Chapter 3: Call Me by My True Names: An Emerging Scholar’s Transformation Within and Outside the Academy

An auto-ethnographic approach is used in this chapter to describe my journey toward the professoriate in the academy—a path paved with contradictions and transformation. Hegel’s notion of dialectics is used as a framework to analyze the contradictions and transformation observed in the personal and social environments. This framework not only allows the researcher to interpret the contradictions that one experiences in the academy, but, perhaps most important, it provides insights for understanding how the struggle of contraction—a dynamic and fluid process—is necessary for transformation to take place. I invite the reader to go beyond the boundaries of race, gender, identities, and philosophical perspectives—the place of struggle—to help us pave our path toward emancipation together.