Critical Co-Constructed Autoethnography: Reflections of a Collaborative Teaching Experience of Two Black Women in Higher Education

Introduction

Black women teaching in higher education at predominately white institutions (PWI) are often marginalized and devalued. According to Warren-Gordon and Mayes (2017), “We are often isolated and lonely because we are the only ones in our department or college. This creates a workplace environment that is not a safe place to vent our frustrations and triumphs” (p. 236). Black women face many obstacles when it comes to teaching in higher education. According to Vargas (1999) Black female faculty are often overburdened with service responsibilities, they lack valued recognition of their reach which focuses on marginalized populations, and they lack mentorship by senior faculty (Croom & Patton, 2011; Harley, 2008).

As Black women, we recognize the systems of oppression that exist within predominantly white institutions of higher education are not designed to support the professional growth of Black people, but specifically Black women (Collins, 1996; Tillman, 2001). Black women in higher education have to contend with racism and sexism due to their intersectional being. Walkington (2017) states, “Black women faculty and graduate students face a double-blind of racial and gender discrimination at every level of academic life. The double minority status leads faculty and students to view black women scholars as less capable” (p. 52). For many Black women the challenges in working in predominantly white institutions of higher education leave Black women feeling isolated, defeated, and in positions that don’t allow for them to articulate their unique voices. As a result, opportunities for advancement within the predominantly white institution are often nonexistent for Black women because of the perception administrators and leaders have about the women (Peters, 2011). Black women will often adopt a coping mechanism in response to the systemic racism they experience on a daily basis, and then they are deemed angry, combative, or detached when all they are doing is practicing self-preservation in a hostile environment.

One place that Black women are most vulnerable is in the classroom. Black female faculty working at PWIs are often plagued with students who constantly question our ability to appropriately convey the material that is being taught. These students also exhaust our classroom management skills through microaggressions and outwardly verbal attacks (Louis et al., 2016). These biases are reflected in the teaching evaluations of Black women. Studies have consistently found that Black women are evaluated more negatively by students than their white counterparts (Allen et al., 2000; Daniel, 2019; Lazos, 2012; Reid, 2010). The impact of teaching evaluations on Black women’s ability to seek tenure and promotion has been documented (Edmondson, 2012; Gregory, 2001; Schimanski & Alperin, 2018; Turner et al., 2011).

Many Black women who teach in higher education have developed ways in which they can address their marginalization and other issues in the classroom. One of the ways is through deliberate teaching that focuses on centering ourselves and other Black women in the course curriculum. Womanism is a standpoint epistemology (Collins, 1991) and is one of the ways in which Black women can shift the classroom experience from being primarily focused on Eurocentric ways of knowing to centering the Black experience. Derived from Walker’s (1983, 2004), term, “womanist” represents the cultural, historical, and political positionality of African American women, a group that has experienced slavery, segregation, sexism, and classism for most of its history in the United States. The womanist perspective is grounded in the need to acknowledge the intersectional existence of being Black.

Womanist pedagogy has been used in various disciplines in higher education. By allowing for the centering of Black women through this pedagogical perspective we recognize the following in our teaching approach: oppression is an interlocking system that provides various degrees of privilege and oppression; individual empowerment along with collective actions leads to lasting change; and the embodiment of humanism which works to liberate all (Beauboeuf-Lafontant, 2006). Womanist pedagogy is concerned with addressing the interconnections of race, class, and gender within other systems of power and inequality (Ntiri, 2014). Womanist pedagogy offers ways in which we can have students engage in course materials that highlights these interconnections.

Within this paper we provide a systemic analysis of a semester in which we, a Black female Criminology professor and a Black female English contract faculty member, utilized womanist pedagogy to collaborate in co-teaching our two courses. Students from our African American studies and Criminology capstone courses worked together on a project in which they sought to understand the needs of individuals who reentered the community after periods of incarceration. They also identified community-based resources that supported the needs of these individuals. During the semester we co-taught our two classes, we focused on how co-teaching allowed us to support each other through the challenges of working at a predominantly white institution (PWI).

