10: Intersecting Identities and the Work of Faculty Development

Abstract

Hobart and William Smith CollegesOn increasingly diverse college campuses, faculty members look to faculty developers for support in facilitating difficult classroom dialogues and in handling challenging interactions around their students' identities and their own. We propose that faculty developers' work around issues of diversity, social justice, and inclusive excellence can be enhanced by developing a foundation in the theory of intersectionality, which engages the complexity of identityand the resulting power structures that inform institutions. We discuss thistheoretical perspective and provide examples offaculty development initiatives that canbe strengthened through the use ofan intersectional lens.What does it feel like to be a faculty member preparing to teach on a Monday or Tuesday, just as a racist incident that occurred on campus over the weekend has begun to gain attention? Suppose a noose was found hanging from a tree on campus, as was the case at

Tracking POD's Engagement with Diversity: A Content Analysis ofTo Improve the Academyand POD Network Conference Programs From 1977 to 2011

“…This, of course, is not to suggest that we are somehow focusing too much on questions of race, nationality, or gender, but that as we seek to further increase our attention to diversity, we must also be intentional in supporting work that expands our understanding of the needs of these populations that go largely unmentioned in the POD scholarship. Expanding our focus in this way not only broadens our understanding of these particular groups but also encourages greater attention to the intersections among these various identity categories (Banks, Iuzzini, & Pliner, ).…”