Brave Women of Color in Academics
The new co-edited anthology, Counternarratives from Women of Color Academics: Bravery, Vulnerability, and Resistance contains essays and creative works by 28 women of color academics who redefine what it means to be successful in academia, who stand up against injustice in academia despite the risks, and who leverage their positions in university to advance diversity and inclusion in higher education.
Academic bravery challenges the status quo, crosses boundaries and breaks new ground. In essence, being a brave academic entails refusing to prioritize self-serving interests at the expense of knowledge production and social justice. Rather than avoiding risky endeavors to protect one’s position and status, a brave academic uses her position, status and expertise to effectively advance knowledge and equity, despite the risks.
The anthology, and this panel, seeks to counter the discourse that women of color are solely tokens and victims of marginalization in academe. Women of color academics have leveraged their professional positions to challenge the status quo in their scholarship, teaching, service, activism, and leadership. By presenting reflexive work from various vantage points within and outside of the academy, contributors document the cultivation of mentoring relationships, the use of administrative roles to challenge institutional leadership, and more.
This panel will feature the co-editors of the anthology: Eric Grollman (University of Richmond) and Manya Whitaker (Colorado College) in addition to two contributors: Alessandra Bazo Vienrich (Davidson College) and Robbin Chapman (Harvard University).
For additional information on this anthology, please see the press release and recent blog post.
Cosponsored by: Boston College Lynch School of Education and Human Development; MIT Women's and Gender Studies; Tufts Department of Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies; Boston University Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Program; UMass Boston Africana Studies Department; UMass Boston Department of Anthropology; UMass Boston Department of Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies
Panelists:
Alessandra Bazo Vienrich is Visiting Assistant Professor of Sociology at Davidson College. Born and raised in Lima, Perú, Alessandra moved to North Carolina with her family when she was 12 years old. As an undocumented immigrant herself, she became interested in understanding and eradicating the inequalities undocumented immigrants in her community experienced. After pursuing bachelor degrees in Sociology and Not-for-Profit Management at Salem College, she began graduate school in Sociology at Lehigh University, where her master's thesis, "In College and Undocumented: An Analysis of the Educational Trajectories of Undocumented Students in North Carolina", was supported by the Strohl Graduate Summer Research Fellowship. In 2014 she became a doctoral student in the Sociology Department at the University of Massachusetts Boston, and spent the next 5 years as a student, researcher and instructor in the department. In July, 2019, she defended her dissertation, "DREAMs of College: In Pursuit of Higher EducationWhile Undocumented", and joined the Sociology Department at Davidson College.
Her current research agenda is motivated by the growth of the Latinx population in recent decades and the fact that Latinxs are now the largest ethnic minority group in the United States. She is particularly interested in how race/ethnicity, immigration status, and place, intersect to create social, political and educational experiences for undocumented Latinx immigrants. Her areas of expertise include immigration policy, immigrant education, immigrant youth and young adults, Latinx identity, race/ethnicity and migrant illegality.
Eric Grollman is an Associate Professor at the University of Richmond and a Black queer non-binary scholar-activist. With Dr. Whitaker, they are the co-editor of Counternarratives of Women of Color Academics. They are the founding editor of ConditionallyAccepted.com, which is now a career advice column for marginalized academics on Inside Higher Ed.
Manya Whitaker is an Associate Professor and Chair of Education at Colorado College. She is a developmental educational psychologist with expertise in social and political issues in education. Her courses include Urban Education, Diversity & Equity in Education, and Educational Psychology, among others. She researches the stability of teachers’ diversity-related belief systems across time and settings, and how those beliefs can be intentionally disrupted and re-structured through teacher training. She is the author of Schooling Multicultural Teachers: A Guide for Program Assessment and Professional Development, Learning from the Inside-Out: Child Development and School Choice and co-editor of Counternarratives from Women of Color Academics. She is also the founder of Blueprint Educational Strategies, an education consulting business.
Robbin Chapman is Associate Dean for Diversity, Inclusion, and Belonging at Harvard Kennedy School. She previously served as associate provost and academic director of diversity and inclusion, and lecturer in education at Wellesley College, and assistant associate provost for faculty equity at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. In 2016, MIT established the annual Dr. Robbin Chapman Excellence through Adversity Award to honor an MIT senior who has demonstrated excellence in leadership. Beginning July 2018, Chapman will serve a two-year term as Sigma Xi Distinguished Lecturer, sponsored by the Sigma Xi International Honor Society of Science and Engineering. Chapman earned her SM and her PhD degrees in electrical engineering and computer science from Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where she conducted research at the MIT Artificial Intelligence Laboratory and the MIT Media Laboratory. Her research interests include design and use of computational tools for learning in public spaces and frameworks and technologies for supporting scholar activism.
Moderator:
Saida Grundy, Assistant Professor of Sociology and African American Studies, Boston University