Abstract
For Canadian-born working-class women, university is often characterized through the axioms of “expanding one’s mind,” “bettering one’s life,” and “saving oneself from a life of hardship.” Associated with these adages is “smartness,” a signature orientation of the academy and a designation that has often excluded the working-class. Our article asks: What does it mean to be a working-class woman in higher education in Canada? How do working-class women negotiate competing notions of “smartness” existing between the university and their home communities? In what ways do these women resist their exclusions from “smartness” and the university project? We answer these questions by drawing on memory stories written by six working-class women who attended or were attending university. The memory stories were written at a series of workshops that one of the authors organized employing the feminist research methodology of Collective Biography. Our analysis illustrates some strategies that working-class and racialized women may use in their encounter with the university including downplaying the value of their working-class backgrounds to make way for the new knowledge to be gained in university, drawing on the strength of community for support, and positioning working-class common sense knowledge as superior to the book knowledge privileged in university. Each story involves the necessity of navigating competing notions of smartness that marks belonging within the university, family, and community.
“The only way out of a paper mill town is through a university door.” These words are written on the walls of the recently constructed Mulroney Hall Building at Saint Francis Xavier University (St. FX.), in Nova Scotia. They were originally spoken to former Canadian Prime Minister, Brian Mulroney, for whom the building is named, by his late father, who worked in a paper mill. On one level, the words address the aspirations of upward mobility, a very common desire of Canadian families as well as a narrative built into the promises of education. However, on another level, the words reflect a painful and complicated dynamic that rests on valuing middle-class over working-class life, urban over rural spaces, and academic endeavors as the pinnacle of intellectual achievement. As one furious commentator said of the signage, it “devalues tradespeople, leaves an impression that mill towns are impoverished and embarrassing, and encourages people to leave their home communities” (Patil, 2019). In addition, what also remains unacknowledged in this parental advice is the often difficult cultural and intellectual separation from family members and friends that working-class students can suffer when they leave home for university and the hassling that they may face from family and community members that somehow their decision to pursue education has made them think too much of themselves or that they have become traitors to their working-class families, communities, and culture.
In this article, we explore how the axioms of higher education as the opportunity for “expanding one’s mind,” “bettering one’s life,” and “saving oneself from a life of hardship” are inhabited by working-class women attending university. We are particularly interested in how “smartness,” a signature orientation of the academy and a designation that has often excluded working-class people is negotiated as well as how the relationship between “smartness” and social class converges with gender and race to produce different types of student subjectivities. Our article asks: What does it mean to be a working-class woman in higher education in Canada? How do working-class women negotiate competing notions of “smartness” existing between the university and their home communities? In what ways do these women resist their exclusions from “smartness” and the university project?
To begin to answer these questions, we draw on a series of workshops that one of the authors organized employing the feminist research methodology of Collective Biography (CB). This author, who grew up in a rural, working-class family in Nova Scotia, recruited five participants who also self-identify as Canadian-born women from working-class backgrounds and who were attending or had attended university. The collective met five times between March and May 2018. As we will outline in more detail below, CB uses memory stories to identify the discursive and affective processes by which subjects are made social (Davies & Gannon, 2006; Gonick & Gannon, 2014). Through an analysis of the memory stories, we examine how dominant discourses of smartness, contemporary femininity, race, neoliberalism, geographical differences, value, and respectability intersect with working-class identity to shape the subjectivities of working-class women in higher education.
Women, Class, and Higher Education
Women’s participation in higher education in Canada has increased significantly; it now generally surpasses that of men (Ferguson, 2016). However, as feminist education researchers have suggested, it is important to look beyond the generalized numbers to ask which specific groups of women are accessing university education and what their experiences are once they get there (Gonick, 2018). This caveat to many of the premature postfeminist 1 celebrations of women’s success in higher education is particularly relevant in relation to Canadian working-class women. While women from working-class backgrounds are among those to have increased their enrollment in higher education, barriers persist as do constraints on their educational aspirations (Evans, 2009; Lohfink & Paulsen, 2005). While limited research on the experiences of women in higher education in Canada exists in both historical and contemporary perspectives (Bellamy & Guppy, 1991; McCargar, 2016; The York Stories Collective, 2000), little attention is given to women from the working class. Extensive searches did not result in any Canadian studies of working-class postsecondary students that focus specifically on women and employ a feminist analysis. This reflects the dearth of research about working-class women in Canada more generally (exceptions include Luxton, 2009; Luxton & Corman, 2001; Sangster, 2000). The shortage in research may be partially explained by the fact that postsecondary institutions have only been more “accessible” to working-class women since the latter half of the twentieth century and because social class as a specific point of analysis has not been widely pursued by Canadian academics. Tom Nesbit (2005) explores the lack of discourse on social class in the field of Canadian Adult Education and notes “ideologies of individualism, egalitarianism, and meritocratic achievement have been more powerful forces than class solidarity” (p. 9).
