Dream a Little [STEAM] of Me

The underrepresentation of Black women in STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) is a significant concern in the United States. Researchers assert that racist stereotyping combined with the lack of access, cultural responsiveness, and intersectional representations within STEM education are key factors that limit Black girls’ capacity to dream of, or aspire toward, STEM futures. To disrupt the notion that STEM is white male property, this study foregrounded the digital multimodal compositions that two Black adolescent girls composed as dreamers of STEAM career futures – professions that fuse the arts with STEM fields. Themes derived from Afrofuturist feminist readings of the digital multimodal compositions demonstrated how girls moved beyond revising STEM trajectories that privilege middle-aged white men to redefining the ways Black girls’ intersectional identities and their professional work are envisioned more expansively as STEAM futures. Findings are significant for understanding how Black girls creatively leveraged images and words to critique U.S. sociohistorical and STEM professional contexts in their digital multimodal compositions, and author new dreams for their scientific and personal futures, providing implications for supporting adolescent Black girls’ STEAM career aspirations and dreams.