"Together We're Stronger": The Promises and Challenges of an Intersectional Counter-Space

• In Event: Fairmont Roundtable Session Eight
  In Roundtable Session: Encountering Counterstories: Crosscurrents of Racialized Narratives in School and Social Contexts (Table 20)

Abstract

This paper explores the values, possibilities, and insights gained through the experiences of students of an undergraduate residential learning community at a large US university committed to multiculturalism and social justice through an intersectional framework. This paper builds on and contributes to scholarship on intersectionality, counterspaces, and learning communities in higher education. We extend this prior work to consider how this college learning community rooted in intersectionality can, and did, serve as a counterspace. Ultimately, we argue that it is necessary for such spaces to constantly work to disrupt and decenter systems of power and oppression and we discuss the challenges and urgency of doing so in persistently white higher education contexts.

Authors

• Alexandra Allweiss, Michigan State University
  Presenting Author

• Diamond Howell-Shields, University of Wisconsin - Madison
  Presenting Author

• Carl A. Grant, University of Wisconsin - Madison
  Presenting Author

• Ja'Miya Grace
  Presenting Author