Nishaun T. Battle, Ph.D., was born and raised in Southern California and earned her Doctorate in Sociology with concentrations in Criminology and Social Inequality and a certificate in Women’s Studies in at Howard University. She is an Assistant Professor of Criminal Justice at Virginia State University, in Petersburg, Virginia. She is a scholar–artist activist whose research explores lived and historical experiences of resistance by Black girls, community activism, and State violence.
This transformative text illustrates Nishaun Battle's strength as a scholar-activist, forging a path for academics, practitioners, and activists to connect historical trajectories of pain with contemporary struggles, nuancing Black girls' rage and joy. In this way, Battle maps these racialized and gendered practices stemming from the Reconstruction era to explicating these subtle machinations of White supremacy in the current context of racialized, hypercriminalization of Black girls. Battle explores these practices as historically, politically, socially, and culturally rooted within plantation violence, but aestheticized in new ways with each revolving loop of state sanctioned violence - continuing the trap of Black girls as cogs in our (in)justice system. Evoking Black feminism, intersectionality, Crunk feminism, critical race theory, critical historiography, and other radical foundations, Black Girlhood, Punishment, and Resistance pushes forward a framework Battle terms Historical Intersectional Criminology, propelling us towards intersectional futures, with her pedagogical prowess, incorporating an interdisciplinary, intersectional, framework grounded in self-reflection. - Kishonna Gray-Denson, Assistant Professor in Communication and Gender and Women's Studies at the University of Illinois at Chicago Nishaun Battle continues efforts to inform history of the role played by African Americans in the establishment of juvenile institutions for youth of color. With particular attention to the Black women who led the battle and the Children, boys AND girls, who benefitted by being separated from adult offenders Dr. Battle has contributed to lifting the veil and expanding the conversation. Moreover, the focus on Janie Porter provides additional insight into the delicate balance that African American reformers had to walk to move forward with their efforts to improve the condition of African American youth in the juvenile justice system. - Vernetta Young, Professor of Criminology in the Department of Sociology and Criminology at Howard University Nishaun Battle has identified an important and largely overlooked case that allows for a direct thread to current treatment of Black women/girls in the justice system. - Katheryn Russell-Brown, Levin, Mabie & Levin Professor and Director of the Center for the Study of Race and Race Relations at the University of Florida, Levin College of Law