How Black Feminism Takes Place

This dissertation explores how younger generations of Black feminists interpret,
collaborate with, and engage with the ideas and ideals of their so-called "Second Wave"
Black feminist fore-sisters. Many of these women, including Alice Walker, Barbara
Smith, Michele Wallace, bell hooks, Beverly Guy-Sheftall, Angela Davis, and Johnnetta
Cole, remain enormously influential and continue to organize, write, teach, and produce
art and scholarship. The late Audre Lorde, the "black, lesbian, warrior, poet, mother"
who integrally claimed and celebrated all of her differences is arguably one of the
world's most revered and cited Black feminist theorists in this the 86th anniversary of her
birth. Intergenerational Black feminists-and people of all colors throughout the world-
study, celebrate, and teach her words and ideas. Throughout this study, I consider how
Lorde's ideas are a touchstone for intergenerational Black feminist activism and cultural
production in the new millennium. My research lies at the intersection of African
American feminism, cultural studies, Women of Color feminisms, and Black Queer
Studies. I engage with scholarship in the arenas of literary criticism, history, cinema,
visual culture, political science, philosophy, sociology, as well as legal scholars of the
Critical Race Movement. I also consider my own location within this debate.