Territorialidades de professoras Afrouniversitárias: entre relações de gênero, raça e mobilidade social

Abstract

This work is part of the research project "Afro-descendant Women Professors in Higher Education: Epistemic Voices" and questions how Black women, from urban peripheries and working in higher education teaching at the Federal University of Maranhão (UFMA), especially in the Physical Education course, have occupied these spaces of social prestige with their marginalized territories intersected by the dimensions of race, gender, and social mobility. The general objective of this research is to analyze the marginalized territories of Afro-Brazilian university professors, intersected by the dimensions of race, gender, and social mobility, that traverse their trajectory in higher education teaching. To this end, the specific objectives are: to analyze studies on the presence of Black women in Brazilian higher education teaching, particularly at UFMA (Dom Delgado University City, in São Luís/MA); to understand their marginalized territories within the Physical Education course (UFMA); and to enunciate the achievements, possibilities, and challenges present in these territories. Methodologically, the research employs a qualitative approach anchored in Afrocentric onto-epistemic perspectives, utilizing narrative production in Dialogue Circles, bibliographic research, and a State of the Art type study. The study emphasizes resistance strategies and ways of creating spaces of agency within the academic territory, engaging theoretically with authors such as Guacira Louro (2004), Fúlvia Rosemberg (2013), Heleieth Saffioti (1987), Lélia Gonzalez (2020), Sueli Carneiro (2023), bell hooks (1995), Milton Santos (2006), David Harvey (2008), Tiaraju D’Andrea (2020), Molefi Kete Asante (2009), and Silvio Almeida (2019). The narratives of these teachers demonstrate that their experiences cannot be understood solely through the logic of social vulnerability, but above all through the power of their political, pedagogical, and epistemological actions, which redefine the academic territory and affirm the presence of Black women as producers of knowledge, memory, and societal transformation.