#BLACKGIRLSOUTH examines the literary, geographic, and [counter]cultural (sub/countercultural) relationship between Black girlhood, Southern geographies, and Black girl futures. In this dissertation, I put forth Southern Black Girl Geographies as both a framework and methodology. As a framework, it centers Black girlhood in the lens of the "Quare Black South". As a methodology, it ascertains the contingencies of Black girls' past, present, and future possibilities of self-mapping and narration of their lived experiences. As framework and methodology, Southern Black Girl Geographies engages multiple ways of knowing, doing, and being and expands our understanding of Black girls as engaged knowledge and culture producers. Within this study, I interrogate the consequences and possibilities of reading both the South and Black girls as "queer/Quare" spaces through which we theorize our lives. This project uses 20th and 21st-century literature to center the South as a critical geography where Black girl identities are formed and to unpack the South as a site of oppression and cultural liberation.
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