Striving for the Im/Possible “Home”: A Tale of a Foreign-Born Scholar in U.S. Academia

Abstract

In this essay, I utilize autoethnographic storytelling to interrogate the notion of searching for an im/possible “home” as a foreign-born, yet U.S. post-graduate educated scholar in the U.S. academy and extend the discussion of theorizing academic home to demonstrate how I am labeled as an Other within the academic arena, and to examine the constant silencing and scrutiny of my teaching, service, and research in my professional life. This essay responds to the call of using autoethnography as a legitimizing space to re-center transnational scholars’ voices and to resist master narratives of being a professional in academia.