Testimonios de las atravesadas: A borderland existence of women of color faculty

ABSTRACT

The temporalities of COVID‐19 and resultant economic crisis, along with increased visibility of white supremacy and anti‐Blackness, have exacerbated the longstanding challenges Women of Color (WOC) faculty experience, particularly around negotiating labor and navigating the academy. Through Anzaldúa's borderlands framework, and an interwoven methodology of testimonios and pláticas, this paper's findings illuminate how the fixed, shifting, and messy boundaries of academic work have, especially for WOC faculty working through COVID‐19, violated the limits of the personal and professional, intruded into the homes as sacred spaces, and continued and expanded demands to provide labor. Institutions have placated these fraught borders with professional development and networks of mentorship—all while pivoting away from addressing the material and structural conditions that disintegrate the borders, particularly for WOC faculty. By exploring the layered complexities of traversing the academy–a space not made for our existence as WOC within them–we offer a nuanced understanding of academic borderlands. As a part of this, we highlight our resistance to carve out spaces of solidarity and collectivity in the face of Eurocentric, individualistic institutions to imagine new possibilities, a practice necessary toward transforming the academy.