In the Figment of Their Imagination: Black Women Faculty Resisting White Imaginations in Higher Education

• In Event: 28.045 - Black Women Faculty Perspectives

Abstract

The struggles of African American professors teaching multicultural courses at PWIs are well documented. One explanation for the struggles is that Black female faculty have issues teaching cultural diversity when white students have limited experiences with Black people. These lack of interactions causes many white undergraduate students to refer to the limited knowledge they can gleam from “post-truth” doctrines evident in the media. The purpose of this study is to investigate how white undergraduate students enrolled in cultural diversity courses: 1) “imagine” Blackness within courses that focus on anti-racist education, and 2) how imaginations about Blackness and Black women professors shapes racial interactions in higher education settings. Implications are discussed for Black female faculty at PWIs.

Authors

• Dorothy E. Hines, University of Kansas

• Jemimah L Young, University of Iowa