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College Students' Experiences of Power and Marginality
Sharing Spaces and Negotiating Differences
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Book Description
As scholars and administrators have sharpened their focus on higher education beyond trends in access and graduation rates for underrepresented college students, there are growing calls for understanding the experiential dimensions of college life. This contributed book explores what actually happens on campus as students from an increasingly wide range of backgrounds enroll and share space. Chapter authors investigate how students of differing socioeconomic backgrounds, genders, and racial/ethnic groups navigate academic institutions alongside each other. Rather than treat diversity as mere difference, this volume provides dynamic analyses of how students come to experience both power and marginality in their campus lives. Each chapter comprises an empirical qualitative study from scholars engaged in cutting-edge research about campus life. This exciting book provides administrators and faculty new ways to think about students’ vulnerabilities and strengths.
Table of Contents
Introduction: Power and Marginality on Campus
Elizabeth M. Lee
Part One: Identities in Practice
- At the intersection of race and class: An autoethnographic study on the experiences of a Southeast Asian American college student Kimberly A. Truong, Tryan L. McMickens, and Ronald E. L. Brown
- "I Kind of Found My People": Latino/a College Students’ Search for Social Integration on Campus
- Constructing "Hawaiian," Post-Racial Narratives, and Social Boundaries at a Predominantly White University
- "That’s What Makes Our Friendships Stronger": Supportive Friendships Based on Both Racial Solidarity and Racial Diversity
- Crisscrossing Boundaries: Variation in Experiences with Class Marginality among Lower-Income, Black Undergraduates at an Elite College
- Les Miraculés: "The Magical Image of the Permanent Miracle"—Constructed Narratives of Self and Mobility from Working-Class Students at an Elite College
- Pushed in or Pulled Out? How Organizational Factors Shape the Social and Extra-curricular Experiences of First-generation Students
- Homo Academicus at Play: An Ethnographic Study of Becoming College Men in a First Year Residence Hall
- Diversity Does Not Mean Equality: De Facto Rules that Maintain Status Inequality among Black and White Fraternity Men
- Being "the Gay" on Campus: Developing Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and/or Queer identities in a college context
Sandi Kawecka Nenga, Guillermo A. Alvarado, and Claire S. Blyth
Daniel Eisen
Janice McCabe
Part Two: Institutional Interactions around Power and Marginality
Anthony Abraham Jack
Allison L. Hurst and Deborah M. Warnock
Jenny M. Stuber
Jane M. Jensen and Karin Ann Lewis
Rashawn Ray and Bryant Best
Elizabeth M. Lee and Chaise LaDousa
Editor(s)
Biography
Elizabeth M. Lee is Assistant Professor of Sociology at Ohio University.
Chaise LaDousa is Associate Professor of Anthropology at Hamilton College.
Reviews
"Lee and LaDousa’s important and well-edited volume brings to light the experiences of students who embody ‘diversity’ through insightful and nuanced qualitative accounts. Each account provides a unique window into students’ highly varied experiences at college and the complex interplay of forces that shape relations of power and emergent forms of marginality on college campuses. The compelling stories brought together in this volume vividly illustrate the deeply contextual nature of how ‘diversity’ is produced, negotiated, and experienced in institutions of higher education in America. The volume should be required reading for higher education administrators and faculty, and will be a valuable resource for all who seek to understand and truly confront the forms of power and marginalization that underlie the deployment of diversity policies in higher education today."
--Kathleen D. Hall, Associate Professor of Education and Anthropology, University of Pennsylvania
"College Students’ Experiences of Power and Marginality takes a long overdue look at the full diversity of students who occupy today’s college campuses. This rich compilation by leading scholars of race, ethnicity, gender, sexuality, and higher education gives readers insight into how students understand and manage their positions in complex status hierarchies—as well as the costs of pervasive inequalities."
--Laura Hamilton, Associate Professor of Sociology, University of California-Merced