Abstract
This paper examines HillmanTok, a digital educational movement that emerged on TikTok in January 2025 as a spontaneous response to escalating political attacks on diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) and the broader erosion of public education in the U.S. Sparked by a viral video from Dr. Leah Barlow, a professor of African American Studies at North Carolina A&T, HillmanTok evolved into an informal, online HBCU where Black professors, scholars, and cultural workers offered free courses. Drawing inspiration from the Black sitcom A Different World, HillmanTok merges popular culture, collective memory, and Black academic labor to build a platform for learning, resistance, and community. Using a Black feminist cultural studies lens and the frameworks of the Black Creative Educational Experience (BCEE), fugitivity, and Afropessimism, this paper analyzes HillmanTok as a site of radical pedagogy and political resistance. It explores how Black creators subverted the capitalist and surveillance structures of TikTok to provide free, culturally grounded education rooted in communal care. It also highlights the movement’s citational praxis, particularly the centering of Dr. Barlow’s labor and the refusal to erase Black women’s intellectual contributions. Through critical discourse analysis and digital ethnography, the paper argues that HillmanTok exemplifies spontaneous digital organizing, Black cultural production, and collective knowledge sharing. It also critically assesses its appropriation by corporate actors like Netflix and TikTok, underscoring patterns of racial capitalism. Ultimately, HillmanTok demonstrates how Black communities mobilize technology and culture to resist state violence, counter misinformation, and reclaim education as a liberatory tool.
Presenters
Javay Frye NekrasovaStudent, Communication & Media Studies PhD, University of Oregon, Oregon, United States
Details
Presentation Type
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session
Theme
KEYWORDS
Cultural studies, Black studies, Social Media, TikTok