Methodology

We used critical co-constructed autoethnography to articulate our experiences of utilizing womanist pedagogy to combine and co-teach our two courses in the fall of 2020. Following the methodology as outlined by Cann and DeMeulenaere (2012, 2020) we used this technique to develop the collaborative autoethnography with a focus on “the system of oppression” (p. 19). This method utilizes a dialog form of communication that “mirrors the cadence, styles, and flow of a collaborative academic process and personal friendship” (p. 20). This method is rooted in Critical Race Theory (Delgado & Stefancic, 2013) critical pedagogy, and African American feminist epistemology (Collins, 1991). This method recognizes the researcher in the research process, and it highlights the need for counter-storytelling to amplify the voices of those who are traditionally marginalized. This method also highlights the community, friendship, and respect between the two collaborators and allows us to share our experiences as being marginalized members in institutions of higher education. The term “critical” denotes the goal of working in solidarity with those who have been oppressed (Cann & DeMeulenaere, 2020). This method is particularly fitting for this project, as we are two women who self-identify as Black who work in a university environment where our voices are frequently marginalized.

The subsequent section is the result of our Saturday morning conversations that occurred over the course of 23 consecutive weeks over the fall of 2020 and spring of 2021. During these conversations, we reflected on our class that we were co-teaching as well as other issues that affected our abilities to be contributing citizens within our PWI and the broader communities in which we live. At the heart of our conversations were discussions about the obstacles we faced in and out of the classroom, including how we were coping with the global pandemic, university politics, and our emotional well-being. These meetings occurred at 8 a.m. and would last anywhere from 15 minutes to 3-hours. Due to Covid-19, these meetings took place over the Zoom video conferencing platform and were recorded and transcribed. We both took detailed notes as additional data gathering. Having the meeting on Saturdays at 8 a.m. ensured that the meeting time would not conflict with our other work or family obligations. This time also provided us the opportunity to have intimate conversations regarding our work, classes, and life, without interruption. During these conversations, we were able to speak openly and freely knowing that our conversations were completely confidential and were rooted in our friendship and desire for each other to be successful.

Our Collaborative Experience

“I have an idea for a class we can teach together,” said Dr. Kiesha Warren Gordon, a tenured faculty member in the Criminal Justice program and the Director of African American (AFAM) studies at Ball State University (BSU) in Muncie, Indiana. She was speaking to Angela Jackson-Brown, a contract faculty member in the English department and the only other Black woman who is part of the faculty in the AFAM studies program. “I have had this idea for a long time, and I think we can do this together,” Kiesha said in a hopeful tone.

It was the fall of 2019, and at the time, Kiesha and Angela were meeting to discuss an immersive learning documentary project Angela was working on with a group of BSU students. The students had left, and Angela had joined Kiesha in her office. It felt good to Angela to be in the warm and inviting space with Kiesha, which was filled with pictures of Kiesha’s family.

For Kiesha, the idea of teaching with Angela was something she had been thinking about for a while. Knowing the struggles they had experienced within their own departments, she thought this opportunity might be a breath of fresh air for both of them. Black women at PWIs rarely find opportunities to collaborate and to share teaching spaces with other Black women. Professional interactions with other Black women often exist only in the space of an occasional university or college committee assignment (Harper et al., 2011). As soon as Kiesha began describing her idea, Angela was intrigued by the invitation to co-teach, but she had some reservations.

“Are you sure about this?” Angela asked, scanning Kiesha’s face to make sure she was as confident about this class as she was implying with her words. Angela was a bit intimidated by the fact that Kiesha was a tenured professor and the Director of the African American Studies program. Angela felt secure in her discipline, but she knew stepping into this arena with Kiesha was going to challenge her as much as it would challenge the students. She kept asking herself, Am I ready for this? “I am not an academic researcher, Kiesha, in the same way you are. I am just not sure I see yet how this will work—how we will be able to mesh our two approaches to teaching in a way that will be fulfilling to the students and beneficial for the community we are attempting to serve.”

“It will be great. I’ve been wanting to teach with you for a while. It’s not about degrees, or even our teaching styles, it’s about us coming together and working as a team,” Kiesha said.

Angela was relieved and excited; this was the camaraderie she had always craved. Throughout her 13 years at BSU, she had wanted this type of relationship with her colleagues. She had been fortunate enough to collaborate with a white male faculty member on a musical she was commissioned to write and produce called Dear Bobby, but other than that, she had never felt a closeness to any of her colleagues enough to even suggest presenting a paper together, let alone co-teach a class. So, she let go of her reservations, and decided she would leap into this opportunity—not just for the experience, but for the sisterhood. For many Black women in higher education at PWIs, alienation is part of the normative experience. As Wolfe and Dilworth (2015) note, Black women who work at PWIs are situated in a cultural context in which they did not originate, have limited existence, and function with limited voice in how the institution operates. As a result, PWIs have often marginalized and neglected the very existence of Black women (Kelly & Winkle-Wagner, 2017).

“This experience is going to be good for the both of us. Imagine: two Black women standing in the front of the classroom, co-teaching courses that will live with these students and this community for years to come. So many of our students never get to experience one Black professor, let alone two,” said Kiesha.

“Then let’s do this,” Angela said, the excitement finally building for her. From there, Kiesha started sharing her vision more fully.

“My students are learning about prison reentry and the struggles individuals face upon returning home. Your students create documentaries, and I think they could create a documentary about this topic. Bringing African American Studies Capstone students together with my Criminal Justice Capstone students would be a great way for them to learn from one another. My students are mostly white, and this class would be the first experience for them that centers Blackness,” Kiesha said.

The two sat and talked for several more minutes, brainstorming ways they could create two courses that would mesh successfully. Both women were accustomed to academic competitiveness and were relieved that this did not exist between them.

The academy of higher education within the walls of PWIs often operates in ways that are counterintuitive to who Black women are. There are racially biased student evaluations, the pressures of publication expectations, and the competitiveness that results from the ranking systems of tenure and promotion. As a result, Black women often struggle to find their place within these institutions. This intersection of being is often ignored at PWIs where the focus is on maintaining white organizational culture (Alfred, 2001).

By the time Kiesha and Angela got to the end of this first conversation, they were firmly invested in their vision. They would teach two concurrent courses that would ultimately produce a resource to help previously incarcerated individuals successfully reenter society. They discussed the idea of a website or a video, but because of Angela’s recent experience teaching an immersive learning course that required her students to create a documentary, she felt confident she could lead their combined classes in this effort.

If Kiesha would not have had an hour-long drive home, the two probably would have continued talking into the wee hours of the night. They could see these courses in their minds, and they could see themselves co-teaching, classrooms just doors apart, and both having easy access to each other and their shared students.

“I’m not a pro at this,” Angela warned before walking out of the office. She wanted to make sure Kiesha knew that documentary filmmaking was something she dabbled in, but that she didn’t consider herself an expert in the field.

“Doesn’t matter,” Kiesha assured Angela. “These students will make up for whatever deficits we might have, particularly the Telecommunications students. And just think about all of the different resources we can provide; we have links to all of the local, state, and federal resources the formerly incarcerated might need like health care, housing. . .”

“Education and food access,” Angela added, returning to stand by Kiesha’s desk. At the rate they were going, they would stay late into the night. Neither woman was eager to end the conversation because they had so many ideas running through their minds.

“As well as legal services and voting registration,” Kiesha said. “We can truly give our students a chance to learn the academic aspect of reentry, but even better, they’ll have a chance to be on the ground floor of a project that will be available to Delaware County residents for years to come.”

From there, they made plans to share their course materials with each other. They frequently emailed each other just to make sure their two classes complimented one other. Kiesha would send Angela a draft of her course description and course goals, and then Angela would take it, tweak it, and send it back with her additions. It wasn’t long before the two colleagues had fleshed out how their two classes would coincide with and diverge from each other.

In a phone call with Kiesha, Angela further explained her vision for the class. “I’ll get them prepared to help take the lead on the design of the documentary both classes will create, but I don’t want my students to just focus on design. I want them to read and absorb many of the things your class will be discussing. They need to know more than the ins and outs of making a documentary look pretty on the screen. They need to understand the reasons behind every stylistic choice they make and every bit of content they include.”

Kiesha agreed. “This project will have a long-lasting effect on viewers for years to come. We’re helping these students create a legacy for themselves and our community, and they need to process the full impact of this immersive learning community-based project.”

From here, Kiesha and Angela began to thoughtfully select the readings that both classes would discuss for the semester. The book that Kiesha selected for her class, Convicted and Condemned by Keesha M. Middlemass, was also adopted by Angela for her students.

Angela used two textbooks called The Oral History Reader and Recording Oral History. Assigning Dr. Middlemass’ book was important because she identified as a Black woman, and this was another way to center a Black woman in the class. Kiesha had also expressed that she had been in communication with Dr. Middlemass and that she was willing to come to their university and give a talk. Kiesha and Angela decided that they would teach the content for the first half of the semester, and for the second half, the students would put into play all they had learned.

From here on, they focused on the specific day-to-day organization of the class, as well as details that were specific to each woman. Because of some underlying health issues, Angela was concerned about the location of their classrooms. She was used to having to fight for accommodations, so she emailed Kiesha with her concerns. As the Director of African American Studies, Kiesha was able to bypass the traditional bureaucracy and send the request directly to the office that handles classroom assignments.

“I’ll make sure our classes are scheduled at the same time in the same building,” Kiesha emailed back. It wasn’t long before Angela heard that the secretary had submitted the request to the appropriate people, and she and Kiesha would be teaching in classrooms that were side by side. In the past, admitting she had health issues made Angela feel vulnerable. She always felt like it was just one more strike against her, but she never felt that way when talking to Kiesha. She knew if it came down to it, and she had a bad day, she would receive Kiesha’s support without having to wonder if she had just accumulated another professional strike.

By January of 2020, Kiesha and Angela were set. Kiesha was even collecting information from a class she was teaching spring semester 2020 that would be beneficial to their classes in the fall. It seemed like nothing could get in the way of their plan. But then, Covid-19 appeared on the horizon.

“What are we going to do?” That was a question that came up many times. By the time their university shut down face-to face-classes on March 16, 2020, they had already mapped out much of the structure of their class. So much of their class depended on their students being in the same room, or so they thought.

“Should we move forward with our classes?” one of them asked.

“Perhaps we should delay it by a semester,” the other replied, but soon, they stopped looking at the limitations and started focusing on the possibilities. As Black women, Kiesha and Angela were familiar with having to be resilient and overcoming hardships.

Their summer was a rollercoaster of tasks and emotions. The women communicated constantly as they reimagined the structure of their course, and as they shouldered the additional work of bringing their other classes online. Meanwhile, Angela was writing a novel with a strict summer deadline for completion, and Kiesha was focused on her research agenda and managing her three children. It was a struggle.

During a typical summer, Kiesha’s kids would be in summer camp and taking part in other structured activities which would provide Kiesha with time to write, but this summer was not typical. Like many Black women in higher education, Kiesha found that Covid-19 impacted her research agenda and created additional stress to work-life balance (Kantamneni, 2020).

To further complicate things, Kiesha and Angela found out that they were required to teach their classes asynchronously. This meant they would seldom, if ever, get the chance to “meet” their students face-to-face online. Thankfully, both Kiesha and Angela had experience teaching online asynchronously, but those experiences had been with classes they had taught before and had a familiarity with teaching online. This new course required so much group work and individualized attention that for a few days, it all felt impossible. But in true Black woman fashion, they figured out how to make a bad situation work in their favor. When the semester started on August 24, 2021, the two women were as ready as they could be.

