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Empowered Presence: Theorizing an Afrocentric Performance of Leadership by African American Women

Wamble-King, Sharon
http://orcid.org/0000-0001-8500-9781
http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=antioch1689063931670778

Abstract Details

2023, Ph.D., Antioch University, Leadership and Change.
There is a paucity of theorizing concerning leadership enactments performed by African American women. The performances have been marginalized and obscured within the Western leadership canon as they fall outside its epistemological boundaries; they have also been sidelined within Critical Leadership Studies. This study employed Afrocentricity as a decolonizing paradigm and Africology as the research methodology to describe and define a leadership phenomenon enacted by African American women. Setting aside Western conceptions of leadership, focus groups of African American women examined video excerpts of Africana women’s oral performances through an Africological lens. Participants’ Afrocentric-oriented perceptions sparked collective storytelling and Meaning-Making regarding their lived experiences of African American women who mobilize and energize others employing spiritually-anchored, embodied, affective approaches to engagement. Centering the African American women’s culturally distinct ways of being, knowing, and doing, the participants’ collective narratives were used to identify the four elements of the leadership phenomenon which included: spirituality, knowing, orality, and embodiment. A framework emerged from the data reflecting the interconnected, interrelated, interdependent, Afro-circular dynamism of the enactment’s elements and their characteristics; it served as the foundational architecture upon which to construct a theory of Empowered Presence, a culturally-distinct, spiritually-anchored, holistically-embodied performance of galvanizing, mobilizing, and engaging others within the collective. This study not only expands Western leadership theorizing but provides the groundwork for Afrocentric researchers to enhance decolonizing approaches to investigate African American women’s leadership within a Africological methodological framework. This dissertation is available in open access at AURA (https://aura.antioch.edu/) and OhioLINK ETD Center (https://etd.ohiolink.edu).
Donna Ladkin, PhD (Committee Chair)
Philomena Essed, PhD (Committee Member)
Chellie Spiller, PhD (Committee Member)
210 p.
African American Studies; Communication; Gender Studies; Spirituality; Womens Studies
Leadership; African American women; decolonizing; spirituality; worldview; Afrocentricity; Africology; embodiment; symbolic imagery; Nommo; Ubuntu

Recommended Citations

Citations

  • Wamble-King, S. (2023). Empowered Presence: Theorizing an Afrocentric Performance of Leadership by African American Women [Doctoral dissertation, Antioch University]. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=antioch1689063931670778

    APA Style (7th edition)

  • Wamble-King, Sharon. Empowered Presence: Theorizing an Afrocentric Performance of Leadership by African American Women. 2023. Antioch University, Doctoral dissertation. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center, http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=antioch1689063931670778.

    MLA Style (8th edition)

  • Wamble-King, Sharon. "Empowered Presence: Theorizing an Afrocentric Performance of Leadership by African American Women." Doctoral dissertation, Antioch University, 2023. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=antioch1689063931670778

    Chicago Manual of Style (17th edition)

antioch1689063931670778
149
© 2023, all rights reserved.
This open access ETD is published by Antioch University and OhioLINK.