Research as Play Womanist Theology and the Liberation of Library Research

Abstract

This essay explores how a womanist theology of play can reimagine librarianship as a sacred, generative, and embodied practice. Drawing from personal experiences in librarianship and divinity school, it challenges dominant epistemologies that frame research as rigid and exclusionary, inviting instead curiosity, joy, and expanded ideas of meaning-making. Womanist thought, rooted in the lived experiences of Black women, reveals how systems of knowledge often privilege objectivity over imagination and marginalize relational, intuitive, and spiritual ways of knowing. The author engages scholars like Lakisha R. Lockhart Rush to argue for research as play—defined by attraction, improvisation, and freedom—as a liberative act. By embracing playful, interdisciplinary methods, libraries can become spaces of moral formation and intellectual vitality that invite exploration, risk, and wholeness. This vision affirms the power of play to challenge the limits of academic structure and create conditions for wonder and renewal.