Embodied Resonance: Using Movement Based Practice to Critically Engage Black Girlhood and K-12 Public Education

In the United States children spend anywhere from nine to thirteen years in school. During this time, children experience some of their most developmentally formative years of their life, which is often characterized as adolescence. For many Black girls in school, this period of adolescence is often where they learn about how their racial and gender identity can affect their everyday life. From teachers who refuse to pronounce their Black girl students’ names correctly to statewide legislation that specifically prohibit the teaching on race and slavery, schools become a space where Black girls begin to receive negative messages about their race. This study constitutes a practice-based mode of inquiry, called Embodied Resonance, into Black girl hood and offers an artistic research project to address the negative impact that the process of racialization has on Black girls. The outward facing outcome of this process was a Marade, the combination of a March and a Parade, that shared the Embodied Resonance practice publicly on the Abele Quad on Duke University’s west campus. During this process, I, along with three first-year Black girl Duke students, explore our past experiences as high schoolers and start to uncover the ways in which we have became who we are today.