A Song For Her: Visions and Tools for a Black Girl Abolitionist Future

Pharren Miller

With current pushes for police abolition both in and out of the academy, how we re-envision and rebuild our current world where everyone's needs are met, that de-centers punishment and harm comes to center stage. This dissertation draws on five years of ethnographic participant observation, in-depth interviews, and life history interviews at a 6-12th-grade school in South Central Los Angeles, as part of an ongoing abolitionist project, to examine the carcerality that Black girls face in schools and how we can form a Black girl abolitionist future. My dissertation focuses on how carcerality exists even in a school where police are abolished, how Black women acting as enactors and resistors of carcerality for Black girls are shaped by their experiences in girlhood, and how Black girls work alongside others in the schools to find pockets of abolition. This dissertation contributes to the literature on Black feminist theory, Black girlhood studies, race and schooling, carcerality, and abolition to showcase the ways antiBlack gendered violence makes room for carcerality even in spaces that claim to be rooted in abolition and restorative justice. I also explore how a Black majority-run school can still create carceral spaces for Black girls. I use the carceral reality of Black girls in the school also to explore how we can truly rebuild schooling to ensure Black girls' needs are met, to create a Black girl abolitionist future.

About Pharren Miller

Pharren Miller (she/her) is a PhD candidate in the Sociology department at the University of California, Los Angeles. Her research interests include Black feminist theory, Black girlhood studies, education, carcerality, and abolition. She uses ethnographic observations, in-depth interviews, and life histories to examine the experiences of Black girls in schools. Ultimately, she explores if/how we can truly rebuild schooling to ensure Black girls' needs are met through an abolitionist framework. Her work has been supported by the American Educational Research Association, the University of California Office of the President, the UCLA Center for the Study of Women|Streisand Center, and the W.M. Keck Foundation. Her writing has been published in leading academic journals, including Gender & Society and Youth Justice. She engages general audiences through op-ed writing, published most recently in Spark Magazine. Before pursuing her PhD, she received a BA in Political Science and African American Studies from Howard University and her MA in Sociology from UCLA. Outside of academia, Pharren DJs and writes music.