Death by 1000 cuts: Workshopping from Black engineering narratives from interview to stage

Debalina Maitra; Brooke Charae Coley; Diego Reyes

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Conference: 2023 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition
Location: Baltimore , Maryland
Publication Date: June 25, 2023
Start Date: June 25, 2023
End Date: June 28, 2023
Conference Session: Research Methodologies – Session 2
Tagged Division: Educational Research and Methods Division (ERM)
Tagged Topic: Diversity
Page Count: 13
DOI: 10.18260/1-2--43204
Permanent URL: https://peer.asee.org/43204
Download Count: 184

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Paper Authors

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Debalina Maitra Arizona State University, Polytechnic Campus

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Debalina Maitra is a Post-doctoral Research Associate at ASU. Prior to her current role, Debalina Maitra was employed by CAFECS (Chicago Alliance for Equity in Computer Science), a NSF-funded Research Practice Partnership, for almost two years. She compl

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Brooke Charae Coley Arizona State University, Polytechnic Campus

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Brooke Coley, PhD is an Assistant Professor in Engineering at the Polytechnic School of the Ira A. Fulton Schools of Engineering at Arizona State University. Dr. Coley is Principal Investigator of the Shifting Perceptions, Attitudes and Cultures in Engine

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Diego Reyes

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I am a PhD Student in the Engineering Education Systems and Design Program at Arizona State Unviersity. I come from a Biomedical engineering background and have a large passion for dismantling barriers to higher education to make it more accessible.

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Abstract

There is limited research exploring the lived experiences of Black engineering Ph.D. students. Our proposed work employs an arts-based inquiry and transforms the interview data into a script for potential ethno-theater performance. We constructed stories of three students’ journeys as they navigated engineering PhD programs at prestigious, predominantly White institutions (PWI) through creative resilience. Ethno-drama joins the words ethnography and drama to describe a written play script derived from significant selections of narratives collected from interview transcripts (Saldana, 2005). Grounded in Critical Race and Role Strain Theories, this script represents counter-narratives of the Black experience in higher education in STEM. The emergent script captures the masks and identities worn by Black students. This work aims to show the death of 1000 cuts and the myriad ways Black students experience marginalization in engineering. To present the marginalization mask, we use the composite narrative approach. In this, we will read story 1 (Adrian), story 2 (Maya), and story 3 (Naomi) to collectively represent these “deaths of 1000 cuts” experiences. This will be recorded as one story/voice; although it represents the varied manifestations of marginalizing experiences that Black students have encountered in engineering, we also refer to the marginalization mask as a spirit murdering mask. Spirit murdering was originally conceptualized by Williams (1987) and applied to education by Love (2016); it is a form of racism that inflicts pain and kills the humanity and spirits of people of color. Microaggression, role negotiation, hypervisibility vs invisibility, lack of direction, mental health, and other marginalized experiences that Black students navigate in academia are a reflection of our society; hence it's critical that academic work reaches beyond the traditional venues. Also, the development of scripts calls for reconsidering current pedagogical practices and policies in academia, as the audience will witness the enactment of some experiences. We would like to advance our discussions in the following directions to further enhance the methodological contributions of ethno-drama in the context of engineering education- • How do you decide what is most impactful to include from your qualitative data set when the experiences are all critical, varied, and differentially impacted by intersectional identities? • Are there other effective ways of moving from narrative to script, specifically in dealing with data from people that have marginalized identities? • The dilemma- when you represent the narratives of the people with who you do not have shared identity (race), however, there are some common identities (marginalization in higher education, gender)-what are the most effective ways?

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Format

Maitra, D., & Coley, B. C., & Reyes, D. (2023, June), Death by 1000 cuts: Workshopping from Black engineering narratives from interview to stage Paper presented at 2023 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition, Baltimore , Maryland. 10.18260/1-2--43204

TY  - CPAPER
AB  - There is limited research exploring the lived experiences of Black engineering Ph.D. students. Our proposed work employs an arts-based inquiry and transforms the interview data into a script for potential ethno-theater performance. We constructed stories of three students’ journeys as they navigated engineering PhD programs at prestigious, predominantly White institutions (PWI) through creative resilience. Ethno-drama joins the words ethnography and drama to describe a written play script derived from significant selections of narratives collected from interview transcripts (Saldana, 2005). Grounded in Critical Race and Role Strain Theories, this script represents counter-narratives of the Black experience in higher education in STEM. The emergent script captures the masks and identities worn by Black students. This work aims to show the death of 1000 cuts and the myriad ways Black students experience marginalization in engineering. To present the marginalization mask, we use the composite narrative approach. In this, we will read story 1 (Adrian), story 2 (Maya), and story 3 (Naomi) to collectively represent these “deaths of 1000 cuts” experiences. This will be recorded as one story/voice; although it represents the varied manifestations of marginalizing experiences that Black students have encountered in engineering, we also refer to the marginalization mask as a spirit murdering mask. Spirit murdering was originally conceptualized by Williams (1987) and applied to education by  Love (2016); it is a form of racism that inflicts pain and kills the humanity and spirits of people of color. Microaggression, role negotiation, hypervisibility vs invisibility, lack of direction, mental health, and other marginalized experiences that Black students navigate in academia are a reflection of our society; hence it&#39;s critical that academic work reaches beyond the traditional venues. Also, the development of scripts calls for reconsidering current pedagogical practices and policies in academia, as the audience will witness the enactment of some experiences.
We would like to advance our discussions in the following directions to further enhance the methodological contributions of ethno-drama in the context of engineering education-
•	How do you decide what is most impactful to include from your qualitative data set when the experiences are all critical, varied, and differentially impacted by intersectional identities?
•	Are there other effective ways of moving from narrative to script, specifically in dealing with data from people that have marginalized identities?
•	The dilemma- when you represent the narratives of the people with who you do not have shared identity (race), however, there are some common identities (marginalization in higher education, gender)-what are the most effective ways?

AU  - Debalina Maitra
AU  - Brooke Charae Coley
AU  - Diego Reyes
CY  - Baltimore , Maryland
DA  - 2023/06/25
PB  - ASEE Conferences
TI  - Death by 1000 cuts: Workshopping from Black engineering narratives from interview to stage
UR  - https://peer.asee.org/43204
DO  - 10.18260/1-2--43204
ER  -