Humanities and Social Studies Center, Room N3136
1226 Park St
Grinnell, IA 50112
United States
Tamara Beauboeuf-Lafontant
Louise R. Noun Chair in Gender, Women's and Sexuality Studies
Tamara Beauboeuf-Lafontant (known as “Dr. B” on campus) is a womanist sociologist. She came to Grinnell in fall 2019 and teaches the three core courses (Intro, Theory and Methods, and Senior Seminar) as well as the electives Growing up Girl, Feminist Educations, and Beyond the Little Mermaid: Race, Gender, and the Global Waters. A qualitative researcher, she focuses on Black women’s contemporary and historical acts of self-definition. Her published work has examined Black women’s pedagogy as a form of “politicized mothering,” the embodied costs of being a strong Black woman, and the liberal arts vision of “living abundantly” championed by Lucy Diggs Slowe, the first trained African American student affairs professional. Increasingly interested in higher education histories and narratives of belonging, she is at work on a book manuscript tentatively titled, 'No one’s better than you’: Edith Renfrow Smith and the nurturing of a Black girlhood in a white midwestern town, 1914-1937.
Education and Degrees
Ed.D., Human Development and Psychology, Harvard Graduate School of Education
MA, Africana Studies, Cornell University
AB, English Literature, Bryn Mawr College