The (Im)Poster Child
Understanding Black Collegiate Women’s Identity Development at HBCUs and PWIs through Popular Culture
Abstract
Popular culture is a powerful site through which Black collegiate women interpret race, gender, and institutional belonging, yet higher education scholarship rarely treats visual media as a serious analytic resource. This essay analyzes two contemporary television series, All American: Homecoming (Carroll et al., 2022–2024) and Grown-ish (Anderson et al., 2018–2024), as cultural texts that illuminate the racialized and gendered identity development of Black women at historically Black colleges and universities (HBCUs) and predominantly White institutions (PWIs). Drawing on Patterson’s (2016) progression to womanhood framework, Clance and Imes’ (1978) imposter phenomenon, and Black feminist media scholarship, we show how institutional context shapes the protective resources Black collegiate women can access, and how popular culture both reflects and complicates those structures. We close with theoretical, policy, and practice implications that move beyond individualized accounts of self-doubt toward structural and culturally affirming responses.
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