A Systematic Review of Select Social Science and Humanities Literature: The Presence and Positioning of Latina Professors

Abstract

To understand the presence and positioning of Latina faculty in humanities and social science scholarship, the authors analyzed articles published between 2000 and 2016 and developed three findings. First, few papers centered Latina professors. Second, when Latina faculty were featured in scholarship, it was often in the context of research concerning other minoritized and underrepresented faculty, more generally. Third, Latina faculty were frequently elevated as intellectuals when Latina-identifying scholars conducted the work.

Authoring a different story about advocacy and public intellectualism

“…Acosta noted that in the white imagination, Latinas have been framed as either “very poor women” or as sexual objects. Powerfully, Acosta reflected, “The imaginary we've created simply refuses to see the reality that Latinas are hard‐working nerds, scholars, intellectuals.” Building on Acosta's groundbreaking work, my colleague Saldivar and I found that across several hundred social science peer‐reviewed journals, Latina faculty were rarely positioned as intellectuals (Gonzales & Saldivar, 2020). In fact, the only evidence of Latinas being framed as intellectuals came from scholarship conducted by other Latina scholars.…”