Earlier this year, I was invited to be part of the Anthology Unmasking the Experiences of Racialized Women in Academia by Sandra Dixon & Cecille DePass. I had an opportunity to review the volume and write its conclusion. As we prepare for return to schools and campuses and the start of another academic year, the concluding chapter I wrote for this volume is top of mind. The Indigenous, Black, and Racialized women writers in the volume collectively shared their lived experiences in the Academy, discussed theoretical frameworks including non-western perspectives that shape their worldviews and offered calls to action for academic institutions that aspire to serve all humanity.
In an increasingly polarized academy, this anthology is an invitation to transformational listening to voices too often unheard—to the counter-stories in our institutions as the editors of the volume note:
By sharing counter-stories, contributors help identify and challenge systemic barriers, creating a vital resource for stakeholders in social justice, education, and related fields. Through critical thinking, self-reflection, and exploration, this collection examines complex issues like intersectionality, power dynamics, and cultural humility (Trevalon & Murray-Garcia,1998). Salient highlights include inclusive pedagogy, diverse curriculum design, and culturally responsive assessments. (p.4)
This volume is a call to move further to action that integrates the multidisciplinary and diverse perspectives of faculty, administrators, and graduate students in educational structures that were not originally constructed with them in mind (see also Meeting the Moment: Public Universities for the 21st Century and Beyond). It asks: How might universities create a future that allows all to flourish? What will it take for the Academy to more fully embrace its role in critical thinking and scholarship? Overall, it is a call to make practical changes to address marginality and transform otherwise spirit-killing experiences into healing, love, and flourishing. I salute these authors for their labour of love in documenting strategies to make academic spaces better for all who walk the halls of institutions of higher learning. I think of all the students we are welcoming into this new year and hold an image and reminder that our work is not educating individuals. Our work is shaping futures. As noted in my conclusion:
There is no better way to offer concluding thoughts for this anthology of papers than through a narrative métissage as an ode and offering to the women[i] in academia, whose life stories and scholarship make up this collection. This conclusion is an ode to them for breaking the silences that would otherwise shroud their voices. It is an ode to them for ensuring their diverse identities, experiences, and histories are canonized in spite of gatekeeping that would otherwise edit it out. It is an ode to the intentionality of offering theoretical frameworks and worldviews that are essential contributions to knowledge-building, yet too often erased from research and literature. It is an ode to the calls to action, which are so overlapping across all 20 chapters that the message they collectively send couldn’t be clearer. It is also an offering to the academy, in the active hope expressed across the pages of this book, that these contributions will not continue to be ignored. Our intertwined humanity makes this a call to healing, reparations, and transformation for all, not just for the women who have navigated the obstacle courses of the hidden curriculum that Indigenous, Black, and Racialized women uniquely experience in academia. (p.251)
The themes from the calls to action reveal that Academia must create more inclusive spaces and institutional practices, increase training for decolonized praxis, acknowledge and expand on non-Western research engagement and reinforce equitable policy-making. This work must continue. The future we are shaping must be one that holds us all.
All the best this academic year
And Happy Labour Day.