Latinx Faculty in la Academia: Power, Agency, and Sobrevivencia

In this chapter, the authors provide an overview of the research-based, collectivized experiences of Latinx faculty in the US academy. Further, the term Latinx is an important tool to signal the colonial nature of the imposition of gender binaries and opens up the possibility for recognizing the diversity of Indigenous sex gender systems in the Americas, many of which included more than two genders. Latinx faculty, like Latinxs working within other institutions, are not passive victims, but survivors and trans/formers of la academia. Gonzalez specifically identified the three areas where the Chicanx students in his study trans/formed the whitestream university: the physical, epistemic, and the social spaces. Latinx faculty’s sobrevivencia is nourished by community cultural wealth, saberes, and felt commitments and responsibilities to the various Latinx communities, including Indigenous and AfroLatinx communities within and outside of broader constructions of Latinidad.