Dr. Cherese F. Fine, Assistant Professor in the Department of Educational Leadership at Southern Illinois University Edwardsville. Photo Credit: Charles H.F. Davis III
Did you know?
Did you know that Black faculty represent just 7% of all full-time college and university professors?1 By contrast, in Fall 2021, 12.5% of all students enrolled in colleges and universities racially identified as Black (NCES, 2024). This means, despite related issues of anti-Black racism in college admissions, Black students outnumber Black faculty by roughly 2:1 on college campuses. This disparity reflects the ongoing obstacles created by institutional racism that limit postsecondary opportunities for Black students pursuing advanced degrees (including terminal) and, subsequently, hired in faculty positions. What is more, of those Black terminal degree-holders that pursue faculty careers, many experience racialized burdens and structural obstacles that impede on their ability to be successful (Allen et al., 2000). These conditions often lead to a revolving door of departures of Black faculty from the academy (Griffin et al., 2011) further stagnating our collective representation across all fields and disciplines.
Altogether, these empirical and social realities raise important questions to be answered regarding the future of Black faculty, within and beyond the academy.
National Center for Education Statistics. (2024). Characteristics of postsecondary faculty. Condition of Education. U.S. Department of Education, Institute of Education Sciences.
Dr. J.T. Snipes, Associate Professor in the Department of Educational Leadership at Southern Illinois University Edwardsville. Photo Credit: Charles H.F. Davis III
What are our imagined futures?
Imagined Futures of Black Faculty is digital and visual scholarship project that brings together artistic portraits, documentary-style interviews, illustrations, and written work from aspiring, current, and former Black college and university faculty and the futures they imagine for themselves. Conceptualized as a collaboration, the project’s primary aims include using speculative approaches to increase the collective visibility of Black college and university faculty while also providing new models for self-authorship and envisioning transformative possibilities for Black life-making (Mustaffa, 2017), within and beyond the academy. Through employing a critical qualitative inquiry (Denzin, 2017) approach in tandem with narrative study (Clandinin & Connelly, 2000) and visual research methods, this project challenges conventional understandings and representations of Black personhood in the professional contexts of higher and postsecondary education. More specifically, and building on Wiegman’s (1995) analysis of image production as a system of representational economics, this project employs photography and film in ways that excavate Black faculty from the recesses of academic life into the forefront.