‘Complicating my place:’ multiracial women faculty navigating monocentricity in higher education––a polyethnography
Department
Secondary and Middle Grades Education
Document Type
Article
Publication Date
1-1-2021
Abstract
This polyethnography is an interdisciplinary collaboration between four multiracial women faculty employed at different universities across the US to examine their experiences navigating monocentricity in higher education. This insightful study amplifies the voices of a particular subset of women of color faculty who identify multiracially–a group overlooked in existing literature examining diverse faculty experiences in higher education. Utilizing Multiracial Critical Race Theory (MultiCrit), we reflex on the similarities and nuances that exist within and between our written stories of experience. Conjointly, our critical reflections reveal the prevalence of monoracism within institutions of higher education, which places both internal and external pressures on multiracial women faculty to demarcate themselves monoracially, while simultaneously maintaining a clandestine borderland identity within their departments. Implications for this study reveal the importance of multiracial counterspaces for multiracial faculty as a form of resistance against monocentricity in US institutions of higher education.
Journal Title
Race Ethnicity and Education
Journal ISSN
13613324
Volume
24
Issue
2
First Page
167
Last Page
185
Digital Object Identifier (DOI)
10.1080/13613324.2020.1753679