Black Gurl Reliable: Pedagogies of Vulnerability and Transgression

Dominique C Hill

Book cover for Black Gurl Reliable: Pedagogies of Vulnerability and Transgression
Book cover for Black Gurl Reliable: Pedagogies of Vulnerability and Transgression
Book cover for Black Gurl Reliable: Pedagogies of Vulnerability and Transgression
Book cover for Black Gurl Reliable: Pedagogies of Vulnerability and Transgression

Black Gurl Reliable: Pedagogies of Vulnerability and Transgression

Black Gurl Reliable: Pedagogies of Vulnerability and Transgression

Dominique C Hill

Member Benefits

  • 30% Off All Books - Savings that support storytellers, not stock prices.
  • Fight Book Bans - Every membership sends a book to LGBTQ+ youth in affected states.
Member Book Price
$58.25 $40.78
Non-Member Book Price $58.25

An annual membership will be billed at $48/year.

Discount applies to first-time members only. Already a member? Log in here.

View full details

Description

Black Gurl Reliable does the original work of curating Black girls' and women's experiences and experiential knowledge, indexing sociocultural tactics (schooling) that foreclose Black girl aliveness, while advancing embodiment as a key ingredient of Black mattering. Elevating Black Girlhood Studies as an ethos, narratives presented offer redress to inequities and hauntings of race-gender structures of dominance and position Black girls and girlhood as more than lamentation and what happens to the body. Hill solicits the strength and utility of arts-based methods in capturing identity, performance, and experimental design for ephemerality and improvisation. Hill makes clear Black feminism's insistence that knowledge and possibility are produced through the body.

As a means of mitigating the deleterious effects of schooling on Black girls' and women's bodies and making legible the insights and knowledge produced from schooling experiences, Hill introduces the concept of Transgressngroove. This living feminist practice explores the relationships between Black girlhood, education, and the body, as researched for over a decade through workshops, consulting, classrooms, personal development, and other teaching/learning spaces.

About the Author

Dominique C. Hill is an assistant professor of women's, gender, and sexuality studies at Colgate University. She is the co-author with Durell M. Callier of Who Look at Me?! Shifting the Gaze of Education through Blackness, Queerness, and the Body.

Critical Reviews

"In the intersections of a body scholarship and the soul of a personal journey, Dr. Dominique Hill illustrates new insights concerning Black Girlhood and Black Womn's Studies. Here in this book, poetry, dance, the gifts of 'knowing, ' and memory become the urgent and embodied inspiration Black Gurl Reliable. This is a book of distinction and a long-awaited addition to the canon of Feminist and Gender Studies, Performance Studies, Black Studies, Pedagogical Theory, and exercises in liberation."
--DaMaris B. Hill, author of Breath Better Spent: Living Black Girlhood

"Using pedagogy as an entry point, Black Gurl Reliable shows how Black gurls make themselves real in light of oppressive structures. This is indeed an original contribution and does much to advance Black Girlhood Studies."
--Julia S. Jordan-Zachery, author of Erotic Testimonies: Black Women Daring to Be Wild and Free

"In the intersections of a body scholarship and the soul of a personal journey, Dr. Dominique Hill illustrates new insights concerning Black Girlhood and Black Womn's Studies. Here-poetry, dance, the gifts of 'knowing, ' and memory become the urgent and embodied inspiration Black Gurl Reliable. This is a book of distinction and a long-awaited addition to the canon of Feminist and Gender Studies, Performance Studies, Black Studies, Pedagogical Theory, and exercises in liberation."
--DaMaris B. Hill, author of Breath Better Spent: Living Black Girlhood

Publishing Information

Publisher: Vanderbilt University Press
Pub date: 2025-04-30
Length: 250 pages

The Allstora Membership

Membership Perks:

  • Save 30% on all online store purchases
  • Exclusive access to author's content
  • You pay less, but authors still earn double

Membership Terms:

First Month: $0.00
Monthly price: $5.00
  • To access membership discount simply log in and add to cart, discount applied automatically.
  • One month free trial, cancel anytime. Membership renews on the 15th of each month.