Hidden Figures Figuring It Out: Mentoring Relations Between Black Women and Cultivating Equitable Approaches in Higher Education

• In Event: Centering Their Epistemologies: Individual and Institutional Approaches to Student Development and Learning

Abstract

Mentorship is critical to the success of Black women doctoral students in addressing their specific research and professional aspirations, and in resisting marginalization and coping with exclusion attendant to rigors of academic life in predominantly white institutions (Baldwin & Johnson, 2018). However, mentorship is elusive and multi-dimensional in typology, structure and function (Carpenter, Makhadmeh & Thornton, 2015). Grounded in Black feminism, this paper provides a review of literature and parallels scenes from the film Hidden Figures to elucidate the ways that Black women mutually support and sustain one another in primarily White (and sometimes predominately male) institutional spaces. The interpersonal connections made possible through mentorship offer ways of imagining and cultivating equitable pedagogical approaches in higher education.

Author

• Nicola Dove, York University