The challenges they faced were many. Some challenges related specifically to the Covid-19 virus such as student after student missing class assignments due to illness. Some challenges were related to the logistics of teaching in different cities without direct contact with the students or each other. And some challenges were personal. Due to her health concerns, Angela worried constantly that she might be exposed to the virus as her husband had to leave the house for work-related meetings. She also struggled with depression issues that were normally manageable, but due to the pandemic, were aggravated by the isolation, fear, and uncertainty it created.

Kiesha’s children were doing school virtually and her first grader required constant supervision to ensure that he was engaged and keeping up with class expectations. This also meant that he needed to be with Kiesha in her home office. The office was the only space in the house that Kiesha considered her own. It was where she found peace and tranquility in a home that was full of energetic children.

Happily, the relationship Kiesha and Angela had formed with each other now helped them cope with the life stresses they experienced as faculty, Black women, wives, and mothers. To help combat some of the pressure they were feeling, they used some of the time during their Saturday check-ins to destress and to discuss their frustrations. Initially, the purpose of the meetings was for Kiesha and Angela to share how things were progressing with their courses, but it didn’t take long before those calls became so much more.

“Those calls became a lifeline for Kiesha and me,” Angela said. “Each week, we would tell ourselves we just had to make it to Saturday, and then we could unload whatever burdens we were carrying, whether those were professional or personal burdens, it didn’t matter. We showed up for each other, time after time and it meant a lot to both of us.”

Mid-way into the semester, a situation arose that illustrated the necessity for Black women in professional spaces to interact with other Black women who can relate to their experiences. Kiesha had arranged for the author of the book Convicted and Condemned to speak to both classes. Although they could not require their students to attend the talk with Dr. Middlemass, Angela and Kiesha offered extra credit, and were delighted when most of their students participated.

Angela and Kiesha were very excited to have Dr. Middlemass as the guest speaker and they looked forward to seeing their students engage with her. As the students read Convicted and Condemned for class, they met in small groups and with their professors to discuss the findings from the book. Kiesha and Angela were convinced that those robust conversations would be carried over into the discussion with Dr. Middlemass.

The conversation took place on Zoom and was going well until out of the blue, a white male student raised a question about Dr. Middlemass’ argument regarding racial disparities and the criminal justice system. Dr. Middlemass addressed the students’ question by citing statistics and discussing the rationale behind the statistics. With a passive-aggressive tone, the student continued to question the accuracy of the findings. Dr. Middlemass, visibly caught off guard, responded by stating, “I will make note of that.”

At that point, Kiesha interjected into the conversation and reminded the student in question that the week prior, the class had covered the topic he raised, and that he should refer back to the course material. Kiesha and Angela were also very shaken-up by the student’s behavior. He had never questioned data from the book during his small group meetings or in any of his reflection assignments. His confrontation during the talk felt like a personal attack. Had this been a regular semester where both women were teaching in isolation, their reaction to the event might have been different. They might have second-guessed what they witnessed during the exchange between the student and the guest speaker, and they might have let it go for fear of being labeled too sensitive or even grossly mistaken. But this time, they were not alone. There were three Black women in that Zoom room. Three Black women who all witnessed and experienced the microaggressions put forth by the student. This time, they did not have to second-guess themselves.

“Girl. . .” This is how the weekly Zoom call between Kiesha and Angela always began. “Girl,” depending on the inflection and tone, could mean a lot of things. After the incident with the student, both women knew exactly what this “Girl” meant. It meant, “Did I hear what I thought I heard during that talk with Dr. Middlemass?” Kiesha and Angela knew their Zoom calls were a safe space to let go of their code switching. They could mix and mingle their academic speech with their Black girlfriend speech, and both would understand the other without any judgment. This was yet another benefit of two Black women sharing the same academic space. There is a saying that there is safety in numbers—for Kiesha and Angela, this was very true. They had created a virtual safe house where they could unload their collective burdens and by the end of the call they could sign off with some semblance of peace and resolution. In the case of this call, they were trying to unpack the microaggressions between their white male undergraduate student and their guest who was a Black woman with a PhD and an expert in her field.

