The Power of Recognition: Positioning Latina Faculty as Intellectuals

• In Event: 18.032 - Latinas' Journey in Higher Education and Leadership Model for Students, Faculty, and Administrators

Abstract

The author will draw from her research on legitimacy in academia, faculty careers, and systems of faculty evaluation to highlight three issues that have particular significance for women of color scholars, including Latinas (Gonzales, 2014; Gonzales & Terosky, 2016). The overarching aim of the author’s comments will be positioning Latina faculty as intellectuals, and the structural and cultural challenges to their recognition as such. First, the author will address how historical institutions are underpinned by systems and practices, such as the academic profession’s commitment to the academic canon and discipline purity, (Gonzales & Rincones, 2012; Lattuca, 1994) yield particularly hostile conditions for Latinas and as well as other women of color, more broadly. Second, she will address how organizational culture and embedded organizational practices, such as tokenization, not only marginalize Latinas, but also threaten their intellectual work (Ford, 2011; Monzó & Soohoo, 2014). Third, the author will discuss how critical it is for scholars engaged in research with and concerning Latinas to avoid essentialism, or treating Latinas as a simplistic function of racial and ethnic identity, and instead to seek out the nuances and complexities inherent in the lives and work of Latina intellectuals (Lugones, 1987; Lugones & Spelman, 1983). Blending several insights from her published work and from literature, the author argues that to ignore the complexity of Latina identity, if and how it shapes their work as academics is not only unfair, but undermines.

Authors

• Leslie D. Gonzales, Michigan State University

• Guadalupe Saldivar, Michigan State University