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Emerging Intersections: Race, Class, and Gender in Theory, Policy, and Practice, Bonnie Thornton Dill and Ruth Enid Zambrana, Eds. (Rutgers University Press, 2009, $24.95 paperback)
“Inequality and oppression are deeply woven into the tapestry of American life,” editors Bonnie Thornton Dill and Ruth Enid Zambrana observe in their introduction to this new collection of previously unpublished essays (1). Evocative not only of the complex strands of power that constitute institutional landscapes, but also of the interwoven complexity of individual identity, the metaphor aptly describes the vision of society this collection advances. Grounded primarily in social science, the collection connects a range of locations where race, class, gender, and other modes of identity inform and constrain opportunity—including the legal field, the welfare state, the classroom, and the faculty lounge. Together, the essays illustrate how the search for pathways to equity requires an eye trained to notice the subtle and significant interlocking matrices of identity that inform experience.
In their introduction, Thornton Dill and Zambrana describe intersectional analysis as “an emerging lens” (18), but Patricia Hill Collins reminds readers in her foreword that intersectionality has been around for decades while still remaining critical, underutilized, and contested. Hill Collins describes Emerging Intersections as “an important guidepost” in intersectional work, and her observation seems apt (vii). The authors intend for the collection to represent a range of ways in which scholars have deployed intersectional analysis, and it seems to succeed in this goal, while also often suggesting pathways for further research. As a whole, Emerging Intersections is an important tool, particularly for feminist educators, that posits intersectional analysis as the “critical first step toward eliminating inequality” (11).
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Rethinking Leadership in a Complex, Multicultural, and Global Environment: New Concepts and Models for Higher Education, Adrianna Kezar, Ed. (Stylus, 2009, $24.95 paperback)
Drawing from a wave of visionary programs as well as from feminist principles, Adrianna Kezar reconceptualizes leadership as embracing interconnection, responding to context, and honoring ethical commitments. In this edited volume, Kezar and contributing authors explore the disparate locations where leadership development models have advanced this “revolutionary” vision. The resulting collection is a detailed and useful survey of existing efforts to transform higher education, including several examples that address feminist concerns, such as HERS (Higher Education Resource Services), Georgia Tech’s ADVANCE program, and institutional efforts to reenvision career flexibility and work-life balance. It is also a call for transformative change in higher education at large.
Along with contributing author Laurel Beesemeyer, Kezar defines leadership as “the process of working collectively in an empowered and values-driven fashion to create change” (235). Positing this model in opposition to traditional leadership that emphasizes efficiency, market share, and individual advancement, the volume is a valuable contribution to a larger movement toward institutional justice-seeking in a complicated world (7). By suggesting new frameworks for leadership development programs, it provides practical if not easily applicable guidelines for real change in higher education at large. The book is essential reading for anyone involved in leadership development or interested in higher education leadership in the twenty-first century.
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Gender and the Changing Face of Higher Education: A Feminized Future?, Carole Leathwood and Barbara Read (Open University Press, 2009, $53.95 paperback)
As women around the world enter colleges and universities in greater numbers than ever before, the charge has sounded that higher education is abandoning its role as gatekeeper to prestige and becoming increasingly “feminized.” Leathwood and Read unpack this dubious assertion by scrutinizing higher education’s constituents and customs through a gendered lens. Examining women’s global rates of participation in higher education, as well as the dominant discourses and norms governing university culture in English-speaking countries, they find much evidence to counter the feminization thesis. According to Leathwood and Read, not only are women not participating in particularly high numbers within faculty and leadership ranks (despite their successes as students), but they also continue to face unwelcoming cultures that have been socially constructed as “male.”
Leathwood and Read undertake a broad-ranging investigation of how university cultures exclude women, exploring how gendered norms operate on a discursive level within university Web sites, in constructions of the “ideal student,” and in models of successful academic communication, among others. With astute analysis thoroughly grounded in feminist theory, they illustrate how higher education ideals continue to correspond with social constructions of white middle-class masculinity, putting women whose identities do not fit those norms (and particularly women of color) at a disadvantage as they navigate academic classrooms and careers. As the authors illustrate, the more pertinent question is not whether higher education has become “feminized,” but whether it can (as it has not yet) become “feminist”—a place that “fully takes into account matrixes of inequality” and values skills traditionally coded as “feminine.” Their answer, albeit tentative, is “yes,” and their analysis provides a framework for considering the remaining barriers to this goal.
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