Intersectionality & Higher Education
Theory, Research, & Praxis, Third Edition
Summary
This is a vibrant and rigorous collection of essays that think about intersectionality in practice and as a practice. The essays think about intersectionality in the context of higher education, and imagine what it might mean to take seriously intersectionality’s call to enact practices of inclusion and equity.
—Jennifer Nash, Jean Fox O’Barr Professor of Gender, Sexuality, and Feminist Studies, Duke University
In times like these when the freedom to learn about truth and justice is under assault, this collection of essays is more important than ever. It illuminates the essential building blocks of intersectionality with care and insight, extends intersectionality into new and urgent territory given the changing landscape of higher education in the United States, and provides successful examples of how to put intersectionality into practice throughout the university.
—Leslie McCall, Presidential Professor of Sociology and Political Science, The Graduate Center, City University of New York
Excerpt
Table Of Contents
- Cover
- Title
- Copyright
- About the author
- About the book
- This eBook can be cited
- Contents
- List of Figures and Tables
- Acknowledgments
- Foreword
- Preface
- Part I: Theory
- 1. Intersectionality, Identity, and Systems of Power and Inequality
- 2. Intersectionality: A Legacy from Critical Legal Studies and Critical Race Theory
- 3. Intersectional Embodiments in Higher Education
- 4. Living Liminal: Conceptualizing Liminality for Undocumented Students of Color
- 5. Thinking Theoretically with and Beyond Intersectionality: Frameworks to Center Queer and Trans People of Color Experiences
- Part II: Research
- 6. Metaphorically Speaking: Being a Black Woman in the Academy is Like…
- 7. Queer Women and Femme Students of Color Seeking Help After Surviving Dating Violence in College
- 8. Navigating Multiple Oppressions: The Intersectional Experiences of a Chinese American College Student with Dis/abilities
- 9. Latina/x Identities and Oppression in Higher Education: A Case in a Hispanic-Serving Institution
- 10. Liminality as a Necessary Companion to Intersectionality
- 11. Backward Thinking: Exploring the Relationship Among Intersectionality, Epistemology, and Research Design
- Part III: Praxis
- 12. The Unlikely Allies Conference: An Intersectional Approach to Diversity Training Between White and Black Women in Academia
- 13. Intersectionality as Praxis for Equity in Medicine: Developing the LMSA Premedical Program
- 14. From Kitchen Tables to Black Spaces: Where Black Women Graduate Students Work Against Intersectionality Crisis
- 15. No Longer Cast Aside: A Critical Approach to Serving Queer and Trans Students of Color in Higher Education
- 16. Hitting the Books: Partnering for Intersectional Leadership Education
- 17. Weaving In and Out of Ourselves: Syllabus Formation and Assignment Development Through the Centering of Intersectionality
- Editor Biographies
- Author Biographies
List of Figures and Tables
Figures
Figure 4.1. Conceiving a Frame of Liminality Interlaced in Racism, Nativism, and Xenophobia
Figure 14.1. Intersecting Identities with an Emphasis on Black Women’s Linguistic Authority
Tables
Table 9.1. Participant Demographics
Table 10.1. Participant Identities and Characteristics
Acknowledgments
We would like to thank those who made the publication of the third edition of Intersectionality & Higher Education: Theory, Research, & Praxis possible. First, we thank all the chapter authors who helped shape this volume through their contributions and blind peer reviews. Second, we thank Dr. Jessica C. Harris for contributing the Foreword. Third, we thank Allison Jefferson, Joshua Charles, and Charmitha Ashok—at Peter Lang—for all that they brought to the production of this volume. Finally, we thank a host of family, friends, and colleagues, whose love and support keep us going each day.
Foreword
Jessica C. Harris
I have immersed myself in intersectional scholarship and practice for some time now. And throughout the years, I have been consistently humbled and constantly reminded of how little I know about intersectionality. Recently, while working on a writing project grounded in intersectionality, I engaged with several contemporary scholarly articles, books, and YouTube videos that explored intersectionality.
