Philesha Colquitt

This project focuses on Black Queer rural folks in the American South. The research question that guides this work is: what is the lived experience of Black Queer folks in the rural South as it relates to accessing care in domestic spaces and places such as healthcare settings (clinics, hospitals, therapy)? Furthermore, this research asks: How does accessing care or a lack of care impact finances, partnerships, communal integration, personal well-being, and familial relationships? This research utilizes an intersectional framework (Crenshaw 1991) to interrogate the notion of “realness” (Mock 2014; Bailey and Richardson 2019) in the rural South for Black Queer folks and the ways realness has tensions with notions of care (domestic and institutional). This work argues that Black Queer folks in the rural South can muddle the rural southern Black common sense (known and circulated communal understandings and meanings) and the heteronormative gender common sense (individuals should be cisgender and heterosexual, which are seen as normative ways of being) if it suits the (Black) rural lifestyle. This work is possible with the guidance of PI Bret Gustafson, mentor Stephanie Andrea Allen and the Black Lesbian Feminist Press, mentor Jayme N. Canty and her Black Queer southern work Snapping Beans, and lastly this project’s collaboration with the Deep South Queer history non-profit organization The Invisible Histories Project.