Profess*Her

Abstract

The twentieth and twenty-first century has conveyed a notable increase in the number of Black women joining the professoriate. While triumphant, Black female presence has yielded significant professional and personal hardships for the Black woman. These hardships, often undervalued or dismissed by the institution, silences stories of mistreatment to maintain the illusion of diversity and inclusion. My chapter makes a notable departure from scholarly dialogue on the Black female professor that conceptualizes her trajectory through the looking glass of what Patricia Hill Collins called controlling images in Black Feminist Thought (2000). Instead, my project highlights the unique position of the Black female professor in the academy through a concept I call Profess*Her. The term references the unique, revelatory power of the Black female professor that exposes what is and what must change in order to stride toward true freedom as actualized and encouraged by the academic institution.