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Practicing Radical Fullness: Deepening Early Career Asian and Asian American Circles of Care.
Proposal abstract :
Through our initial meeting through the early career Wabash workshop for early career faculty of Asian descent, we surprisingly discovered stark similarities in our experiences in a number of aspects and strongly felt greater need and desire to support each other. As we still navigate common challenges that all minoritized faculty face: overt or subtle biases, highly demanding service obligations, being tokenized by authority, and cultural incompetence, we are looking to support each other in new ways of the scholar- teacher life. In addition to the challenges of academy for minoritize faculty, we are all parents of young children (ages 0-5) and come from non-European, Asian immigrant backgrounds (whether as the first or 1.5 generation) as this comes with its own unique stressors. At our home institutions, we feel very isolated due to not having colleagues who share our backgrounds and experiences. While there is growing support for early career faculty of color—notably early career Asian faculty through wonderful organizations like the Wabash Center—, extractive capitalist practices such as “publish or perish” have exacerbated impacts on minoritized bodies in academia. Navigating one’s professional life can be more challenging for those who have parenting responsibilities, especially within immigrant backgrounds where the culture of the “nuclear” unit is not the norm. Our situations became more complicated when we find that often, our progressive values and research are considered problematic within conservative Asian communities: still, we desire to teach and write about theology and religion in ways that embrace the formative aspects of our experiences and transform the rest. As we now look to advance our careers in the academy, we often struggle to find spaces where we can bring our full selves. Where do we fully fit? How can we become people who support the fullness of others? Further, how will we sustain ourselves and not fall into the trap of racialized capitalism or the model minority myth along the way? We continue to grapple with internalized beliefs of our work not being “good enough” (complicated by the Confucian value of continual development) and we need to share more deeply about our own questions, hopes, and intentions for cultural and personal change
Learning Abstract :
This peer mentoring cluster will support the creation of a new circle of care for three early-career Asian
and Asian American scholar-teachers and allow us to nurture conversations that will gift us with inner,
relational, and cultural resources such as creativity, harmony, and celebration. Our sessions will be
reflective of our own lived experiences, which include similarities (being of Asian descent and navigating
early career academic life while being parents of young children) and differences of parenting, ability,
ethnicity, race, gender, nationality, and institutional demands. This space is all so important as we do not
have commensurate conversation partners at our home institutions. Through our grant, we plan to
remember and revisit our cultural histories and legacy as well as share transparently about our own sense
of needed transformation. We will seek the support of trained cultural facilitators who can help us
collectively discern ways of living out our vocation to support one another in our pursuit of cultural
healing and intersectional liberation. Recognizing the white Christian supremacy, which has been at times
adopted for purposes of survival by immigrants from East Asia, we will also explore the impact of
internalized sexism, racism, homophobia/transphobia, and ableism, by reflecting on how to counter
this mentality moving forward. This program will be a crucial opportunity for us to create a new space of
support in our unique Asian and Asian American experiences that we deeply long for. In the spirit of the
Lilly endowment, we will strive to embody the gifts we receive and together imagine alternative cultures
within theological education that are compassionate, intersectional, and courageous. We will know our
goals have been accomplished in three primary ways: 1) through self-recognition of professional, cultural,
and relational empowerment in claiming our voice and agency, 2) the celebration of at least two (each)
teaching and writing projects which will be nurtured throughout the year and 3) the ability to craft out
rhythms of the scholar-teacher life which can support us holistically amidst life's demands.
Through our initial meeting through the early career Wabash workshop for early career faculty of Asian descent, we surprisingly discovered stark similarities in our experiences in a number of aspects and strongly felt greater need and desire to support each other. As we still navigate common challenges that all minoritized faculty face: overt or subtle biases, highly demanding service obligations, being tokenized by authority, and cultural incompetence, we are looking to support each other in new ways of the scholar- teacher life. In addition to the challenges of academy for minoritize faculty, we are all parents of young children (ages 0-5) and come from non-European, Asian immigrant backgrounds (whether as the first or 1.5 generation) as this comes with its own unique stressors. At our home institutions, we feel very isolated due to not having colleagues who share our backgrounds and experiences. While there is growing support for early career faculty of color—notably early career Asian faculty through wonderful organizations like the Wabash Center—, extractive capitalist practices such as “publish or perish” have exacerbated impacts on minoritized bodies in academia. Navigating one’s professional life can be more challenging for those who have parenting responsibilities, especially within immigrant backgrounds where the culture of the “nuclear” unit is not the norm. Our situations became more complicated when we find that often, our progressive values and research are considered problematic within conservative Asian communities: still, we desire to teach and write about theology and religion in ways that embrace the formative aspects of our experiences and transform the rest. As we now look to advance our careers in the academy, we often struggle to find spaces where we can bring our full selves. Where do we fully fit? How can we become people who support the fullness of others? Further, how will we sustain ourselves and not fall into the trap of racialized capitalism or the model minority myth along the way? We continue to grapple with internalized beliefs of our work not being “good enough” (complicated by the Confucian value of continual development) and we need to share more deeply about our own questions, hopes, and intentions for cultural and personal change
Learning Abstract :
This peer mentoring cluster will support the creation of a new circle of care for three early-career Asian
and Asian American scholar-teachers and allow us to nurture conversations that will gift us with inner,
relational, and cultural resources such as creativity, harmony, and celebration. Our sessions will be
reflective of our own lived experiences, which include similarities (being of Asian descent and navigating
early career academic life while being parents of young children) and differences of parenting, ability,
ethnicity, race, gender, nationality, and institutional demands. This space is all so important as we do not
have commensurate conversation partners at our home institutions. Through our grant, we plan to
remember and revisit our cultural histories and legacy as well as share transparently about our own sense
of needed transformation. We will seek the support of trained cultural facilitators who can help us
collectively discern ways of living out our vocation to support one another in our pursuit of cultural
healing and intersectional liberation. Recognizing the white Christian supremacy, which has been at times
adopted for purposes of survival by immigrants from East Asia, we will also explore the impact of
internalized sexism, racism, homophobia/transphobia, and ableism, by reflecting on how to counter
this mentality moving forward. This program will be a crucial opportunity for us to create a new space of
support in our unique Asian and Asian American experiences that we deeply long for. In the spirit of the
Lilly endowment, we will strive to embody the gifts we receive and together imagine alternative cultures
within theological education that are compassionate, intersectional, and courageous. We will know our
goals have been accomplished in three primary ways: 1) through self-recognition of professional, cultural,
and relational empowerment in claiming our voice and agency, 2) the celebration of at least two (each)
teaching and writing projects which will be nurtured throughout the year and 3) the ability to craft out
rhythms of the scholar-teacher life which can support us holistically amidst life's demands.