Journeying: Black Girls' Twin Movement through Urban Space​

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Dr. Salas Pujols' current book project "Journeying: Black Girlhood, Movement, and the Refusal of (In)justice" examines how Black girls draw on their movement through and between multiple urban sites to identify and challenge injustice. Using ethnographic data from a 15-month study of 45 high school-aged Black girls in the New York City metro area, the manuscript illustrates how Black girls physically navigate and make meaning (and resist!) the messages imbued in distinct urban sites— theorizing this twin movement as journeying. By focusing on their travels in and out of their kitchen tables, classrooms, daily commutes, and afterschool programs, this research expands our understanding of how Black girls gain the tools to resist the anti-Black girl policies and practices that attempt to govern their lives. Ultimately, it tells the story of how Black youth make sense of, navigate, and challenge urban constraints.  

 

A journal article based on this book project is currently under review. 

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Black Girls Navigating and Confronting Street Harassment

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Dr. Salas Pujols' upcoming research project focuses on the urban and spatial experiences of Black girls in the New York City Metro area. Focusing on Black girls' encounters with street harassment, this work explores how Black girls contend with and strategically navigate catcalling and unwanted gestures in public space. In addition to quantifying and categorizing the frequency and types of street harassment that Black girls encounter as they commute between home and school, this work also traces the consequences of experiencing street harassment on Black girls' educational outcomes. 

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Black Latina Girlhood

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Black Latina girls have much to tell us about Blackness and racialization. Dr. Salas Pujols' existing research (published with Youth & Society) examines the multiple contexts that inform the racialized identities of Afro-Latina girls, highlighting how journeying equips these girls with the ability to reject mestizaje ideology and attach positive meaning to their Blackness. A version of this paper was awarded the Rutgers Sociology Matilda White Riley Qualifying Paper Award (2020) and an honorable mention from the Latino/a/x Sociology Section of the American Sociological Association. 

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