Illuminating Joy in the Margins: An Exploration of Black Women Faculty's Coping Strategies in the Face of Institutional Race-Based Harm


Carae Henry, University of Toronto

In Canadian higher education institutions, Black women are largely underrepresented as faculty. Despite efforts to increase their recruitment and retainment in the academy, Black women remain relegated to the margins. As researchers have noted, many of these faculty recruitment efforts focus their attention toward financial incentives rather than holistic improvement of faculty wellbeing. Previous work in Canada and the United States has identified patterns of structural racism that impact Black women faculty’s experiences in higher education, and in some cases, result in their departure. Accordingly, much of the literature that has emerged has considered the psychological harm done to Black women and Black faculty broadly in these work environments shaped by race-based harm. While these works illuminate pathways of harm that shape Black women faculty’s experiences, there is risk of the reproduction of damage-centred narratives of Black women’s mental health that confine Black women to narratives of dismissal, disappearance and death at the hands of the academy. Alternatively, some American researchers have taken a turn toward the study of Black joy/happiness as a new frame to reconceptualize the relationship between Black faculty mental health and retainment within higher education. In Canada, initiatives in response to anti-Black racism such as the Scarborough Charter highlight a clear desire within academic to make room for Black faculty to flourish. Joy-oriented inquiries offer greater for desire for Black women in the academy, highlighting their agency in responding to adversity within the academy and beyond. This paper responds directly to scholarship in Black studies, higher education studies and the sociology of mental health by placing the study joy firmly at the centre of Black women faculty’s experiences. Taking the form of a critical literature review, it functions as a preliminary step to future research on the coping strategies that Black women faculty employ to navigate predominantly White institutions in Canada. This work is led by three primary questions: (a) What is known about the coping strategies/strategies of resistance that Black women faculty employ in response to institutional race-based harm?; (b) How does a focus on Black faculty joy/happiness opened new possibilities to interpret Black women faculty’s responses to race-based harm, independent of retainment?; (c) What is the potential of healing for Black women faculty through joy-oriented research of their mental health experiences? This piece will investigate the discourse surrounding Black women faculty’s efforts to navigate their mental health, with emphasis on the literature that frames these efforts through the lens of joy rather than imminent, unavoidable, damage and deficit. Informed by critical Black feminist thought, with particular attention to intersectional analysis. In her early work on intersectionality, Kimberle Crenshaw had utilized the concept to speak to the ways that intersections between race and gender shaped the employment experiences of Black women (1991). Later, Crenshaw would develop the theory to examine the ways that race, and gender contributed to “structural, political and representational aspects of violence against women of color” (1991:1244). While the theory has since been widely applied to other axes of identity since, its conceptual foundations suggest that it is well suited to an analysis of Black women faculty’s mental health experiences within and beyond higher education experiences. More broadly, this work follows the tradition of critical Indigenous feminisms in conversation with Black feminist thought, seeking to uncover a radical, decolonized ‘elsewhere’ that prioritize Black wellbeing and futurity within and beyond the academy (King 2019). What is more, this research is firmly interested in the pursuit of desire-based – rather than damage-centred – images of Black women faculty and their mental health experiences being produced (Tuck 2009). As Black women, these faculty are treated as fungible; they are recruited primarily for their optical or practical use value that is far removed from their personhood. As such, this work aligns strongly with the calls to action in Session EDU7: Creating Care and Community in the Neoliberal University. This paper is a challenge to the neoliberalization of higher education that relies on commodified of Black labour, the disposability of Black bodies and the illusion of “strength” throughout the process. An orientation towards Black women’s joy as faculty opens possibilities for communities of belonging and care to emerge within and beyond the university that may not only sustain these faculty, but the students whom they encounter for the long term.

This paper will be presented at the following session: