The Complexity of Our Tears: Dis/enchantment and (In)Difference In the Academy

Abstract

Conducting scholarship and teaching about socially constructed aspects of identity (e.g., race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, age, and class) often presents challenges to communication scholars. Within this article, we discuss some of those challenges by disclosing aspects of our lived experiences as "outsiders within" the academy. Through analyzing e-mail messages that we exchanged with one another, we explore complexities of our emotions (and ensuing tears) as we experience both enchantment and disenchantment with how members of the academy deal with difference matters. We rely upon feminist standpoint epistemology as our theoretical framework, and we specify dialogic theory and ontology as a promising means by which we can transform the academy.We were eager to respond to the call for papers for this special issue because we wanted to write about our feelings of disenchantment with the academy. Each of us feels a strong desire for healing apathy, fear, and frustration regarding teaching, studying, and doing "difference" in the academy. Furthermore, we seek to transform how scholars study, teach, and enact difference. Within the context of this article, we refer to "difference" to signify issues that traditionally have been consumed under the umbrella of "diversity." By using this terminology, we specify the primary source of our disenchantment: the ways in which human differences are negotiated in the academy.Whereas most institutional mission statements centralize diversity within their public identities, "doing difference" in the academy reveals that such ideologies are not necessarily part of the everyday culture of these institutions. Many members of the academy seem to regard difference-based on race or ethnicity, gender, socioeconomic status, sexual

Memorable Messages as Discursive Formations: The Gendered Socialization of New University Faculty

“…The communi cation research focusing on faculty experiences (Allen, 1996;Allen, Orbe, & Olivas, 1999;Boyd, 1999;Goodall, 1999;Nicotera, 1999) has primarily addressed "disenchantment and renewal in the academy" Elise J. Dall imore 2 17 (Ge ist, 1999) rather than socialization more specifica lly-with the exception of Allen ( 1996). Further, this research does not focus specifically on new faculty' and is autoethnogra phic genera lly focusing on the experiences of one faculty member.'…”

“…The multi-phase and complex nature of the academic path has been explored through the personal acco unts of faculty (Allen, Orbe, & Olivas, 1999;Boyd, 1999;Frost & Taylor, 1996;Goodall, 1999;Nicotera, 1999). Research doc uments the ways in which inequity persists in higher education (Clark & Corcoran, 1986;Martin, 1994).…”

Gendered and Racialized Identities and Alliances in the Classroom: Formations in/of Resistive Space

“…It is important that we offer autobiographical sketches of ourselves in order to examine how we create resistance and build alliances through our teaching (Allen, Orbe, & Olivas, 1999). We have been friends for over a decade and have individually (and later collectively) come to critical cultural and feminist studies through our evolution as communication scholars.…”

“…Although there exists a "newly forming" body of literature legitimating, in part, the kind of relational and autoethnographic exploration we engage (Alexander, 1999;Alexander & Warren, 2002;Allen, Orbe, & Olivas, 1999;Davis, 1998;Johnson, 2001), by invoking the "personal," we recognize the scrutiny that often ensues. Perhaps because of the scrutiny we experience, we are driven to embody ourselves in this paper and our classrooms using an autoethnographic style and adhere even more fully to Cooks' (2001) claim that "… if our theories are to be useful, they must speak to people's everyday lived experiences, their locations within and without the social structure … " (p. 341).…”

Lifting as We Climb: African American Women's Education Experience in the Ivory Tower

“…Others advise that mentors should also apprise his or her protégés of the hidden curriculum (Allen, 1999;Duckworth-Warner, 2003;Hinton-Johnson, 2003) permeating the academy, i.e., those policies, activities, and requirements that cannot be found on the department's website, professional brochures, or fact sheets. This includes the politics of the department and its personnel.…”