Blog

Teaching Evaluations. I’m Over It

When I was applying for tenure, I had to compile all of my teaching evaluations. I have rarely found teaching evaluations helpful, but as I looked at the evaluations across semesters and across years, I started to see an interesting pattern. As happens with many of us, my evaluations show very little middle ground. The...

Lactation Space Anyone?

Three months after my second child was born, I was scheduled to be at an academic conference. Unlike most conferences I attend, this one did not require me to travel out of state. However, it did require that I leave my baby for upwards of eight hours, during which time I would have few opportunities or space for pumpi...

White People, Your Silence Speaks Volumes

Charlottesville has brought with it even more divisions on the issue of confederate monuments than we had seen in recent months. Somehow, an act of domestic terrorism carried out by white supremacists has become a debate about preserving confederate monuments. Those opposed to their removal argue that these monuments a...

What’s Going on in Queer and Lesbian Stepparent Families?

What’s Going on in Queer and Lesbian Stepparent Families? Data collection for the queer and lesbian stepparent study is drawing to a close. In total, I conducted 50 interviews with families that include: four moms, three moms and a dad, two moms and an uncle, one-mom-one-dad and one-parent, and everything else in bet...

Pulse: A Space for Resilience, a Home for the Brave

I originally wrote this for QED: A Journal for GLBT Worldmakers. It appeared in their Fall 2016 special issue. In light on the one year anniversary of these tragic events, I thought I’d share it with you. Pulse: A Space for Resilience, a Home for the Brave Katie L. Acosta How many nights have I spent at Latinx n...

On Moving Past the White-Washed Academy

On Moving Past the White-Washed Academy The first time I went on the job market I became acutely aware of the unique space faculty members of color inhabit within it. I had spent years preparing for that first tenure-track job; taken all the right classes, focused on publishing and followed the rules of networking. I h...

Yo Soy Una Nepantlera

I remember the day when I realized that the Academy was not going to be a safe space for me. I was a graduate student and still painfully naïve. I had spent several years working in the corporate world where I had been truly miserable for a number of reasons and I had envisioned that academia would be this wonderful p...

Straight People…Please Stop Telling Us How Much Our Baby Looks Like Me

“I saw a picture of your daughter today … She is so cute. I can’t get over how much she looks like you.” I hear this ALL THE TIME. I heard it within hours of my daughter’s birth. So many people have commented on how very much my daughter looks like me that I have had to do a lot of work over the past few ...

Bringing in the Political Self: Teaching in the Era of Trump

Katie L Acosta This post originally appeared in Write Where it Hurts.   I recently attended a meeting designed to explain the boundaries of academic freedom to faculty members and to brainstorm best practices for creating a non-hostile classroom environment that presents students with a balanced picture of contemp...