My dissertation examines the diasporic cultural feminism of four black Chicago women—Margaret Burroughs, Gwendolyn Brooks, Val Gray Ward, and Christine Johnson X—from the Chicago Black Renaissance of the 1930s and 1940s through the Black Arts Movement of the 1960s and 1970s. As friends and collaborators, these four women formed the nucleus of a thriving community of black women cultural workers in Chicago.  Together, they forged a distinct diasporic cultural politics during the early and mid-twentieth century.

In chronicling the lives of these women, my dissertation deepens our understanding of the myriad ways black women grafted African-American history, art, and culture onto a larger map of diasporic belonging and production in Chicago. At the same time, my dissertation illuminates the gendered contours of these women’s diasporic freedom dreams, and it provides a theoretical and empirical template for appreciating the distinct ways in race, space, place, gender, and class have shaped diasporic communities and politics in the American Heartland.