This dissertation introduces the Kitchen Scholar Framework (KSF) as both a theoretical and methodological intervention to challenge dominant epistemic structures. By centering Southern Black grandmothers as intellectuals—kitchen scholars—KSF disrupts knowledge hierarchies that have historically excluded vernacular, relational, and embodied forms of theorizing. Drawing from Black Feminist Autoethnography, oral history, and critical epistemology, this study engages Antonio Gramsci’s concept of organic intellectuals, Gayatri Spivak’s critique of epistemic violence, and Patricia Hill Collins’ theorization of Black women’s knowledge production. While these frameworks highlight structural barriers to recognizing subaltern voices, they stop short of offering epistemic justice. KSF advances beyond critique, proposing a framework grounded in embedded reflexivity, amplification over translation, collaborative knowledge production, and authorship as intellectual recognition.In collaboration with oral narratives from Kitchen Scholars Hattie Belle Jones, Luvenia McFadden, Lena Jenkins, and Mattie Jewel Lane, this study examines how storytelling, carework, love as praxis, and spiritual ways of knowing operate as intellectual practices. These vernacular epistemologies—grounded in iterative observation, communal validation, and ethical deliberation—mirror but remain distinct from formal academic methodologies. Rather than viewing Southern Black grandmothers as passive knowledge-keepers, this dissertation asserts their role as active theorists whose intellectual labor has long shaped culture, community, and resistance. This dissertation is structured in two parts. Part I establishes the theoretical and methodological foundations of KSF, critically engaging with dominant epistemological frameworks while outlining its core principles. Part II applies KSF through collaborative narrative case studies, showcasing how relational, vernacular, and embodied knowledge emerge as rigorous scholarship within the lived experiences of Southern Black grandmothers. By reframing everyday theorizing as a legitimate knowledge system, KSF contributes to knowledge justice initiatives and offers a methodological alternative that resists extractive research while honoring marginalized epistemologies. Ultimately, this work interrogates the boundaries of scholarship and demands a fundamental reimagining of who qualifies as a scholar and what counts as intellectual labor. This dissertation is not just a critique but an epistemic intervention—a refusal to seek permission to name as scholarship what has always existed.