One specific YouTube video stuck with me. In the video, Kimberlé Crenshaw delivered a 15-minute speech to participants of the 2020 MAKERS Conference. The MAKERS Conference “is a global leadership event that convenes the most powerful names in business, entertainment, tech and finance to explore ways to advance equality in the workplace” (Coburn & Forgione, 2020, para. 2). The 2020 Conference adopted the theme, “Not Done,” to represent where we are in the women’s movement—we exist in a world in which more work must be done to achieve gender equity.
With this theme in mind, Crenshaw opened her speech by exploring what intersectionality is and how it can help us understand why we are not yet done. She also explained how intersectionality might help us get this work done. She stated:
What intersectionality is, is a prism, it’s a framework. It’s a template for seeing and telling different kinds of stories about what happens in our workplaces, what happens in society, and to whom it happens. Now, some part of why we’re not done is predicated on what we haven’t been able to see, what’s not remembered, the stories that are not told. So, intersectionality is like training wheels to get us to where we need to go. It’s glasses, high index glasses, to help us see the things we need to see. (MAKERS, 2020)
Crenshaw suggested that intersectional failure is the reason we are not yet done. Intersectional failure occurs when intersectionality is absent, denied, forgotten, or intentionally distorted within spaces and places where the effects of multiple systems of oppression are present (Crenshaw, 1989, 1991; Southbank Center, 2016). Intersectionality challenges intersectional failure by centering stories that have been silenced and forgotten. Intersectionality allows us to work toward intersectional repair, or what is right, inclusive, and more effective (Crenshaw, 1989, 1991; Southbank Center, 2016). Crenshaw closed out her 2020 MAKERS speech with the memorable statement that intersectionality “can inspire us to get shit done” (MAKERS, 2020).
Although Crenshaw referenced the women’s movement in her speech, we can, and should, apply her message to higher education contexts. Intersectional failure has influenced our inability to substantively engage equity, inclusion, and radical social justice in postsecondary education. The chapters in this book demonstrate many of these intersectional failings. But the chapters also allow us to think about intersectional repair. Chapter authors explore these ruptures and repairs as it relates to methodology, everyday experiences of students, faculty, and staff, and praxis.
Methodologically, some chapter authors encourage us to engage with the intellectual genealogy of intersectionality prior to employing the framework in our research. This includes (re)reading foundational work on intersectionality, sitting with how intersectionality relates to one’s epistemology and research design, and exploring other intersectional frameworks that might better serve the populations and issues at hand. Through these chapters, authors call out the intersectional failure that occurs when intersectionality is mis/used; when it is employed as a buzzword, as an additive framework, and/or is not grounded in the Black feminist knowledge from which it developed (Harris & Patton, 2019). The chapters also encourage intersectional repair, suggesting how we might move forward by substantively engaging with intersectionality in ways that further, rather than hinder, radical social justice and institutional transformations.
Through this book, we also explore the everyday experiences of Black women faculty at a historically White institution, Latinx students navigating a Hispanic-Serving Institution, Queer Women and Femme Students of Color survivors of dating violence, undocumented Students of Color, and a Chinese American college student with dis/abilities, to name a few. These chapters explore individual and community-level stories that are often silenced and invisibilized within and by postsecondary institutions. The stories contained in these chapters demonstrate not only the ways that multiple intersecting systems of oppression influence the everyday experiences of multiply minoritized individuals, but they also offer stories of resilience, survival, and meaning making.
Several of the final chapters in this book focus on intersectional repair through praxis. We learn how a premedical program for underrepresented medical students can take an intersectional approach to address systems of oppression students face in medical school. We also explore the Leadership for Liberation Pop-Up Library, a leadership education program aimed at engaging students in dialogue about intersectionality and liberation. These chapters, alongside others, show how intersectionality (theory) can be realized in action (practice) to work toward intersectional repair.
