ABSTRACT
“For the Love of Black Girls” traces the concretization of the field of Black Girlhood Studies from the vantage point of the author. Exposing disciplinary erasure and misogynoir over the past 25 years, Aria S. Halliday explores the stakes and future of Black Girlhood Studies. Halliday thinks with bell hooks’s Bone Black and the work of scholars in education, literary studies, history, anthropology, and other disciplines to consider how theories, archives, and methodologies of Black girlhood can make Black girls’ experiences visible in the past and present. By developing a Black girl epistemological standpoint apart from Black feminist theorizing that focuses on the cultural knowledge and implications of Black girls and Black girlhood as Halliday challenges, we allow Black Girlhood Studies to create spaces of scholarly criticality for the Black girls we were and the Black girls we remain in community with – the intellectual life jacket we need.
