Hermanitas: Reframing Mentorship Through Sisterhood in Everyday Femtorship Among Women of Color in Academia

• In Event: 66.058 - Roundtable Session 28
  In Roundtable Session: 66.058-4 - Gender, Relationship, and Story in Navigating Educational Spaces

Abstract

A group of first generation Women of Color (WOC) working with undergraduate students as Graduate Mentors through Research Program and Graduate Guidance (RPGG), reframe mentorship practices through Critical Race Theory (CRT) and Chicana Feminist Epistemology (CFE). They acknowledge the centrality of intersectional identities, experiential knowledge, and challenging dominant ideologies to foster their analysis as femtors. They offer the term femtor, to identify their multiplicity through a feminist lens. Moreover, adopting the term hermanitas (Cervantes-Soon, 2014), they embrace the sisterhood and accountability to each other’s success as they create Sacred Space (Diaz Soto, et al. 2009) that sustains them through academia. Offering a paper presentation to underline the interactions, guidance, and support they offer each other and students, through their platicas.

Authors

• Magali Campos, University of California - Los Angeles

• Lauren Ilano, University of California - Los Angeles

• Feliz Quinones, University of California - Los Angeles

• Yadira Valencia, University of California - Los Angeles

• Christine Vega, University of California - Los Angeles