Through each book chapter authors use intersectionality as a “prism” to seek out and tell different kinds of stories. These stories, and the authors use of intersectionality, continue to inspire me to “get shit done” (MAKERS, 2020). My hope is that they also inspire you, your colleagues, your institutions, and beyond to work toward justice, equity, intersectional repair, and, to “get shit done” (MAKERS, 2020).
Jessica C. Harris
University of California, Los Angeles
Los Angeles, California
References
Coburn, C., & Forgione, B. (2020). MAKERS announces speakers for the 2020 MAKERS Conference, Feb 10-12 in Los Angeles. Verizon. https://www.verizon.com/about/news/makers-announces-speakers-2020
Crenshaw, K. (1989). Demarginalizing the intersection of race and sex: A Black feminist critique of antidiscrimination doctrine, feminist theory, and antiracist politics. University of Chicago Legal Forum, 1989(8), 139–167.
Crenshaw, K. (1991). Mapping the margins: Intersectionality, identity politics, and violence against Women of Color. Stanford Law Review, 43(6), 1241–1299.
Harris, J. C., & Patton, L. D. (2019). Un/Doing intersectionality through higher education research. Journal of Higher Education, 90(3) 347–372.
MAKERS. (2020, February 14). Kimberlé Crenshaw. The 2020 MAKERS Conference [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cSTf89pLcl0
Southbank Center. (2016, March 14). Kimberlé Crenshaw—On Intersectionality—Keynote—WOW 2016 [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-DW4HLgYPlA&t=245s
Preface
Donald “DJ” Mitchell, Jr.
This is my third time writing the preface for an edition of Intersectionality & Higher Education: Theory, Research, and Praxis, but this time feels different. The first two times, I felt like I was helping advance the understanding of intersectionality within higher education contexts, but now, I am helping protect intersectionality. I do not mean this in a patriarchal or parental sense; I understand my positionality and my personal connection to a framework primarily advanced by Black women for decades, even centuries, so I hope my words are not misinterpreted. When I say “protect,” I mean it literally, considering the recent attacks on intersectionality and critical race theory, particularly in higher education, over the past few years. I realize why we are here, but I question how we are here simultaneously. How could intersectionality—the recognition of interlocking systems of oppression and how the most marginalized are rendered invisible through single-axis analyses (e.g., exploring just racism or just homophobia; Crenshaw, 1989, 1991)—be under attack? As Crenshaw (2023) so powerfully articulated, “Intersectionality is a uniting framework” [emphasis added]. Crenshaw went on to note:
People see common cause with each other. So, the reality is that Black people are not just straight; they’re not just men; they’re not just middle class. When we expand our understanding of Black reality to include the way that patriarchy, homophobia, [and] class shapes our reality, so we can better transform it. It means that we have connections with other movements and other people. And that is exactly why they’re trying to force us to give up intersectionality.
Why are so many against the liberation and inclusion of all? Why are so many against justice? While society continues to wrestle with these questions, I do know that intersectionality is a framework that propels us toward inclusion, liberation, and justice. As I have noted before (see Mitchell, 2019), I contend higher education is an ideal place to incubate the liberatory ideals countless individuals constantly strive for across the globe. This is why my colleagues and I persist in editing this critical text—we believe understanding intersectionality and acting based on this understanding help us realize these ideals.
Details
- Pages
- XXII, 256
- Year
- 2024
- ISBN (PDF)
- 9781636678771
- ISBN (ePUB)
- 9781636678788
- ISBN (Softcover)
- 9781636678764
- DOI
- 10.3726/b21687
- Language
- English
- Publication date
- 2024 (March)
- Keywords
- Intersectionality Diversity Equity Inclusion Kimberlé Crenshaw Social Justice Higher Education Theory Research Praxis Oppression Privilege Intersectionality & Higher Education Theory, Research, and Praxis, 3ed Donald Mitchell, Jr. Jakia Marie Patricia P. Carver
- Published
- New York, Berlin, Bruxelles, Chennai, Lausanne, Oxford, 2024. XXII, 256 pp., 3 b/w ill., 4 tables.
