Black Women's Studies

Two of the most significant reforms in U.S. higher education with respect to diversity over the past several decades have come as a result of the Black studies and women's studies movements. Advocates of both movements have argued that the typical college curriculum is based on a worldview that is largely Eurocentric and does not reflect the fact that people of color make up more than half the world's population and that about half the world's population is female. Less well known but also important has been the development of a relatively new field of study—Black women's studies—that emerged in the late 1970s in part because of the failure of both Black and women's studies to adequately address the unique experiences of Black women in the United States and around the globe. In a landmark publication in this newly emerging interdiscipline, All the Women Are White, All the Blacks Are Men, but Some of Us Are Brave: Black Women's Studies (1982), the editors (Gloria T. Hull, Patricia Bell Scott, and Barbara Smith)—all three of whom were Black studies scholars—attempt to define the new concept, trace its development, and provide a rationale for its existence. At its core, Black women's studies is the scholarly investigation of the history, creative/intellectual/political expression, and experiences of this unique segment of the population. It confronts the problem of gender bias in Black studies and race bias in women's studies, and analyzes the myriad ways in [Page 249]which race/gender form an “otherness,” both in relationship to Black men and in relationship to White women. All three of these oppositional movements—Black studies, women's studies, and Black women's studies—call into question the philosophical frameworks and values of the American college curriculum. This entry describes the academic setting within which Black women's studies emerged and examines its evolution as an interdisciplinary field that has transformed the understanding of how race and gender shape the human experience.