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The study compares the demographics and degree attainment in Washington University’s (the University) Chancellor’s Graduate Fellowship Program (CGFP) in the pre- and post-Grutter era. The fellowship program’s aims included bolstering African American graduate degree completion and preparing African American faculty members. The 2003 Grutter v. Bollinger affirmative action case serves as a break point to compare the 1991–2003 cohorts and the 2004–2008 cohorts. Interviews of key leaders give a historical perspective on the program’s mission. Institutional data organized to form two cohorts, pre- and post-Grutter comparison groups, provide insight into demographic trends and degree attainment. The CGFP realized its original mission to diversify the professoriate by supporting underrepresented graduate students. The vast majority of alumni in both cohorts earned a graduate degree and earned their intended degrees. The two cohorts achieved high doctoral degree attainment. Time-to-degree findings and placement within the academy demonstrated a positive outcome. However, the program post-Grutter has generated fewer African American participants. In the post-Grutter era, the University needs to develop new strategies to increase the racial diversity of graduate education. As a complementary resource, the CGFP, as part of a broader portfolio of programmatic and policy tools designed to diversify, merits continued investment. Only a fraction of programs focused on African American doctoral attainment publish evaluation data. The study captures the programmatic effects of the Grutter decision at an elite American university.

In this chapter, I analyze how the intersection of geographic and social locations shapes ethnographic relationships in urban areas. While early urban ethnographers were acutely aware of the importance of geographic location, I argue that researchers’ social locations were ignored, obscuring how their bodies and social identities lead to different forms of knowledge about the metropolis. I use data from a two-year ethnographic research project conducted in Caracas, Venezuela as well as interviews conducted with women qualitative researchers to consider gendered dynamics of fieldwork experiences and data collection. Using a framework of embodied ethnography, which posits that all ethnographic knowledge is shaped by researchers’ bodies, I argue that men and women confront similar but distinct challenges while conducting fieldwork, and discuss what this means for data collection in cities. Specifically, I focus on how social control mechanisms, the gendered meanings attached to researchers’ bodies, and geographic barriers in urban areas can facilitate and restrict fieldwork. Critiquing hegemonic standards within ethnography that encourage researchers to leave their bodies out of their tales of the field, I advocate for the incorporation of gendered research experiences in our ethnographic writing with the aim of producing more complete narratives, but also to better prepare future ethnographers for fieldwork.

Many Black women continue to negotiate their way within higher education institutions, which are influenced by social class, race, and gender biases. Several scholars contend that Black women’s objectification as the “other” and “outsider within” (Collins, 2000; Fitzgerald, 2014; Jean-Marie, 2014) is still apparent in today’s institutions yet many persist to ascend to top leadership positions (Bates, 2007; Epps, 2008; Evans, 2007; Hamilton, 2004; Jean-Marie, 2006, 2008). In particular, the inroads made by Black women administrators in both predominantly white colleges (PWIs) as well as historically black colleges and universities (HBCUs) depict a rich and enduring history of providing leadership to effect social change in the African American community (i.e., uplift the race) and at large (Bates, 2007; Dede & Poats, 2008; Evans, 2007; Hine, 1994; Miller & Vaughn, 1997). There is a growing body of literature exploring Black women’s leadership in higher education, and most research have focused on their experiences in predominantly white institutions (Bower & Wolverton, 2009; Dixon, 2005; Harris, Wright, & Msengi, 2011; Jordan, 1994; Rusher, 1996; Turner, 2008). A review of the literature points to the paucity of research on their experiences and issues of race and gender continue to have an effect on the advancement of Black women in the academy. In this chapter, we examine factors that create hindrance to the transformation of the composition, structure, and power of leadership paradigm with a particular focus on Black women administrators and those at the presidency at HBCUs. From a review of the literature, our synthesis is based on major themes and subthemes that emerged and guide our analysis in this chapter. The chapter concludes with recommendations for identifying and developing Black women leaders to diversify the leadership pipeline at HBCUs and other institutions for the future.

Much of the research on intimate partner violence focuses on adults, and little of it emanates from the Global-South. The study reported upon in this chapter is aimed at addressing these gaps. Adopting a Southern Feminist Framework, it discusses findings from interviews with Brasilian and Australian advocates working on prevention of youth IPV. Participants from both countries noted disturbing instances of digital coercive control among the youth with whom they work, as well as underlying factors such as gender-based discrimination that simultaneously contribute to the prevalence of such behaviors, as well as their normalization among young people. However, they also emphasized the positive role that technology can play in distributing educational programming that reaches young people where they are and circumvents conservative agendas that in some cases keep education about gender discrimination and healthy relationships out of schools.