Applying Intersectional Research Practice
By Sydney Graham
Well, another summer season has come and gone. As I sit writing to you from a Columbia, Missouri coffee shop, I cannot help but transport myself to the streets of Washington, D.C. I lived and worked there for two and a half years, and October was my favorite time. It is around this time the leaves begin to change, and fewer tour company shuttles fill the streets of the National Mall. The lines to enter the museums are also shorter, which was something that I personally appreciated. It was usually in October that I would return to perusing sacred museum spaces with ease and leisure.
In addition to my love of adventuring through museums, I also served as the Social Media Specialist at one of the newest museums in the city, Museum of the Bible. Museum of the Bible opened in 2017 and has six floors of exhibit space. Three of those floors are permanent exhibitions: the History of the Bible, the Stories of the Bible, and the Impact of the Bible. Its mission? To invite all people to engage with the transformative power of the Bible.
Between my work and the accessibility of other well-esteemed educational institutions, my love for museums blossomed over the two and a half years that I lived there. I learned about historical figures, stories, and histories previously unknown to me. I loved the creative storytelling in exhibitions, and I appreciated their use of space. They were places that I deeply trusted. I never asked any questions.
Today, as a first-year doctoral student in communication, I find many similarities between museum exhibitions and higher education. In my doctoral program, specifically, my peers and I are constantly encouraged to challenge master narratives, question research notions, find gaps in scholarship, and become attune to oppressive social structures, particularly through an intersectional framework. I am learning to be critical and to critique.
It is becoming clear to me that academia is not always fair to its subjects or the stories it tells. Histories are erased, stories are warped, and people are silenced. Structural, cultural, disciplinary, and interpersonal domains of power saturate time and space (Collins & Bilge, 2020). If I have learned anything in the last two months as a doctoral student, it is to trust less the social norms and narratives.
As I grapple with the concept of intersectionality and attempt to pry my eyes open to the systems of oppression that have benefitted me for so long (a White straight woman from an upper-middle class family), I can’t help but reflect the conversations from my classrooms and the critiques of academia to the museum spaces I once wandered. Voices are left out and looked over in academia. They must be left out and looked over in museums too.
I was inspired by questions posed by Flores (2019) for the academic community. She asks, “How have historic moments, movements and/or trends shaped intersectional research?” and “How might normative frames of social identities, such as gender or race, shape the ways scholars theorize intersectionality?” (p. 405). I then ask:
How might we apply this question to other academic and educational institutions such as museums? Is it equally important that the same frames of which we craft intersectional scholarship and theory be reflected in the stories we tell in our museum spaces?
Further:
What do the stories told in Museum of the Bible’s Impact of the Bible exhibition reflect about our culture’s affinity for White heteronormativity, and the “White Jesus” narrative?
Lisa Flores, Hana Masri, Kesha James, Sylvanna Falcón, Jennifer Nash, Julia Wood and Bernadette Calafell are just a few of the scholars that critique the use of intersectional frameworks in academia. In this letter, I intend to apply Lisa Bowleg’s tools for conducting intersectional research to the stories in Museum of the Bible’s Impact of the Bible in America exhibition.
The Reversal of an Additive Approach: The Breaking Apart of Identities
For the questions I asked above, I turned to Lisa Bowleg’s article, “When Black + Lesbian + Woman ≠ Black Lesbian Woman: The Methodological Challenges of Qualitative and Quantitative Intersectionality Research” (2008). This article has been a game-changer for me. It specifically challenges previous ways of analyzing, measuring, and interpreting data and calls for an intersectional approach.
As she brings to attention, when measuring identities in research, we traditionally ask people to be additive – to select their race, sex, sexual orientation, etc. – as though each of these acts independently. It is as though our identities can be ranked in importance. This additive approach, as Bowleg argues, removes sociohistorical and cultural contexts that bring the fullness of life to the stories of the research participants. Instead, we should consider the unmeasurable to be “one of the most substantial tools of the intersectionality researcher” (p. 322).
So how does this relate to Museum of the Bible and the Impact of the Bible Floor?
In the following video, the museum discusses the Bible’s impact on Martin Luther King Jr. and Billy Graham.
As I watched the video with Bowleg’s article in mind, it became clear to me that additive approaches to identity were recognizable outside of academia. Through the additive framework Bowleg (2008) uses in her article, the identities as portrayed in the video are broken down as this:
For Martin Luther King, Jr.:
Black
Civil Rights Leader/committed to racial justice
Baptist Minister
For Billy Graham:
White
Committed to racial justice
Baptist Minister
Martin Luther King Jr. and Billy Graham, therefore, are described by three identities. Two of which they have in common (committed to racial justice and Baptist minister) and one identity which is different (race). The goal of the video is to show commonality between the two – that they relate to one another. As I read through the lines as a former employee (with the knowledge that the audience of this video is an evangelical White upper-middle class individual), my interpretation of the video is: Martin Luther King Jr. is like us White people. This, to me, was a clear example of the danger of additive identities. The sociohistorical and cultural contexts are disregarded. Cultural differences between Graham and King are suppressed, further contributing to the oppression of diverse stories as warned by intersectional ideas.
So what?
The intersectional tools provided by Bowleg are necessary not just for research knowledge but can and should be used when crafting narratives in other educational spaces. The cultural domains of power (Collins & Bilge, 2020) displayed in this video assume Martin Luther King Jr. and Billy Graham share many similarities (including prejudice, mentioned at 0:57). This is a deceiving attempt to separate and individualize sociohistorical and cultural contexts of Martin Luther King Jr.’s stories, as is like the additive approach Bowleg (2008) describes. The norm of additive identities in research reflects the social norms that view people’s identities as separate –neglecting context. If we do this to the strongest of Black leaders and historical figures at well-respected educational institutions, we are surely leaving behind the voices of those suffering from the overlapping systems of oppression. Instead, to further the need for intersectional frameworks, may we recognize how narratives are separated to make people and their stories more relatable to and comfortable for White people. Maybe then will be able to better acknowledge the structures (both big and small, in museums and in scholarship) that uphold overlapping systems of oppression.
Moment of Reflection
I will leave you with a letter I once saw at the Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery in Washington, D.C. The letter was written by feminist Rita Mae Brown to other feminists. She writes:
Dear Sisters,
Feminist art is when your mirrors become windows.
Kisses and Revolution,
Rita Mae Brown
As I grapple to understand intersectional concepts of race, gender, class and others, it is my hope that my mirrors become windows. May that be for you too.
Sincerely,
Sydney Graham
References
Bowleg, L. (2008). When Black + Lesbian + Woman ≠ Black Lesbian Woman: The Methodological Challenges of Qualitative and Quantitative Intersectionality Research. Sex Roles, 59(5), 312-325. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11199-008-9400-z
Collins, P. H., & Bilge, S. (2020). Intersectionality (2nd ed.). Polity Press.
Flores, L. A. (2019). At, of, and beyond the intersections. Women’s Studies in Communication, 42(4), 405-407. https://doi.org/10.1080/07491409.2019.1682913.
