We Are Each Other's Harvests: Envisioning Hope, Reclaiming Voice Through Critical Action Research by and About Doctoral Female Students

• In Event: 66.060 - Survival, Resistance, and Resiliency: Problematizing Diverse Experience of Women in Academia in a Post-Truth World

Abstract

Many women in academia endure marginalization and isolation throughout their graduate student careers—an experience that is especially prevalent among women of color and often continues long after the doctorate is conferred (Moore, 2017). Moreover, implicit and explicit power dynamics between white women and women of color in academia serve to heighten this sense of “not belonging,” leading to ever-widening schisms both inside and outside of the academy.
Objectives
This paper explores the critical action research of three female doctoral students, each of different racial/ethnic backgrounds, in their attempts to support one another in becoming critical scholars. By sharing our lived experiences through photovoice (Wang & Burrs, 1997) and applying a framework of intersectionality as critical praxis (Collins & Bilge, 2016), we chart our transformative and collaborative journey. Our aim is to shed light on how such cooperative efforts promote much-needed interracial and interdisciplinary dialogues.
Framework
While our stance is rooted in an intersectional and critical praxis framework (Collins & Bilge, 2016) we incorporate a feminist lens (Weiner,1994) of the “whole” person as integral to our epistemological foundations. Intersectionality as critical inquiry permits the use of intersectional frameworks to specifically question the dynamic nature of power relations in order to transform them.
Methodology
By employing critical action research (Carr & Kemmis, 2003; Anderson, Herr & Nihlen, 2007), we seek to identify, reflect upon, deconstruct, and re-imagine the power dynamics that confront and constrain female doctoral students. As a political tool of transformation (Weiner, 2004), this critical action research project has restored a sense of agency by demonstrating, thus far, how collaborative support and reflective action empower female scholars. Key to the project’s transformative impact is the use of photovoice: our group is engaged in an exchange of images of our lived experiences in academia that reveal both our fears of internalized oppression and our hopes for self-transformation through the analysis of everyday events.
Data Analysis
Our doctoral student collaborative meets twice a month; the data collected during those meetings include photovoice (visual images and stories about those images) as a stimulus for discussion, as well as reflective journals and/or correspondence. All data is open coded and narrative analysis has been employed.
Findings
Preliminary data analysis reveals that, by describing and naming everyday learning/teaching events that reinforce or disrupt dominant narratives, critical action research collaboratives empower female doctoral students to not only sharpen criticality of self and surroundings and become comfortable with uncomfortable conversations, but to seek out mentoring opportunities that promote interracial and interdisciplinary dialogue.
Significance
Although the current literature explores the professional and personal challenges that women and people of color face in academia (Bernal and Villalpando, 2002; Gutierrez y Muhs, 2012), no mention is made of critical action research initiated by and about doctoral students with the intent of disrupting and transforming these existing power dynamics. The scholarly significance of this project is that it allows for the often-silenced voices of women in academia to be reclaimed for self-reaffirmation as creators of knowledge in a perplexing post-truth era.

Authors

• Magda Dathe, The University of New Mexico

• Beth Giebus-Chavez, University of New Mexico

• Gregoria Arienda Cavazos, The University of New Mexico