Silence of the Lambs
Document Type
Book Chapter
Publication Date
2012
Editor(s)
Gabriella Gutiérrez y Muhs, Yolanda Flores Niemann, Carmen G. Gonzalez & Angela P. Harris
ISBN
9780874218701
Publisher
Utah State University Press
Language
en-US
Abstract
For an untenured faculty member, perception is everything. It matters how her students, her senior colleagues, the greater university, and outsiders at other institutions perceive her (Carbado and Gulati 2003b).1 The way that an untenured faculty member uses those perceptions, or in the words of Professors Devon Carbado and Mitu Gulati, works her identity, is critical to her survival and the ultimate goal of obtaining tenure (2000b).2 How should this young “lamb” signal to all that she is a dedicated teacher, a brilliant scholar, and a wonderful colleague who services her department, the university, and the community as a whole? In that signaling, how should she balance her own sense of self with her appraisal of the institutional values involved? In other words, how does a pretenure faculty member “resolve the conflict between [her] sense of identity and [her] sense of the identity [she] needs to project to signal to [the] employer that [she] exhibits the characteristics the employer values” (Carbado and Gulati 2000b, 1266)?
Recommended Citation
Angela Onwuachi-Willig,
Silence of the Lambs
,
in
Presumed Incompetent: The Intersections of Race and Class for Women in Academia
142
(Gabriella Gutiérrez y Muhs, Yolanda Flores Niemann, Carmen G. Gonzalez & Angela P. Harris ed.,
2012).
Available at:
https://doi.org/https://doi-org/10.2307/j.ctt4cgr3k.17