“I have never been so embarrassed,” Kiesha said. “Dr. Middlemass was our guest and our student intentionally tried to derail the conversation. It felt like he purposefully set her up to make her look bad.”

Angela was in total agreement. “That is exactly how it felt to me too. Now, whether he consciously did so because there were too many Black women with power in that room, we may never know, but the end result is the same. Did you have a chance to email Dr. Middlemass?”

“I sent Dr. Middlemass an email to apologize. She responded by saying that when that happens, her go to response is, ‘I will make a note of that.’”

“What about the student?” Angela asked.

“How do I address this with him?” Kiesha asked, thinking out loud. The student in question was enrolled in Kiesha’s course. “I can’t just let this slide.”

“We definitely want to make this a learning experience for him,” Angela said. “His privilege is so strong, that he could have just been acting on impulse. That is what makes systemic racism so difficult to pinpoint.”

“Exactly,” Kiesha said. “They do it as instinctively as breathing. They often aren’t even aware it’s happening.”

By the time they concluded their conversation that day, both women had a good idea about how they would move forward with this student and in their classes overall.

Kiesha and Angela found that their weekly meetings were less about the day-to-day grind of teaching asynchronously and more about developing a language and a space where they were free to share anything with each other, from the systemic racism and microaggressions they experienced as the only Black faculty members in their academic areas to the fear of raising Black sons in the Midwest. No topic was too frivolous or too deep.

Even though their co-taught courses have ended, these weekly calls continue to bring peace and companionship to Kiesha and Angela. These calls had created a safe space in which they could release the stress that accumulates in the mind, body, and spirits of Black women in the academic community. On a day-to-day basis, Black women in academia are walking powder kegs with no outlet to release all that they carry. The physical and emotional toll of teaching at a PWI (Shavers & Moore, 2019) is overwhelming.

In one of their calls over the Winter holiday break in 2020, Kiesha asked Angela, “Did you look at your teaching evals?”

Angela responded, “I never look at them until it’s time to do my Annual Report of Scholarship and Merit every January. The way the evaluations are structured, it’s seldom that I receive the kind of comments that are going to benefit my teaching. So, unless I absolutely have to look at them, I avoid them like the plague.”

Kiesha said, “Yeah, I know, but I want to go up for Full Professor, so I have to look at them.”

“Try not to internalize any of those comments,” Angela advised. “I try to stick with the data. The data doesn’t affect me the same way as the comments.”

“Yeah, never read the comments.”

“Once, a student commented that my ‘big behind and broad nose’ was too much of a distraction in the classroom,” Angela said. “That’s the type of mess we have to deal with on a regular basis teaching at a PWI. Come for me about the rigor of my course but my appearance? Really? And they expect us to soak up all of that racist propaganda every semester like sponges and pretend like it doesn’t affect our physical and emotional health. No. I refuse to go down that road. Those evaluations get my attention one time per year and that’s it.”

“Girl, you know reading all of that is not good for your health.”

The way in which student evaluations are used in the promotion, tenure, and annual review processes within the University system impacts the mental health of Black female faculty (Harlow, 2003; Stanley, 2006). Studies have consistently found that Black women have lower teaching evaluations than their Black male counterparts and white women (Daniel, 2019; Griffin et al., 2013; O’Meara, 2002).

Kiesha and Angela’s conversations did not right all of the wrongs in the academic world, but these weekly check-ins did let them know they were not alone. Before, they felt like they were on a deserted island, experiencing a barrage of indignities without another soul who could understand. These conversations showed them that they could trust their instincts—they were not imagining things. They also found that through the friendship that grew from those weekly meetings, they would always have an ally in each other.

Discussion

Within the paper, we highlight how we utilized a womanist approach within our co-teaching experience. Womanist Ethicist Dr. Floyd-Thomas (2006), expands Alice Walker’s definition of womanism by identifying four tenets integral to liberating the voices of women as: radical subjectivity, traditional communalism, redemptive self-love, and critical engagement. Radical subjectivity asks that women take seriously both their personal and communal agency. While co-teaching, we both understood our positionality as Black women who were co-creating a learning experience for our students. We were very deliberate in structuring our courses in a manner that highlighted the voices of Black women. Traditional Communalism is defined as loving yourself and others. The experiences of supporting each other through co-teaching, through the stressors of working at a PWI, and through life in a global pandemic were reflected in our Saturday morning meetings. During these Zoom meetings, we would listen, share, reflect and offer love and support to each other. These meetings became part of our weekend routine and demonstrated the dedication we have for each other and for the educational process of our students. Redemptive Self Love is defined as loving yourself. These once-a-week meetings provided a space for the two of us to use reflection as a form of self-care and self-love (Haarhoff et al., 2015). Critical Engagement focuses on systemic issues that undergird the perpetuation of the tripartite intersection of race, sex, and class oppression. Within the course we focused on identifying support resources for the marginalized population of those who have returned to communities after periods of incarceration. Throughout the semester, we worked to support each other in ways that are atypical for two Black female faculty who teach at a PWI. By co-teaching we were able to collaborate and commiserate; we could discuss the highlights and challenges because of the shared teaching experience.

The methodological technique of critical co-constructed autoethnography allows for individuals to reflect on the complexities of relationships that exist when collaborating. This also allows for the distribution of power inequities by disrupting what is considered the standard academic writing process. This method allowed us to draw upon the complexity of our friendship within the collaborative process. Cann and DeMeulenaere (2012) describe critical co-constructed autoethnography as a method that is situated within the context of “critical theory, critical pedagogy, and critical race methodology” (p. 147).

Critical Race methodology highlights the value of counter-storytelling as a means of sharing the stories and lived experiences of those whose stories are not often told or are told in ways in which their voices are marginalized (Solórzano & Yosso, 2002). According to Delgado (1989) “oppressed groups have known instinctively that stories are an essential tool to their survival and liberation” (p. 2436). Those who use Critical Race Theory as a tool to counter dominant narratives recognize that race, class, and gender are salient issues that impact individuals’ daily lives. Counter-stories also highlight the ways in which marginalized groups survive, resist, and develop cultural cohesion, and how fighting against the dominant narrative falsely defines them as groups and individuals. This paper extends the use of counter-storytelling within CRT by highlighting a new form of storytelling: co-constructed autoethnography. Previous research recognizes various forms of storytelling such as Personal Stories or Narratives, Composite Stories or Narratives, Other People’s Stories or Narrative (Solórzano & Yosso, 2002) and we can add co-constructed autoethnography to the list of counter-stories.

This research also contributes to the growing body of work that chronicles the experiences of Black women who work at PWIs. The research offers an insight into the lived experiences of two Black who women who often struggle to find a place and voice in their home departments. For other minority faculty, this paper will reaffirm their experiences at their institutions. For Anglo faculty who want to serve as allies and want to learn how to support faculty of color, this document can serve as a learning tool. Speaking publicly about frustrations in your work life is often discouraged by individuals who are in a position of power and authority. This may be one of the reasons why there are so few publications that focus on individuals of color working in predominantly white institutions of higher education (Stanley, 2006). However, we are convinced that the articulation of this shared lived experience contributes to the current and developing body of research on African-American women in higher education at PWIs. This paper highlights the experiences of Black women in the academy, and is therefore important that all colleges and universities, but specifically, PWIs take note of the research findings shared in this paper.

Writing this paper required both of us to rethink the traditional models associated with writing an academic paper. Specifically, for Kiesha, the way in which she and Angela approached researching and writing this paper was a complete abandonment of what she had been taught as a researcher. At the same time, having an opportunity to create knowledge and apply critical social theory to that knowledge using voice and dialog allowed for deeper processing of both her and Angela’s experiences. We recognize that for some readers this approach may require them to rethink how they process and analyze what they consider to be research. Our general hope is that just like we were able to set aside many of the traditions that influenced how we wrote academic papers, that the readers of this paper will likewise set aside how they engage with research and be open to this new and different form of expression.