Negotiating Power, Developing Trust: Transgressing Race and Status in the Academy

Abstract

Exploring the experiences of African American students engaged in doctoral studies reveals disturbing realities. In this article, we use narrative inquiry to engage in a collaborative project between two White faculty members and three African American graduate students. Transgressive pedagogy provided a conceptual framework for both our initial study and our subsequent reflections on the need to create supportive networks for graduate students of color in the academy. In the project we conversed and reflected about how our understanding of race and status had an impact on our experiences in the academy. Our study contrasted student experiences in environments in which students expressed feeling like “casualties of war” with those in which they expressed feeling like valued colleagues. We found that unspoken assumptions about race and status often created a turbulent climate for the participating African American doctoral students and White faculty members who shared values of inclusivity.