{"id":{"repo_id":"uiuc","oai_identifier":"oai:www.ideals.illinois.edu:2142/115899"},"canonical_url":"https://search.dev.ndltd.org/etd/uiuc/oai:www.ideals.illinois.edu:2142/115899","repository":{"repo_id":"uiuc","name":"University of Illinois - Urbana-Champaign","base_url":"https://www.ideals.illinois.edu/oai-pmh"},"display":{"title":"“Call me African”: Black women and diasporic cultural feminism in Chicago, 1930-1980","abstract":"Submission published under a 24 month embargo labeled 'Closed Access', the embargo will last until 2024-08-01","abstract_html":"Submission published under a 24 month embargo labeled 'Closed Access', the embargo will last until 2024-08-01","abstract_has_math":false,"creators":["Hagedorn, Olivia M"],"institution":"University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign","degree_name":"Ph.D.","degree_level":"Dissertation","degree_discipline":"History","degree_department":null,"school":null,"contributors":["McDuffie, Erik S","Oberdeck, Kathryn J","Asaka, Ikuko","Burton, Antoinette","Hertzman, Marc A"],"advisors":[],"committee_chairs":[],"committee_members":[],"year":2022,"date_issued":"2022-08","date_published":"2022-08","updated_at":"2026-07-22T22:24:55Z","subjects":["African Diaspora","Black Women","Gender","African American Midwest"],"languages":["en","eng"],"rights":["Copyright 2022 Olivia Hagedorn"],"rights_urls":[],"identifier_entries":[]},"links":{"outbound_url":"https://hdl.handle.net/2142/115899","outbound_label":"Handle","outbound_source":"dc:identifier"},"metadata_groups":[{"id":"people","label":"People","entries":[{"key":"dc:contributor","label":"Contributor","values":["McDuffie, Erik S","Oberdeck, Kathryn J","Asaka, Ikuko","Burton, Antoinette","Hertzman, Marc A"]},{"key":"dc:creator","label":"Author","values":["Hagedorn, Olivia M"]}]},{"id":"academic_context","label":"Academic Context","entries":[{"key":"dc:date","label":"Dc Date","values":["2022-08","2022-07-08"]},{"key":"dc:type","label":"Dc Type","values":["text","Thesis"]},{"key":"thesis:degree_discipline","label":"Discipline","values":["History"]},{"key":"thesis:degree_level","label":"Degree Level","values":["Dissertation"]},{"key":"thesis:degree_name","label":"Degree Name","values":["Ph.D."]},{"key":"thesis:institution_name","label":"Thesis Institution Name","values":["University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign"]}]},{"id":"subjects_keywords","label":"Subjects and Keywords","entries":[{"key":"dc:subject","label":"Dc Subject","values":["African Diaspora","Black Women","Gender","African American Midwest"]}]},{"id":"language_rights","label":"Language and Rights","entries":[{"key":"dc:language","label":"Dc Language","values":["en","eng"]},{"key":"dc:rights","label":"Dc Rights","values":["Copyright 2022 Olivia Hagedorn"]}]},{"id":"identifiers","label":"Identifiers","entries":[{"key":"dc:identifier","label":"Identifier","values":["https://hdl.handle.net/2142/115899"]}]},{"id":"additional","label":"Additional Metadata","entries":[{"key":"dc:description","label":"Description","values":["Submission published under a 24 month embargo labeled 'Closed Access', the embargo will last until 2024-08-01","The student, Olivia Hagedorn, accepted the attached license on 2022-07-07 at 16:44.","The student, Olivia Hagedorn, submitted this Dissertation for approval on 2022-07-07 at 16:56.","This Dissertation was approved for publication on 2022-07-08 at 12:15.","DSpace SAF Submission Ingestion Package generated from Vireo submission #18176 on 2022-11-16 at 10:18:00","“Call Me African”: Black Women and Diasporic Cultural Feminism in Chicago, 1930-1980 offers the first sustained history of diasporic cultural feminism in twentieth-century Chicago by chronicling the lives of four African American women: Margaret Burroughs, Gwendolyn Brooks, Christine Johnson, and Val Gray Ward. These women formed the nucleus of a thriving community of African American women cultural workers who claimed Blackness on a global stage. Together, they used cultural politics and the arts—namely public history, education, visual art, writing, and performance—to challenge white supremacy, disrupt masculinism within global Black liberation movements, and build community among African-descended women worldwide. These efforts transformed the US Midwest into a vital and dynamic center of diasporic feminist thought and protest. Indeed, Chicago Black women’s cultural productions not only reflected the Midwest’s connections to the worldwide African diaspora; they ultimately produced those connections. In telling this history, this dissertation deepens our understanding of the myriad ways Chicago Black women used history, art, and culture to link local structures to world politics. “Call Me African” rethinks the histories of Black Chicago, the African diaspora, and Black radicalism by appreciating Chicago as a distinct site of diasporic feminist activism. I introduce this concept to denote the transnational and feminist dimensions of these women’s lives and activism. These women consistently rejected perceptions of Black women as intellectually inferior and sexually promiscuous; they contested heteronormative social conventions and practices of respectability; they challenged the patriarchal structures of prominent Black organizations; and they sought to empower other women across the African diaspora. Through these efforts, diasporic cultural feminists exposed the moral depredations undergirding imperialism, gender oppression, nuclear armament, and global racial capitalism. Incorporating materials from more than fifteen archives in the United States and the United