Disrupting Carceral Logics Within U.S. Higher Education: Black Women’s Lawsuits as Resistance to Institution-Sanctioned Violence

Strategic Ambiguity: How Pre-Tenure Faculty Negotiate the Hidden Rules of Academia

“…It promotes maximum productivity from pre-tenure faculty by making the goals for research and publication obscure yet ever-increasing. It protects the university from litigation in the event that tenure is denied (Ward, 2021 ). Strategic ambiguity allows the university to send multiple, often contradictory, messages about what is valued in faculty performance without incurring conflict, allowing “multiple interpretations to exist among people who contend that they are attending to the same message” (Eisenberg, 1984 , p. 231).…”

“Playing with” and “Letting go”: Employing theoretical frameworks and methodologies to examine Black women's experiences in higher education

“…Venus Evans-Winters (2019) reminded readers, "Although Black women have always conducted research using qualitative methodologies, rarely are Black women given space to play with or theorize methodological moves in qualitative inquiry" (p. 1). Alice Walker (1983) grounded womanism in the context of a love for Black women. In pushing against Black women's erasure in feminism, she asserted, the Black woman "must be her own model as well as the artist attending, creating, learning from, [and] realizing the model, which is to say, herself" (p. 8).…”

“…Historically, Black women have taken up the mantle to conceptualize the interconnectedness of positionality, epistemology, and praxis to theorize our unique experiences, wherein "personal expressiveness, emotions, and empathy are central to the knowledge validation process" (Collins, 1989, p. 766). Walker (1983) asserted, "guided by my heritage of a love of beauty and a respect for strength-in search of my mother's garden, I found my own" (p. 242). Theorizing means to find and (re)member our homeplace (hooks, 1990); those moments, people, and locations wherein we can/could find strength to resist what the academy (and society) perpetuates as knowledge and rigor (e.g., the kitchen table, places of worship, or a sister collective).…”

“…In addition to recently edited texts (see also Kelly & Fries‐Britt, 2022; Patton & Croom, 2017; Patton et al., 2022), Black women and scholars of color have (re)imagined methodological possibilities concerning their research on behalf of and alongside Black women (Berry & Cook, 2019; Porter & Byrd, 2021). For example, Patton and Njoku (2019) theorized institution‐sanctioned violence against Black women in higher education while juxtaposing Black women's erasure within the Black Lives Matter Movement (see also Ward's (2021) use of institution‐sanctioned violence as a framework to examine Black women's lawsuits). McClish‐Boyd and Bhattacharya (2021) (re)imagined narrative inquiry as endarkened to explore their respective (and collective) experiences as a Black woman graduate student and an Indian woman faculty member.…”