Full Description
Still Shaking the Table: Activism, Unity, and Supporting Students is the second volume in the Shaking the Table series, which centers the voices of identity center practitioners navigating increasingly complex, politicized, and constrained higher education environments. As colleges and universities continue to struggle to meaningfully support students across marginalized identities—including race, gender, sexuality, ability, class, religion, and citizenship status—those working within identity-based centers remain at the forefront of advocacy, care, and institutional change, often at great personal and professional cost.
Building on the foundation of Shaking the Table, which focused on survival and healing, this volume moves more explicitly into the terrain of campus activism, coalition-building, and sustained support for students. Amid mounting resistance to diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts nationwide, practitioners are increasingly asked to navigate competing institutional interests, political pressures, and shifting student needs, while showing up for the communities they serve. Through first-person narratives, contributors illuminate the tensions, contradictions, and possibilities that emerge when identity-centered work exists in opposition to institutional norms and state-level constraints.
Organized around three interconnected themes—Navigating Activism, Fostering Unity, and Supporting Students—this volume highlights how practitioners engage in advocacy within and beyond their institutions, wrestle with questions of privilege and intersectionality, and develop responsive practices to meet students' evolving needs. Across the chapters, authors explore the labor of coalition-building, the emotional toll of identity-based work, and the critical importance of self-reflection, critical hope, and collective care as strategies for longevity.
Still Shaking the Table serves as both a mirror and a roadmap: a reflection of the lived realities of identity center practitioners and a guide for those committed to advancing justice-oriented work in higher education. It is a resource for practitioners, scholars, and graduate students, and a call to action for supervisors, senior leaders, and institutions to move beyond performative commitments toward meaningful, accountable support for identity centers and the people who lead them.
Contents
Chapter 1. Stories We Refuse to Lose: Identity Center Staff Contributing to Our Visions for More; Stephanie Hernandez Rivera and Jonathan A. McElderry
Section I. Activism
Chapter 2. (Re)Imagining the Work: Counter-Storytelling in a Time of Organizational Change; Kandi M. Bauman
Chapter 3. "I'm Here For You, and I'm Here With You": Building Communities of Care Across Midwestern Public Universities; Susan Harper, Kalyani Kannan, Daniel Rau, and Emma Welch
Chapter 4. Partners in Justice: The Origin Story of a Middle Eastern and North African (MENA) Cultural Center; Marcela Ramirez-Stapleton
Chapter 5. Surviving through 2016: Building Community Amidst Trump and Racial Oppression; Ashley Gaddy Robbins
Section II. Unity
Chapter 6. Beyond Predominantly White Institution Perspectives: An Afro-Latina Black Culture Center Director's Journey in Supporting Afro-Latinidad; Brandi Wells-Stone
Chapter 7. The Dream Job: Reimagining Traditional Forms of Brotherhood Inclusive of Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer, & Questioning Men of Color; Vincent T. Harris
Chapter 8. Cultural Center Spaces Beyond Four-Year Institutions: Exploring Cultural Centers in Community Colleges; Susan Hua
Chapter 9. Toward Liberation, Resistance, Unity, and Healing: Experiences of Asian American Cultural Center Staff; Aaron J. Parayno, Kristine A. Din, and Joliana Yee
Chapter 10. Hope Alone is Not Enough: Surviving and Thriving in Identity-Based Spaces; Marcela Torres-Cervantes, Meg E. Evans and Jason K. Wallace
Section III. Supporting Students
Chapter 11. Beyond Women's Leadership: Embracing Feminist Praxis in Campus Women's and Gender Equity Centers; Heather D. Shea
Chapter 12. Reimagining Identity Support Spaces in Higher Education: An Appreciative Approach to Advancing Student Success for Students of Color; Jesse R. Ford, Erica R. Wiborg, and Calvin R. Lowery, Sr.
Chapter 13. Collaboration and Coalition: A White Woman's Reflections on Leading a Women's Center; Stefanie Argus
Chapter 14. Leading from the Middle: Reflections of a Nepantlera Navigating Identity and Supporting Students at La Casa; Adele Lozano
Chapter 15. Sustaining the Work: Care, Coalition, and Commitment in Identity-Based Practice From Here?; Jonathan A. McElderry and Stephanie Hernandez Rivera
