Black adolescent females. The authors draw on their collective yet individual experiences as Black women scholars and teachers to share ways to transform the identity development of Black adolescent females within and beyond official school contexts. Implications are provided for educators in creating legitimate spaces for Black girls to express their voices, perspectives and ways engage in multiple acts of literacies.
This work argues for an approach to research and education practices that considers the historica... more This work argues for an approach to research and education practices that considers the historically deficit-based research practices and views on Black girls and develops humanizing research methods that consider the multiple oppressions that act as barriers for this group. Research must acknowledge the precarious position of Black girls in order to adequately address their needs and inform policy around Black girl achievement.We contend, along with Ruth Nicole Brown (2009), that the research process needs to celebrate Black girls as much as it works to relieve the social, political, and economic challenges they navigate. Through a series of vignettes, the authors explain how relationships, a
regard for being, and voice offer methods for humanizing educational research with Black girls.
Despite the largely degrading media representations of Blackness, historically, Black girls and w... more Despite the largely degrading media representations of Blackness, historically, Black girls and women have been strong activists, disrupting narratives the media conveys about Black girl- and
womanhood. Centering Black girls’ lived experience through critical media literacy can give them the opportunity to develop the language to identify, deconstruct, and problematize the complexity of power operating in media and negotiate visibility by counternarrating racist, sexist, and classist media narratives with authentic stories of Black girlhood. This article centralizes Black girls in media literacy by articulating the aims of the individual and collective endeavors of the Black Girls’ Literacies Collective (BGLC). The author unpacks critical media literacy for classroom teachers and shares practical ways to employ media literacy for youth social activism to alter the educational
landscape to effect change.
Multicultural Perspectives, 2015
Those born between 1965 and 1984, the first hip hop generation, have entered adulthood and middle... more Those born between 1965 and 1984, the first hip hop generation, have entered adulthood and middle age and now have children impacted by musical content and imagery that also influenced them (Kitwana, 2002). Further, while young people all over the world today identify with and use popular culture to define themselves, this is so for hip hop’s second generation of African American hip hop youth as well as their parents. This description of the problem addresses the socialization messages African American female adolescents receive, the hip hop cultural movement as an educative site, and the role of parents and educators in countering the dominant scripts and facilitating media literacy among African American adolescent females.
Hip hop is now intergenerational, for many of the millennial generation, their parents, and possibly their grandparents, listen to the music. Further, these parents engage with hip hop media through multiple television shows and films which have been created by the mainstream corporate media. As hip hop is becoming more pervasive, and the attempts to appropriate this cultural movement and endorse monolithic representations of Black women and men, attention must be called to the ways in which our youth create authentic selves. Research must examine how Black women and girls move beyond the limited imagery of them presented in the media. It also needs to explore how young Black women, involved in the cultural movement of hip hop, create and sustain positive self-identity while consuming monolithic and misogynistic messages in hip hop media. Examples of these monolithic messages include: sexually immoral, overly aggressive, angry, loud, and on welfare.
This study examined the role of parents in the education and socialization of Black girls and their resistance to hip hop media influence, an undertheorized area of research. Understanding how girls experience their education and social development requires that we examine youth culture, opportunities for family and school collaboration, and new possibilities for teacher education, as contemporary adolescents continue to construct themselves within their cultural communities outside the classroom.
By exploring the relationship dynamics and levels of dialogue between seven African American adolescent girls and their “parent”—which refers to anyone who maintains the emotional consideration of the child involved—it was evident that parents engage with hip hop media by listening to the music and watching television shows and music videos. However, the ways in which they engage their daughters in dialogue pertaining to the messages within hip hop media is sporadic and suggests the need for parents to become media literate. The implications of this study suggest the need for the creation of collaborative and emancipatory spaces for Black girls, media literacy education for parents, and culturally relevant pedagogy. African American adolescent girls’ ability to decode and make meaning of messages in hip hop media have great implications on multiple forms of literacies and youth’s ability to have both critical reading and writing skills.
Haddix, M., McArthur, S. A., Muhammad, G. E., Price-Dennis, D. & Sealey-Ruiz, Y. (2016). At the Kitchen Table: Black Women English Educators Speaking Our Truths. English Education, 48(4), 380-395. In this Provocateur Piece, the authors featured in the themed issue re-create a virtual kitchen t... more In this Provocateur Piece, the authors featured in the themed issue re-create a virtual kitchen table talk where they dialogue across their respective work as English teacher educators and scholars who foreground Black feminist/womanist epistemologies in their personal, social, and professional lives. They discuss what it means to be Black women, mothers, sisters, and daughters who do work with Black girls in K–12 educational settings and Black women in teacher education. Why is it critical that all educators acknowledge Black girls’ literacies in their work? How are Black girls’ literacies honored in our work? What does it mean for us as Black women educators to do this work? How does it enrich our lives? What are the challenges? The piece ends with an open letter to Black girls as an affirming call for their reclaiming and redefining of their literate selves.
