Enacting Feminist Alliance Principles in a Doctoral Writing Support Group

• In Event: 70.033 - Reciprocal Mentoring for Critical, Activist Scholarship

Abstract

Objectives or Purposes
This paper foregrounds the perspectives of support group participants, bringing attention to the organization, dynamics and impacts of a dissertation writing support group. The group reflected several forms of intersectionality and gender, race/ethnicity, sexual orientation, class background and other markers of identity played a role in the formation and evolution of the group. In sharing the perspectives of support group members, our aim is to personalize the experiences of doctoral study, emphasizing the significance of community and a pedagogy of caring.

Perspective(s) or Theoretical Framework
We draw from bell hooks notions of “homespace” (hooks, 1998) and community as a “place of the positive” (hooks, 2003) to examine how the writing group contributed to both individual members’ self-actualization and to group identity. Additionally, we use Gustavo Esteva’s (1987) metaphor of a hammock to reflect the ways the group functions. According to Esteva, a hammock does not represent a standardized or formulaic approach to mentorship; it adapts to those whom it cradles and represents a changing source of support as it takes different shapes as needed.

Methods and Data Sources
Of over 40 past and present group members, 11 people shared their reflections and explanations as to how the group is providing or has provided support in the dissertation completion process and sense of efficacy in the process. Group members also described how the group was or is significant to their roles as scholars, graduate mentors and educators. Critical personal narrative (Burdell and author, 1999) from the author standpoints also frame the analysis.

Results and Conclusions
The findings present brief narratives from current and past group members to illustrate dynamics and impacts of the group. For example, Members of the writing group who contributed to this paper spoke extensively about a community of care (hooks, 2009) that emerged and continually changes as people formed relationships, reached particular milestones, and ultimately achieved dissertation completion. For instance, one current group member wrote:
What this support group embodies and represents to me is a group that genuinely celebrates each member’s success, and at the same time provides emotional and moral support, as well as practical advice to students when challenges arise on this convoluted yet exciting road of attaining a Ph.D.

Scientific or Scholarly Significance
The group continues to be responsive to the needs and funds of knowledge of its changing membership, and providing a hammock for early career scholars to shape their careers and impact other early career scholars. With 44 group members graduating and getting primarily higher education positions, we would like to think our small group is having a ripple effect and is impacting practice and mentoring strategies, not only across the U.S. but internationally. Thus, one of the implications that can be drawn from our collective experience is that, while there is a need to focus on the writing process, there is also great need for holistic, feminist approaches to supporting early career scholars in their overall socialization to higher education careers.

Authors

• Lacey Elizabeth Peters, Hunter College - CUNY

• Kimberly Ann Eversman, Wartburg College

• Beth Blue Swadener, Arizona State University