The “Sister Circle” as Peer Mentorship for Black Women on the Academic Job Market

• In Event: Women Sustaining Each Other

Abstract

This autoethnographic study explores the sister circle formed by three Black women early career scholars as they navigated the academic job market. Facing varying levels of institutional support within a predominantly white doctoral program, we relied on weekly virtual meetings and a lively text group chat to share resources, process experiences, and sustain each other through the challenges of academic precarity. Drawing on Black feminist mentoring frameworks and existing research on sister circles, we argue that such peer networks function as both resistance and refuge. Our stories illuminate the affective labor and strategic knowledge-sharing that helped each of us secure desirable academic positions—and offer insight into the transformative power of informal, identity-affirming peer mentorship.

Authors

• CoCo Massengale, Stanford University

• Sandra Habtamu, Foothill College

• Kyalamboka Brown, Stanford University