Becoming Academicians: An Ethnographic Analysis of the Figured Worlds of Racially Underrepresented Female Faculty

Abstract

AbstractResearch that exclusively focuses on pre-tenure racially underrepresented female faculty remains scarce. Our aim is to shed light on these rarely documented experiences in an effort to understand their navigation of world of academia. Using critical ethnographic methodology, we argue that pre-tenure racially underrepresented female faculty come to understand themselves as academicians through figured worlds that they participate in. We use framework of figured worlds to frame these sites of identity production and to describe how they become academicians. Findings reveal that pre-tenure racially underrepresented female faculty enact agency in seemingly benign, yet critical moments within their professional contexts to assert their identities. We conclude by suggesting that it is within these spaces of authoring that they exercise their limited yet meaningful agency in an effort to make sense of process of becoming academicians.IntroductionIn academy, racially underrepresented female faculty (i.e. Black, Asian American, Latina, and Native American) are dually burdened because of their race and gender, constructing a space in which they are doubly minoritized (Berry & Mizelle, 2006; Hirshfield & Joseph, 2012). This intersection of racism and sexism contribute to racially underrepresented female faculty having lowest tenure rate of all faculty groups (Vargas, 2002). Among female faculty in United States, White women represent 85% at full professor rank and 80% at associate level, whereas non-White women represent 13.5% and 18% respectively (U.S. Department of Education, 2011). On road to tenure, racially underrepresented female faculty experience structural and interpersonal roadblocks, i.e. identity taxation, that their White male and female colleagues do not face (Ford, 2011; Hirshfield & Joseph, 2012). Tokenism arises when racially underrepresented female faculty are one of the ones in their department (Hirshfield & Joseph, 2012; Turner, 2002). For example, they are often assigned extra duties, such as additional university committee membership, because they dually fulfill diversity requirement of being both female and racially underrepresented in higher education (Turner, 2002). Furthermore, they typically hold greater student advising responsibilities than their White male and female colleagues as they are often called upon to do mothering work (Griffm & Reddick, 2011; Turner, 2002). However, they embrace mentoring as a way in which to support educational advancement of their self-identified communities (Griffm & Reddick, 2011).Given their hyper-visibility at predominately White institutions (PWIs), racially underrepresented female faculty are intersectionally marked (raced, gendered, and otherwise marked by social identities) and othered by colleagues and students (Ford 2011; Turner, 2002). Criticisms are either centered on bodily features, such as hair, skin color, or clothing; or bodily performances, which are institutional/departmental expectations of how faculty should behave or act (Ford, 2012). Similarly, their intellectual credibility is often called into question (Ford, 2011; Johnsrud & Sadao, 1998). Racially underrepresented female faculty members are commonly othered because their complex identities contradict what academy perceives as normal. Consequently, their tenure reviews are often based not on transparent and objective standards but on a candidate's particularities (Agathangelou & Ling, 2002, p. 370) or fit. Finally, they find it challenging to legitimatize their research and find an academic space of their own because they are commonly one of few or only one in their academic department who conducts research on social justice issues. As a result, they are intellectually segregated and further isolated from their colleagues (Mawhinney, 2011 & 2012).Contrarily, this otherness is used as a vehicle for struggle, resistance, legitimacy, assertion of agency, and a space for their own intellectual productivity in their departments (Segura, 2003). …