Book Reviews by Sherell A McArthur
Review of "Hear Our Truths: The Creative Potential of Black Girlhood" by Ruth Nicole Brown
Book Chapters by Sherell A McArthur
McArthur, S.A. (2018). “’My Sister, Myself’: Why the Miseducation of Black girls requires spaces and places for their healing.”
In M.B. Sankofa Waters, V.E. Evans-Winters, and B.L. Love (Eds.) Celebrating Twenty Years of Black Girlhood: Lauryn Hill Reader (pp. 101-111). New York, NY: Peter Lang Publishing
In 1998, Lauryn Hill penned the lyrics to the song named after the album The Miseducation of Laur... more In 1998, Lauryn Hill penned the lyrics to the song named after the album The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill that discussed her miseducation and illustrates her growth and inspiration:
My world it moves so fast today. The past it seems so far away.
And life squeezes so tight that I can't breathe. And every time I've tried to be
what someone else thought of me, so caught up, I wasn't able to achieve.
Over 15 years later, working with eight Black girls, the author led a 14 week critical media literacy collective with the intention of providing an avenue for them to voice and write about ways in which their real lives disrupt the dominant narrative presented by the media. Sy, a 17 year old member of the collective, penned a poem entitled My Sister, Myself about her own miseducation, growth and inspiration through sisterhood that include the following stanzas:
Tightly wrapped around me are my little brother’s cries, my step dad’s lies and my mothers in denial that those lies and cries don’t exist.
Stitched into this tightly wrapped garment are all the nobody’s who convinced me they were somebody so I could invest my lunch money in them, that I decided to bare it all for, the friends the very people who were there for me only when being there benefited their presence. . . .
The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill, serves as a mirror and reflection for Black girls; a reflection of ourselves and a mirror of our experiences. Hill’s album was a place for her to heal and share her experiences to help others. Comparatively, the critical media literacy collective, Beyond Your Perception (BYP), became a similar space and place for high school girls. There are few spaces—the spatial configuration of an area (Piasecka, 2014; Thompson, Russell, & Simmons, 2014)—or places—the meaningfulness of that space (Cook, 2005; Kitto, Nordquist, Peller, Grant & Reeves, 2013; Schwartz, 2013)—for Black girls to make meaning of the everyday; to decode the messages they read from the world around them as text, contextualize and decontextualize their lived experiences, society, and how and where they fit within it, to resist the dominant narrative about Black girlhood, and to recover from the unique experiences their racialized-gender create. Hill’s album was a coming of self relaying stories of heartbreak, love, the pregnancy of her first child, and reflections from her childhood while comparatively Sy’s poem details her own trials and tribulations through childhood, trauma, and finding herself through the sisterhood BYP fostered.
This chapter explores and discusses the concepts of space and place in the context of Hill’s album, broadly, and the song named after the album, more specifically, contextualizing Hill’s departure from the Fugees and the solo album juxtaposed with a narrative of Sy’s life. A critical discourse analysis (Fairclough, 2003, 2006) of the lyrics from Hill’s song The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill and Sy’s poem My Sister, Myself will highlight the importance of creating space and place for Black girls; of becoming undone and whole again.
Womanist Hip Hop Pedagogy: Creating Collaborative Kinship Spaces for Black Girls
In L. Maparyan (Ed.) Womanist Rising; Womanist Studies is Here! Chicago, IL: University of Illinois Press. , 2020
Working with seven African American high school girls in an early college program at an urban res... more Working with seven African American high school girls in an early college program at an urban research university, the author developed a critical media literacy collaborative toward the ends of exploration of personal identity and representations of African American women in the media. In working with these girls I proffer a space of hip hop Womanism as Womanism seeks to expand the discussion on oppressions and identities. Hip hop Womanism views the issues of hip hop beyond the battles of the sexes and gender wars, and highlights oppressions within the cultural movement like colorism, body size, and the commodification of hip hop. The curriculum of the critical media literacy collaborative—situating the historical antisexist and antiracist struggles of Black women within a hip hop framework—is Womanist Hip Hop Pedagogy. I designed this collaborative with a particular curriculum set to discuss Black girls perceptions of how Black girls and women are portrayed in the media as well as the history underlying many contemporary tropes. I designed the curriculum to consider the multifaceted nature of our racialized-gender identities and the manifestations of representations in the media. I was intentional in sharing my experiences and stories to add to the collaborative; providing an avenue for these Black girls to voice the ways in which their real lives disrupt the dominant narrative presented by the media. In so doing, we were able to create a collaborative kinship space that allowed us all to reflect, share, and to question who we were and who we wanted to be. This critical media literacy collaborative utilized hip hop pedagogy with Black girls who engaged in, were influenced by, and constructed racialized-gender identities through hip hop media. In this way, we extended both culturally relevant pedagogy and Womanism into a Womanist Hip Hop Pedagogy.
Dissertation by Sherell A McArthur
This study is situated at the nexus of three bodies of literature and research and sought to cont... more This study is situated at the nexus of three bodies of literature and research and sought to contribute to all three: the socialization of Black girls, hip hop as a pedagogical tool and critical media literacy. My research explored how might the Black parent-daughter relationship serve as a vehicle by which the girls come to know, submit to, and/or resist the stereotypical images prevalent in the hip-hop culture? I co-created a critical media literacy collective with high school, African American girls where we explored personal identity development in relationship to representations of African-American women in the media through my interactions with the girls in the collective, named Beyond Your Perception (BYP). Through this collective, the primary data sources were qualitative interviews, focus groups, and documents. A thematic analysis revealed Black girls represent the dominant narratives within the cultural movement of hip hop by ascribing to cultural mores like fashion trends, hairstyles and language. They also consciously choose to resist the stereotypical imagery (e.g., loud, angry, sexually loose, etc.) and are able to compose powerful counter-narratives to the monolithic depictions of Black women in the media. By examining the data it was evident that parents engage with hip hop media by listening to the music and watching television shows and music videos, however the ways in which they engage their daughters in dialogue pertaining to the messages within hip hop media is sporadic and suggests the need for parents to become media literate. The implications of this study suggest the need for the creation of collaborative and emancipatory spaces for Black girls, media literacy education for parents, and culturally relevant pedagogy.
Papers by Sherell A McArthur
Kitchen Table Talks
Black Girls’ Literacies, 2021
Pens Down, Don’t Shoot: An Analysis of How Black Young Women Use Language to Fight Back
Urban Education, 2020
Media culture is exploitative and damaging. It reinforces both racist and sexist stereotypes, whi... more Media culture is exploitative and damaging. It reinforces both racist and sexist stereotypes, which places Black young women’s unique racialized gender in a position to be overidentified in derogatory ways. The bodies of Black young women, as an example, are labeled with social stigmas that make them identifiable to society at large as deficient. Furthermore, their lives have been devalued and dehumanized in the public eye as their stories are often left untold, falsely reported, or overlooked in the wider media landscape. Using qualitative interview methods, we examine the current state of Black girlhood and womanhood and the racism that pervades their lives in the United States. With this backdrop, we also investigate the ways in which Black young women have responded with their writings when we, as Black women researchers, created spaces for them to use language to fight back and resist assaults against their humanity. Specifically, we illustrate the historical literacy practice ...
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Peer Reviewed Articles by Sherell A McArthur
literacy program was designed to engage and support Black Muslim girls, aged 12–17 years old, in reading, writing, and understanding the multiple contexts that inform their worlds. The girls received
writing instruction connected to their experiences and identities in an environment that afforded them time to represent their situated worlds of being Black, Muslim, and girls in the United States. In this qualitative inquiry, we investigated the following research question: How would Black Muslim girls write to encourage a future generation to navigate multiple identities? The participants penned letters to a future generation of African American Muslim girls. Drawing upon methods of thematic
analysis, we found that themes of sisterhood and unity, shattering misrepresentations, empowerment, strength through faith, knowledge (education), and speaking up and fighting for rights emerged. These
themes indicate the messages Muslim girls write are indicative of the multiple identities they navigate and speaks to how they would encourage youth who share their complex racialized-gender religious
identities, as well as the need to open the conversation on Black education to center both Black girls and Black Muslim girls.
regard for being, and voice offer methods for humanizing educational research with Black girls.
womanhood. Centering Black girls’ lived experience through critical media literacy can give them the opportunity to develop the language to identify, deconstruct, and problematize the complexity of power operating in media and negotiate visibility by counternarrating racist, sexist, and classist media narratives with authentic stories of Black girlhood. This article centralizes Black girls in media literacy by articulating the aims of the individual and collective endeavors of the Black Girls’ Literacies Collective (BGLC). The author unpacks critical media literacy for classroom teachers and shares practical ways to employ media literacy for youth social activism to alter the educational
landscape to effect change.
