Spatial Belonging and Collective Imagination: Reflections on a West Coast RAC Site Visit

• In Event: Co-Designing Futures: Latina Scholars Build the East Coast RAC Through Collective Vision and Shared Praxis

Abstract

Purpose: This presentation explores how the structure and design of the West Coast Research Apprenticeship Course (WC-RAC) [7] can inform the development of an East Coast counterpart. As East Coast Latina scholars prepare for a site visit to the WC-RAC, we reflect on the significance of spatial design—physical and digital—in fostering fementorship, relational scholarship, and critical resistance. This presentation is part of a broader inquiry into how intentional space-making supports Latina researchers through collective care, healing, and community-building.
Theoretical Framework: This paper is grounded in Critical Race Theory (CRT), Critical Race Spatial Analysis (CRSA), and Critical Race Feminista Methodologies (CRFM) [1-3,5]. These frameworks interrogate how institutional spaces exclude or affirm scholars of color, center lived experience as legitimate knowledge, and emphasize storytelling, healing, and affect as essential to reimagining research communities. CRFM, in particular, orients this work toward relationality, intergenerational fementorship, and resistance to academic norms that devalue emotion, identity, and collectivity.
Methods: Pláticas, grounded in CRFM, guide our reflective methodology [1-3,5]. Presenters will engage in collective storytelling and critical dialogue about the upcoming site visit to the WC-RAC. These conversations surface expectations, longings, and guiding questions: What does it feel like to enter a space created for and by scholars of color? How does environment shape possibility? How can the WC-RAC inspire place-making for East Coast scholars? Through shared reflection, we aim to generate knowledge that bridges legacy and vision.
Findings: Although our site visit has not yet occurred, early reflections and dialogues with WC-RAC compañeras have already revealed powerful insights. The WC-RAC is widely regarded not only as an academic space but as a third space—a site where fementorship, healing, and critical inquiry intersect. Through intentional rituals, visual affirmations, and intergenerational relationships, it offers a model for how a community sustains resistance.
In preparing for our visit, we return to themes raised during our 2025 AERA session, where we imagined an East Coast RAC rooted in justice, belonging, and memory. This paper marks the next step: turning vision into inquiry, and inquiry into design. Our exploration of the WC-RAC’s history and structure allows us to dream forward while grounding our process in what has worked. We approach the site visit not only to observe, but to listen—with our bodies, our questions, and our collective hope.
Significance: This paper contributes to emerging scholarship on race, space, and academic community by theorizing site visits as generative moments of activation and imagination. For East Coast Latina scholars, reflecting on the WC-RAC is more than an observational exercise—it is a practice of translation, adaptation, and creation. We seek to build not a replica, but a community responsive to our own regional and relational contexts. In imagining this third space, we invite others to rethink the architectures of research and belonging.

Authors

• Cristina M. Medellin, Bank Street College of Education

• Vanessa Rodriguez, New York University

• Alexandra Figueras-Daniel, National Institute for Early Education Research