Academic Outsider: Stories of Exclusion and Hope

Tenure-track, published author, recipient of prestigious fellowships and awards--these credentials mark Victoria Reyes as somebody who has achieved the status of insider in the academy. Woman of color, family history of sexual violence, first generation, mother--these qualities place, and have always placed, Reyes on the margins of the academy; a person who does not see herself reflected in the models of academic excellence to which she aspired. Both statements are true. They also speak to the experiences of a rapidly growing proportion of the academy, as the majority white, male, and affluent space simultaneously transforms and resists transformation. These experiences are what allow Reyes to theorize the conditional citizenship of academic life, and to explore with sensitivity and fury the pain and paradoxes inherent in it.

Academic Outsider deftly blends personal stories with social theory to uncover and critically examine different spaces within the hierarchical world of the academy. Reyes thematically organizes a set of her own lived experiences--from navigating coded language in conversations with senior scholars, to balancing the ever-expanding list of professional expectations with family care-taking responsibilities, to managing life during a global pandemic--and uses them to deconstruct the academic institution itself, laying bare its failures. Her searing commentary is driven by the question: in light of all this, what can academic justice look like?

In many ways, this book is a response to the burgeoning genre of academic self-help (to which Reyes herself has contributed). Academic Outsider counters this trend by placing the accountability squarely on the policies that govern academic culture and those insiders with the power to change them. This doesn't mean that academic outsiders lack agency to improve their lives; Reyes concludes by contemplating her own decision to leave her home discipline, and on learning how to practice and institutionalize a loving academic ethic.