How We Got Here: The Power of Black Faculty’s Linguistic & Intellectual Autobiographies

• In Event: Talking Faculty: The Linguistic and Professional Choices of Black Faculty in U.S. Higher Education

Abstract

Objectives: Paper 1 takes a bird’s-eye view of Black linguists’ personal and professional experiences to humanize Black faculty. This paper demonstrates how Black faculty trajectories and career decisions are shaped by highly personal and individualized factors as well as by societal and institutional factors. Narratives from scholars of different backgrounds are analyzed to show that Blackness inescapably shapes faculty experiences but there is no singular or monolithic “Black faculty experience.”

Theoretical Perspective: This chapter takes a critical descriptive stance in its examination of the lives of Black language scholars. I draw on a collective autobiographical approach that integrates descriptions of life experiences with analyses of the factors that shape people’s choices in order to scale from the individual to the group or macro level. Collective autobiography brings together the stories of individuals – often ones whose lives have intersected – in order “to tap into wider social, economic, and cultural forces, processes, and power relations that contribute to shaping particular subjectivities” (Hawkins et al., 2006, pg. 166). Particular attention is given to systems of power and diversity of identity and experience among Black faculty, countering racist homogenizing discourses about Black people.

Data and Methods: We chose a multi-method qualitative approach for the book that includes one-on-one interviews and thematic and discourse analysis of multiple types of text. This multi-method approach allowed us to triangulate ideas across data types. The data in this paper includes narratives of 38 Black scholars in interviews (n=44), written autobiographies, published biographical work (e.g., oral histories), and lectures. This chapter is a discourse analysis of data from both interview and text sources.

Results: Paper 1 identifies common factors that have shaped Black faculty’s academic trajectories, such as class background and generational access to education, gender, personal value systems, and institutionalized anti-Black ideologies about language. The paper also illustrates the inherent heterogeneity of Blackness that makes our individual experiences as Black faculty unique.

Scholarly Significance: Black faculty narratives highlight the heterogeneity of Blackness, requiring our description of “Black faculty experiences” to account for the inherent diversity among the people the book is written for. The myth of a monolithic Blackness, alongside racialized and gendered stereotypes about how Black people (are supposed to) act, harms Black faculty personally and professionally. The voices of Black faculty not only prove that myth false, but also create space for readers to reflect on how their own conceptions of Blackness have shaped their life in academia. The narratives represented in this chapter add to the body of collective knowledge that current and future generations of Black scholars can use to inform their career decisions.

Author

• Kendra Calhoun, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign