Description
Book SynopsisThe Feminist Alliance Project in Appalachia: Minoritized Experiences of Women Faculty and Administrators in Higher Education illustrates the minoritized experiences of women faculty and administrators in higher education and highlights Appalachia as a geographic and cultural region, a sector in academia that still remains relatively ignored in mainstream feminist studies. This book is based on autobiographical and autoethnographic narratives of diverse women who discuss their similar and unique forms of oppression as students and as professionals in the academic workplace within Appalachia. Their minoritized experiences exemplify women's relational ties and the need for what the volume editor Alicia Chavira-Prado names the Feminist Alliance Project. Chavira-Prado calls for feminists to develop and enact an allied feminism that transcends class, race, or other artificially constructed borders and identities, as well as the specific subjectivities that have separated feminist
Trade Review
“Alicia Chavira-Prado lays the groundwork for the long-overdue alliance of all women in the academy by shedding light on how ‘traditional’ feminist approaches, as well as higher education history and development, work to oppress and exclude them by silencing their voices, limiting opportunities for success, and ignoring their contributions. Through powerful narratives, the contributors make clear the ways in which social class and race intersect without dismissing the existence of white privilege.” —Karen L. Dace, Vice Chancellor for Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion at Indiana University–Purdue University Indianapolis and author of Unlikely Allies in the Academy: Women of Color and White Women in Conversation
“Alicia Chavira-Prado has organized an important intervention into transformative feminist alliances that span racial lines. This collection of essays lays important groundwork to naming and theorizing the interstitial spaces and unnamed possibilities that exist in alliances between white Appalachian women and women of color. The volume takes challenging our limited understanding of Appalachian culture as a point of departure to explore the intersections that align women of color and white Appalachian women, taking care to attend to the intersections of power that enable and constrain those affinities.” —Aimee Carrillo Rowe, Associate Professor of Communication Studies at California State University, Northridge, and author of Power Lines: On the Subject of Feminist Alliances
Table of Contents
Naomi Zack: Foreword: Feminism, Higher Education, and Appalachia – Acknowledgements – Alicia Chavira-Prado: Introduction: A Transracial Feminist Alliance in Appalachia? – Alicia Chavira-Prado: Understanding Minoritization – Laura L. Tussey: Oxbow: Finding the Path to Purpose Through Communities of Academic Women in Appalachia – Dina L. Lopez: Against All Odds – Ellen Belchior Rodrigues: The Academic Minority Women’s Survival Handbook in Appalachia: Keep Your Head Down, Work, Be Invisible – Nancy Coldiron Preston: Recruiting Marginalized Participants Into Research: Reflections on a Study of Appalachian Women – Chantel Weisenmuller: The Imposter Syndrome: An Appalachian Woman in the Academy – Linda Koenig: Appalachian Privilege – Alicia Chavira-Prado: Conclusion: On the Significance of The Feminist Alliance Project in Appalachia – Index.
