Öffentlicher Gastvortrag: Becoming Edith Renfrow - Snapshots of an affirmed early 20th century Black girl

Dr. Tamara Beauboeuf-Lafontant vom Grinnell College (Iowa/USA) hält am Donnerstag, 21. März, um 15 Uhr einen öffentlichen Gastvortrag an der Pädagogischen Hochschule Karlsruhe. Der Eintritt ist frei. Der Titel ihres englischsprachigen Vortrags lautet "Becoming Edith Renfrow: Snapshots of an affirmed early 20th century Black girl".

Zum Vortrag

"Edith Renfrow Smith (1914-present) is a 109-year-old elder, who was born and raised in Grinnell, Iowa. Despite growing up during the Great Depression, in one of the few Black families in a majority white rural midwestern town, she aspired to attend Grinnell College and in 1937, she became her alma mater’s first Black alumna.

In this presentation, I offer an analysis of the experiences that empowered the then teenage Edith Renfrow to “recruit myself” to her hometown’s college. Drawing on several life history interviews Mrs. Renfrow Smith has given over the last 40 years and a set of amateur snapshots from her family album and school yearbooks, my talk emphasizes the following: the consequential affirmation Edith Renfrow received in her family home; the long-forgotten opportunities for school-age girlhood that existed in Grinnell and across the US in the 1920s and 1930s; and the importance of Black family memories and artifacts as sources of historical understanding."

Infos zu Edith Renfrow:

• https://edithrenfrowsmith.sites.grinnell.edu/

• https://magazine.grinnell.edu/news/new-residence-hall-naming-honors-edith-renfrow-smith

• https://grinnell.lib.ia.us/renfrow-story/

Zur Vortragenden

"Tamara Beauboeuf-Lafontant joined the faculty of Grinnell College in Fall 2019 as the Louise R. Noun chair in Gender, Women’s, and Sexuality Studies. A qualitative sociologist and scholar of racialized gender, she has long explored the ways Black girls and women forge identities that broaden their sense of personal and collective possibility. She is the author of two books – Beyond the mask of the strong Black woman: Voice and the embodiment of a costly performance (2009), and To live more abundantly: Black collegiate women, Howard University, and the audacity of Dean Lucy Diggs Slowe (2022) – as well as several articles. Known as Dr. B on her campus, she has spent the last three years heading up Team Renfrow, a group of Grinnell College students, alumni, and townspeople focused on researching the life and ongoing significance of Edith Renfrow Smith. She is working on a book about the girlhood and college years of Edith Renfrow."