Hip hop is now intergenerational, for many of the millennial generation, their parents, and possibly their grandparents, listen to the music. Further, these parents engage with hip hop media through multiple television shows and films which have been created by the mainstream corporate media. As hip hop is becoming more pervasive, and the attempts to appropriate this cultural movement and endorse monolithic representations of Black women and men, attention must be called to the ways in which our youth create authentic selves. Research must examine how Black women and girls move beyond the limited imagery of them presented in the media. It also needs to explore how young Black women, involved in the cultural movement of hip hop, create and sustain positive self-identity while consuming monolithic and misogynistic messages in hip hop media. Examples of these monolithic messages include: sexually immoral, overly aggressive, angry, loud, and on welfare.
This study examined the role of parents in the education and socialization of Black girls and their resistance to hip hop media influence, an undertheorized area of research. Understanding how girls experience their education and social development requires that we examine youth culture, opportunities for family and school collaboration, and new possibilities for teacher education, as contemporary adolescents continue to construct themselves within their cultural communities outside the classroom.
By exploring the relationship dynamics and levels of dialogue between seven African American adolescent girls and their “parent”—which refers to anyone who maintains the emotional consideration of the child involved—it was evident that parents engage with hip hop media by listening to the music and watching television shows and music videos. However, the ways in which they engage their daughters in dialogue pertaining to the messages within hip hop media is sporadic and suggests the need for parents to become media literate. The implications of this study suggest the need for the creation of collaborative and emancipatory spaces for Black girls, media literacy education for parents, and culturally relevant pedagogy. African American adolescent girls’ ability to decode and make meaning of messages in hip hop media have great implications on multiple forms of literacies and youth’s ability to have both critical reading and writing skills.
Book Reviews by Sherell A McArthur
Book Chapters by Sherell A McArthur
My world it moves so fast today. The past it seems so far away.
And life squeezes so tight that I can't breathe. And every time I've tried to be
what someone else thought of me, so caught up, I wasn't able to achieve.
Over 15 years later, working with eight Black girls, the author led a 14 week critical media literacy collective with the intention of providing an avenue for them to voice and write about ways in which their real lives disrupt the dominant narrative presented by the media. Sy, a 17 year old member of the collective, penned a poem entitled My Sister, Myself about her own miseducation, growth and inspiration through sisterhood that include the following stanzas:
Tightly wrapped around me are my little brother’s cries, my step dad’s lies and my mothers in denial that those lies and cries don’t exist.
Stitched into this tightly wrapped garment are all the nobody’s who convinced me they were somebody so I could invest my lunch money in them, that I decided to bare it all for, the friends the very people who were there for me only when being there benefited their presence. . . .
The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill, serves as a mirror and reflection for Black girls; a reflection of ourselves and a mirror of our experiences. Hill’s album was a place for her to heal and share her experiences to help others. Comparatively, the critical media literacy collective, Beyond Your Perception (BYP), became a similar space and place for high school girls. There are few spaces—the spatial configuration of an area (Piasecka, 2014; Thompson, Russell, & Simmons, 2014)—or places—the meaningfulness of that space (Cook, 2005; Kitto, Nordquist, Peller, Grant & Reeves, 2013; Schwartz, 2013)—for Black girls to make meaning of the everyday; to decode the messages they read from the world around them as text, contextualize and decontextualize their lived experiences, society, and how and where they fit within it, to resist the dominant narrative about Black girlhood, and to recover from the unique experiences their racialized-gender create. Hill’s album was a coming of self relaying stories of heartbreak, love, the pregnancy of her first child, and reflections from her childhood while comparatively Sy’s poem details her own trials and tribulations through childhood, trauma, and finding herself through the sisterhood BYP fostered.
This chapter explores and discusses the concepts of space and place in the context of Hill’s album, broadly, and the song named after the album, more specifically, contextualizing Hill’s departure from the Fugees and the solo album juxtaposed with a narrative of Sy’s life. A critical discourse analysis (Fairclough, 2003, 2006) of the lyrics from Hill’s song The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill and Sy’s poem My Sister, Myself will highlight the importance of creating space and place for Black girls; of becoming undone and whole again.
Dissertation by Sherell A McArthur
Papers by Sherell A McArthur