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Chapter 12 - Bearing a Black Woman’s Burden: Autoethnography for Provoking Perspective-Taking and Action in Predominantly White Academic Spaces

from Part III - Strategies for Inclusion and Retention

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 April 2022

By
Kathy-Ann C. Hernandez
Edited by
Antija M. Allen  and
Justin T. Stewart
Antija M. Allen
Affiliation:
Pellissippi State Community College, Teachers College Columbia University
Justin T. Stewart
Affiliation:
Allen Ivy Prep Consulting
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Summary

This chapter explores the challenges Black women face in the US academy as outsiders within these institutional spaces. The author situates the discussion in the relevant literature as well as her experiences as a foreign-born Black faculty member in a predominantly White US higher education context. Beyond problem identification, the chapter advances an application of autoethnography as a useful strategy for inviting White women and others of difference into the space of this lived experience. The chapter concludes with a discussion of how the process of engaging in autoethnographic work has the capacity to change us as relational individuals within communities, and the ways in which this work can provoke participants to act to create more equitable and inclusive academic spaces.

Keywords

black facultyintersectionalityautoethnographyhigher educationtransformative learning
Type
Chapter
Information
We're Not OK
Black Faculty Experiences and Higher Education Strategies
 , pp. 198 - 217
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2022

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