Kingdom, “Call Me African” locates the expressive arts as repositories of diasporic thought and provides a model for understanding less commonly studied geographic sites across the African diaspora. This dissertation extends the geographical scope of the African diaspora to include the Midwest, positions Black women as progenitors of Black internationalist and Pan-Africanist thought, appreciates the importance of space and place to the formation of diasporic politics, and reinterprets Chicago’s history through diasporic and feminist lenses. This study also raises questions about the ethical implications of historical inquiry by highlighting how constructions of race, gender, and sexuality inform archival representation. Finally, this project provides powerful lessons for understanding the Midwest’s centrality to global Black Lives Matter protests. As trailblazers of their day, Chicago’s Black women internationalists anticipated this moment by daring to imagine that another world was possible."]},{"key":"dc:format","label":"Dc Format","values":["application/pdf"]},{"key":"dc:title","label":"Title","values":["“Call me African”: Black women and diasporic cultural feminism in Chicago, 1930-1980"]}]}],"canonical_facts":{"dc:contributor":["McDuffie, Erik S","Oberdeck, Kathryn J","Asaka, Ikuko","Burton, Antoinette","Hertzman, Marc A"],"dc:creator":["Hagedorn, Olivia M"],"dc:date":["2022-08","2022-07-08"],"dc:description":["Submission published under a 24 month embargo labeled 'Closed Access', the embargo will last until 2024-08-01","The student, Olivia Hagedorn, accepted the attached license on 2022-07-07 at 16:44.","The student, Olivia Hagedorn, submitted this Dissertation for approval on 2022-07-07 at 16:56.","This Dissertation was approved for publication on 2022-07-08 at 12:15.","DSpace SAF Submission Ingestion Package generated from Vireo submission #18176 on 2022-11-16 at 10:18:00","“Call Me African”: Black Women and Diasporic Cultural Feminism in Chicago, 1930-1980 offers the first sustained history of diasporic cultural feminism in twentieth-century Chicago by chronicling the lives of four African American women: Margaret Burroughs, Gwendolyn Brooks, Christine Johnson, and Val Gray Ward. These women formed the nucleus of a thriving community of African American women cultural workers who claimed Blackness on a global stage. Together, they used cultural politics and the arts—namely public history, education, visual art, writing, and performance—to challenge white supremacy, disrupt masculinism within global Black liberation movements, and build community among African-descended women worldwide. These efforts transformed the US Midwest into a vital and dynamic center of diasporic feminist thought and protest. Indeed, Chicago Black women’s cultural productions not only reflected the Midwest’s connections to the worldwide African diaspora; they ultimately produced those connections. In telling this history, this dissertation deepens our understanding of the myriad ways Chicago Black women used history, art, and culture to link local structures to world politics. “Call Me African” rethinks the histories of Black Chicago, the African diaspora, and Black radicalism by appreciating Chicago as a distinct site of diasporic feminist activism. I introduce this concept to denote the transnational and feminist dimensions of these women’s lives and activism. These women consistently rejected perceptions of Black women as intellectually inferior and sexually promiscuous; they contested heteronormative social conventions and practices of respectability; they challenged the patriarchal structures of prominent Black organizations; and they sought to empower other women across the African diaspora. Through these efforts, diasporic cultural feminists exposed the moral depredations undergirding imperialism, gender oppression, nuclear armament, and global racial capitalism. Incorporating materials from more than fifteen archives in the United States and the United Kingdom, “Call Me African” locates the expressive arts as repositories of diasporic thought and provides a model for understanding less commonly studied geographic sites across the African diaspora. This dissertation extends the geographical scope of the African diaspora to include the Midwest, positions Black women as progenitors of Black internationalist and Pan-Africanist thought, appreciates the importance of space and place to the formation of diasporic politics, and reinterprets Chicago’s history through diasporic and feminist lenses. This study also raises questions about the ethical implications of historical inquiry by highlighting how constructions of race, gender, and sexuality inform archival representation. Finally, this project provides powerful lessons for understanding the Midwest’s centrality to global Black Lives Matter protests. As trailblazers of their day, Chicago’s Black women internationalists anticipated this moment by daring to imagine that another world was possible."],"dc:format":["application/pdf"],"dc:identifier":["https://hdl.handle.net/2142/115899"],"dc:language":["en","eng"],"dc:rights":["Copyright 2022 Olivia Hagedorn"],"dc:subject":["African Diaspora","Black Women","Gender","African American Midwest"],"dc:title":["“Call me African”: Black women and diasporic cultural feminism in Chicago, 1930-1980"],"dc:type":["text","Thesis"],"thesis:degree_discipline":["History"],"thesis:degree_level":["Dissertation"],"thesis:degree_name":["Ph.D."],"thesis:institution_name":["University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign"]},"updated_at":"2026-07-22T22:24:55Z"}