2025 Theses Doctoral

A Seat at Whose Table? Black Excellence Definitions, Experiences, and Mental Health Outcomes for Black American Women in Graduate School

Gordon, Tyner

This study examines Black Excellence as a lived phenomenon among Black American women in graduate school, exploring how they define, experience, and navigate its complexities within social and academic spaces, and in their personal lives and histories. While Black Excellence is widely celebrated, existing frameworks—such as Du Bois’ (1903) Talented Tenth and contemporary social narratives—often reinforce hyper-resilience and exceptionalism, failing to capture the intersectional and deeply personal realities of those who embody it.

Using phenomenology as the method of hermeneutic inquiry and Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (IPA) for data analysis, this study centers participants' voices, allowing them to articulate their own meanings of success, identity, and resilience (Smith et al., 2009). Through in-depth interviews and a visual categorization task, findings revealed that Black Excellence seemed to operate as a multi-dimensional phenomenon shaped by three core themes: intersectionality, collectivism, and resilience.

Participants described the complexity of their intersecting racial and gender identities, the communal nature of their success, and the evolving definition of resilience beyond struggle toward sustainability and self-preservation. Findings highlight the need for future scholarship to examine how Black Excellence can be redefined to center authenticity, rest, and communal care. Implications for education, mental health, and policy emphasize the importance of fostering environments that honor and sustain Black women’s success without reinforcing the burdens of hyper-performance.