Shaking the Table: Survival and Healing Amongst Identity Center Practitioners

by Stephanie Hernandez Rivera (Editor), Jonathan A. McElderry (Editor)

Overview

Shaking the Table provides perspectives and narratives of practitioners working in, or who have worked in, identity centers. Colleges and universities across the country continue to grapple with supporting students in their marginalized identities, including gender, race, ethnicity, sexual identity, ability, socioeconomic status, religious identity, and citizenship status. The creation of spaces and centers to support students in their acclimation, belonging, and identity development has been one way institutions have sought to address the needs of those with marginalized identities. Those working within these spaces have provided students with transformative learning and developmental experiences.

Despite this contribution to campus equity and inclusion efforts, the voices and experiences of those engaged in this work are often invisible. In the face of increasing resistance to equity and inclusion work nationally, and the multiple demands placed on the staff in these spaces, it is crucial to center and uplift these voices that are often relegated to the margins. This book features first-person accounts of the complexities, challenges, joy, and resistance practitioners experience while surviving and healing through and from this work.

Shaking the Table is a resource of guidance, wisdom, connection, and community for those who share in this labor and who aspire to do this work. It is also a call to action for colleagues, supervisors, and institutional leaders to better understand, champion, and uplift those working in these spaces.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781805922254
Publisher:	Emerald Publishing Limited
Publication date:	11/24/2025
Series:	Identity & Practice in Higher Education-Student Affairs
Pages:	276
Product dimensions:	6.14(w) x 9.21(h) x (d)

About the Author

Stephanie Hernandez Rivera, Ph.D. is a Boricua woman and race-gender, higher education scholar and educator. She is an assistant professor at Elon University(NC), USA, in the Master of Arts in Higher Education Program, and the endowed Dr. Jo Watts Williams School of Education Emerging

Jonathan A. McElderry, Ph.D. is a dedicated scholar, educator, and higher education practitioner. Currently serving as the Dean of Student Inclusive Excellence and an Assistant Professor at Elon University(NC), USA, Dr. McElderry is deeply committed to enhancing the academic and social experiences of historically marginalized students, particularly those at predominantly White institutions.

Table of Contents

Chapter 1. Surviving and Healing: Identity Center Practitioners’ Navigating Identity, Power, and Position; Jonathan A. McElderry and Stephanie Hernandez Rivera
Section 1. Surviving Alongside Students
Chapter 2. Lifting from the Field: Challenging Plantation Politics to Increase Support for Cultural Center Professionals; Tristen Brenaé Johnson, Tekita Bankhead, and Jamal J. Myrick
Chapter 3. Beyond Surviving Alongside Our Students: An Asian American UniversityStaff Perspective of Mourning and Resistance; Julian Ignacio and Alyson Kung
Chapter 4. The Bitter with the Sweet: Empowerment Through the Struggle of Protecting Spaces for Intersecting Communities; Bruce E. Mitchell
Chapter 5. Home Away from Home: The Liminal Space of Latino Cultural Centers; Carina Olaru
Chapter 6. Hold the Line! A Call to Action for Professionals Serving Within Black Cultural Centers; Emerald S.Green, Bridgette Johnson, and Adrian Jones
Chapter 7. Outsider-Within: A Black Woman’s Journey in Multicultural Center Administration at an HWI; Erica T. Campbell;
Chapter 8. Continuing the Foundation: A Multigenerational Perspective on Leadership in Identity Centers; Bobby D. Steele, Gabrielle N. Lloyd, and Ro-Anne Royer Engle
Chapter 9. What If We Just Walk Away?: A Question and an Answer; Dana Murray Patterson
Chapter 10. Hello, from the Otherside; A. Pierre Sherrill II
Section 2. Healing in the Struggle
Chapter 11. Touching My Spirit: Healing Through Memory; angela gay-audre
Chapter 12. Responding to the Call: A Queer Latine Understanding of Self Using Conocimiento; Luis H. Garay
Chapter 13. Mitigating Misogynoir: Cultivating Psychologically Safe Experiences for Black Women Leading Cultural Centers Using Black Feminist Approaches; Tekita Bankhead and Nikita Haynie
Chapter 14. “It Is Better to Speak”: Public Testimony as Survival, Resistance, and Healing; Bulaong Ramiz
Chapter 15. My Ethnic Studies Kuwento: Healing and Liberation Through Student Resource Centers; Michael R. Manalo-Pedro
Chapter 16. “At the End of the Day, the Day Gotta End”: Collective Healing After Trauma in Multicultural Affairs Work; Jason K. Wallace, Jesse R. Ford, and Jaborius D. Ball
Chapter 17. Radical Love and Belonging: Emerging Understandings from a Former Cultural Center Practitioner; Jasmine A. Lee;
Chapter 18. We Deserve More: Wisdom from the Voices of Identity Center Practitioners; Jonathan A. McElderry and Stephanie Hernandez Rivera;