Water in the Well: Lowering and Lifting Georgia Jeanes Teachers' Pedagogical Theories Through Archival Recovery, 1908–1968

Brittney Kilgore

This dissertation recovers the intellectual labor of Georgia Jeanes Teachers, rural African American women educators who developed sophisticated pedagogical strategies under Jim Crow. It does so through a methodological framework I term speculative nonfiction, developed to examine fragmented and incomplete archival records that must be read across dispersed and heterogeneous sources, particularly in relation to rural African American women educators. Jeanes Teachers’ archival traces appear across institutional records in fragmented form and are shaped by intersecting conditions of race, gender, and geography that contribute to their invisibility as pedagogical actors. Existing methodologies cannot adequately account for this form of archival fragmentation. Speculative nonfiction responds to this challenge by reconstructing evidence across dispersed repositories through five principles: multi-repository saturation, triangulation across networked sources, pattern analysis across comparable cases, reflexive positionality, and clear distinction among documented, inferred, and speculative evidence. Grounded in Black feminist theory, critical rural theory, and social network analysis, this three-manuscript dissertation argues that Georgia Jeanes Teachers practiced what I call double curricular consciousness: the simultaneous engagement with state-mandated curricula for formal oversight while embedding community-defined liberatory content within those same lessons. Rural material conditions, including agricultural economies, dense kinship networks, church infrastructures, and intensified surveillance, shaped the contexts in which this pedagogy developed. This research makes three contributions: it introduces speculative nonfiction as a methodological protocol for analyzing fragmented archival records; it positions rural African American women educators as pedagogical theorists; and it translates recovered practices into conceptual frameworks for contemporary educators navigating curriculum standardization and political constraints that echo earlier regimes of surveillance.

About Brittney Kilgore

Brittney Kilgore is a first-generation scholar from the state of Georgia and a doctoral candidate in education whose research examines the intellectual and pedagogical labor of Black women educators in rural communities, with a particular focus on the Jeanes Teachers of the American South (1908–1968). Grounded in Black feminist theory and critical rural theory, her work investigates how race, gender, and place shaped supervisory practices and community-based educational models that extended learning beyond the classroom into the broader social life of rural Black communities. Her scholarship centers archival recovery as both a methodological practice and an interpretive stance, examining how Black women educators’ labor, leadership, and intellectual contributions become fragmented, obscured, or underrecognized within dominant historical narratives. Through engagement with dispersed and underutilized archives, she develops interpretive approaches for reading educational labor across incomplete records and institutional silences. She introduces speculative nonfiction as a methodological framework for working across these fragmented histories while maintaining clarity around documented, inferred, and interpretive claims. Kilgore previously served as a University Supervisor at the University of Georgia, where she supported teacher candidates in clinical practice and instructional development. She is also a proud member of Delta Sigma Theta Sorority, Incorporated. Her experiences as an educator, mentor, and supervisor continue to shape her commitments to equity-centered teaching and community engagement. Outside of her academic work, Kilgore finds joy in baking and roller skating, practices that reflect her appreciation for creativity, rhythm, and care beyond the archive and classroom. In all, she is committed to connecting historical inquiry with contemporary educational practice, offering insights for equity-oriented supervision, culturally responsive pedagogy, and community-centered approaches to teaching and leadership.