Guy-Sheftall’s 1992 article focuses on the rise of black women’s studies as an academic discipline during the last decades of the 20th century. The article includes a bibliographic review of critical works on the topic that have made significant contributions to studying the experience of black women from a historical perspective. The author sheds light on the scientific enterprise about the black women’s literary tradition, which consisted of two phases. In the first phase, scholars sought to address the very existence of the original literary tradition of black female writers. In the second phase, the topic started to be approached more critically. For example, in her article Black Women Image Makers (1974), scholar Mary Helen argues that this literary tradition differs in the particular historical role of women writers and the set of topics they raise. Additionally, the second phase was characterized by the intersection of feminist scholarship and black women’s studies. Particular attention was drawn to the role of gender and sexual exploitation in enslaved communities.
Among the main challenges of the scholarship on black women is the need for equal consideration of gender, race, and class issues. The author highlights that it is not always easy to choose a conceptual framework adequate enough to embrace the multifaceted experience of women of color in America and around the globe. While the dominant approach to studying the experience of black women in the 1990s continued to be feminism, a number of scholars have proposed to revise the “minority group model” (Guy-Sheftall, 1992, p. 37). For example, researcher William Chafe problematized the comparison of the categories of race and argued that white women were far less oppressed throughout their history and had greater access to power.
In the final part of the article, Guy-Sheftall states the unique position of the black women scholarship between black studies and women’s studies. Although the author notes the complexity of the theoretical framework for this topic, its students nevertheless have the advantage to intervene in intersectional studies of race, gender, and class.
Question: How do you think the state of Black Women’s Studies has changed in past decades, and what prospects does the study of race, gender, and class have in the future?
Reference
Guy-Sheftall, B. (1992). Black women’s studies: The interface of women’s studies and black studies. Phylon, 49(1/2), 33–41. Web.