Date of Award
Doctor of Social Work (DSW)
Global critical race feminism (GCRF) is a complex theory situated in legal scholarship that emerged from critical race feminism (CRF) at the end of the twentieth century to address the legal concerns of foreign-born women of color both in the United States and abroad. For nearly two decades, GCRF and CRF have not only been influential in the legal profession but have impacted other disciplines’ understanding of women’s multiple intersecting identities within a larger psychosocial context, including education, public policy, human rights, psychology, and liberal arts. Despite GCRF’s applicability in a variety of contexts, GCRF has not previously been applied to the field of social work. Although social work has spent the last few decades developing a discourse around feminist theories and multicultural competencies to meet the needs of the diverse populations of women who are served by the field, there remains a gap in the literature and research specifically to meet the rapidly evolving needs of some of the most vulnerable and oppressed populations of women with whom social workers currently engage in direct practice: foreign-born women who are survivors of trauma and torture. Through a review of the literature, this dissertation offers a multi-paper examination that 1) introduces GCRF to social work’s theory building and epistemology and 2) provides a conceptual framework for the integration of GCRF into direct practice to meet the needs of foreign-born women who are survivors of trauma and torture.
Goldberg, Carly, "Locating Women's Global Narratives and Local Needs in Our Own Backyard: Global Critical Race Feminism for Direct Social Work Practice" (2012). Doctorate in Social Work (DSW) Dissertations. Paper 19.