What Does It Mean to be in an Academic Space that Doesn’t Reflect Your Cultural Background? Identidad, Empoderamiento, y Representación Latina in the Texas State MARC Program
Date
2022-05
Authors
Blanco, Clarice A.
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Abstract
What does it mean to be in an academic space that doesn’t reflect you or your cultural background? As Latina/o/x students navigate higher education, they are isolated as Latina/o/x-faculty-to-Latina/o/x-student ratios continue to be unbalanced. Additionally, Latina/o/x students are preoccupied with negotiating issues on identidad management and formation as well as feeling empowered to persevere in a predominately White space. There is already a significant amount of scholarship that stress the importance of ethnic faculty representación, but most of this research is focused on K-12 education, not the university level, or does not consider Latina/o/x representación specifically. This case study seeks to understand how the lack of ethnic faculty representación in a particular place and program—the Master of Arts in Rhetoric and Composition program at Texas State University, a Hispanic-Serving Institution—affects a cohort of Latina students and how it informs (a) identidad, (b) empoderamiento, and (c) representación étnica through academic relationships, participation, and self-identification in a predominantly White academic space. To do so, I incorporate student perspectives through semi-structured interviews with the Latina MARC students enrolled in the Spring 2021 semester.
What does it mean to be in an academic space that doesn’t reflect you or your cultural background? As Latina/o/x students navigate higher education, they are isolated as Latina/o/x-faculty-to-Latina/o/x-student ratios continue to be unbalanced. Additionally, Latina/o/x students are preoccupied with negotiating issues on identidad management and formation as well as feeling empowered to persevere in a predominately White space. There is already a significant amount of scholarship that stress the importance of ethnic faculty representación, but most of this research is focused on K-12 education, not the university level, or does not consider Latina/o/x representación specifically. This case study seeks to understand how the lack of ethnic faculty representación in a particular place and program—the Master of Arts in Rhetoric and Composition program at Texas State University, a Hispanic-Serving Institution—affects a cohort of Latina students and how it informs (a) identidad, (b) empoderamiento, and (c) representación étnica through academic relationships, participation, and self-identification in a predominantly White academic space. To do so, I incorporate student perspectives through semi-structured interviews with the Latina MARC students enrolled in the Spring 2021 semester.
What does it mean to be in an academic space that doesn’t reflect you or your cultural background? As Latina/o/x students navigate higher education, they are isolated as Latina/o/x-faculty-to-Latina/o/x-student ratios continue to be unbalanced. Additionally, Latina/o/x students are preoccupied with negotiating issues on identidad management and formation as well as feeling empowered to persevere in a predominately White space. There is already a significant amount of scholarship that stress the importance of ethnic faculty representación, but most of this research is focused on K-12 education, not the university level, or does not consider Latina/o/x representación specifically. This case study seeks to understand how the lack of ethnic faculty representación in a particular place and program—the Master of Arts in Rhetoric and Composition program at Texas State University, a Hispanic-Serving Institution—affects a cohort of Latina students and how it informs (a) identidad, (b) empoderamiento, and (c) representación étnica through academic relationships, participation, and self-identification in a predominantly White academic space. To do so, I incorporate student perspectives through semi-structured interviews with the Latina MARC students enrolled in the Spring 2021 semester.
Description
Keywords
Latina/o/x, Language, Rhetoric, Academia, Empoderamiento, Counterstory
Citation
Blanco, Clarice A. What Does It Mean to be in an Academic Space that Doesn't Reflect Your Cultural Background? Identidad, Empoderamiento, y Representación Latina in the Texas State MARC Program. 2022. Texas State University, Master’s Thesis.