One area in Canadian higher education research where issues of social class are discussed is in the context of first-generation students’ experiences in postsecondary institutions (Birani & Lehmann, 2013; Grayson, 1997, 2011; Lane & Taber, 2012; Lehmann, 2007). Grayson (1997) finds that first-generation students are at a disadvantage compared with students with at least one parent who attended university when it comes to GPA and involvement in campus activities. Lehmann (2007) notes that Canadian first-generation students are more likely to drop out of university than their peers who have parents with postsecondary experience and discusses the fact that integrating into university life is a major issue for first-generation postsecondary students. In Lehmann’s (2007) study, in contrast with non-first-generation students, first-generation students, even those achieving good grades, described feelings of not fitting in at university and questioned the value of being at university. These findings suggest that cultural capital 2 plays a role in students’ educational attainment, and when students do not possess the dominant cultural capital that is supported by universities, the result is a feeling of inadequacy, which may translate into a discontinuation of studies. Lehmann (2007) also addresses the notion of stigma management as a way that students from working-class backgrounds succeed in an elite academic environment. This idea comes from a study by Granfield (1991) in which successful working-class students mirrored their middle-class peers’ dress, manners of speech, and career backings, while downplaying their own social class origins (as cited in Lehmann, 2007, p. 92). Lehmann (2009, 2012a, 2012b, 2013) focuses widely on working-class students in higher education in his studies, though gender is not a point of analysis. In one study, Lehmann (2013) discusses the “hidden injuries” of habitus 3 transformation for working-class university students. Although the students in his research noted their expansion of knowledge, increasing cultural capital, and development of new dispositions and tastes as positive, they also expressed both allegiance and contempt for their working-class roots and their friends and family members who remained in the working class. They came to see their new knowledge as superior to that of their old friends and family. Lehmann (2013) notes that even with successful completion of university and upward mobility, the feeling of being caught between two worlds continues to impact those who are from working-class backgrounds.
In addition, Lane and Taber (2012) found the students 4 in their study faced obstacles for not possessing privileged cultural capital but overcame these obstacles by either conforming to the dominant cultural expectations or using their own cultural capital to “create new ways of being academically successful within the education system” (p. 13). These students also demonstrated how they conformed to the demands of dominant norms through their discussions about increasing their social capital to make use of their educational qualifications and set themselves apart from their peers, for example, by utilizing accrued social networks for mobility in the job market.
Some autobiographical work exists that is evocative of working-class women’s experiences (the authors do not explicitly identify as working class but provide information that suggests their class positioning) (MacIntyre, 2000; The York Stories Collective, 2000). The lack of more research focused on Canadian working-class women’s experiences in higher education, institutions with extensive histories of gendered, racialized, and classed exclusions, highlights the need for more attention to these experiences.
Collective Biography and Working-Class Women’s Stories
Collective biography (CB) is rooted in the memory work of German scholar, Frigga Haug (1987), and has been subsequently developed by other feminist researchers (Davies & Gannon, 2006; Gannon & Gonick, 2019; Gonick & Gannon, 2014; Onyx & Small, 2001). It is a very flexible method that can be shaped in unlimited ways to suit a range of research questions and contexts, themes, and purposes (Gannon & Gonick, 2019). The method entails gathering a small group of people in what is usually a series of meetings and using a prompt to elicit memories on a theme decided in advance. Often, the group has collectively done some reading of articles on the selected theme ahead of meeting for the workshop. The workshop can be residential for a period of a few days, or non-residential and drawn out for a longer period of time. In the first step of the process, each participant shares at least one memory story and sometimes more aloud with the group. One person’s story often triggers a memory for someone else. Participants assist each other in drawing out the details of the memory, adding color, texture, and affect. In the second step, participants choose a memory and using an embodied technique that strips down cliches and explanations they write the memory as it was lived and felt in the moment. When the group reconvenes, each participant reads her story aloud. Other participants then probe for more details or draw attention to any instances in which the writer may not be using embodied language or has imposed their current understanding or subject position on the memory story. With feedback generated from the probing of the collective, participants tweak the memory stories, re-writing them if they wish to take into account the group’s feedback. The stories are read aloud to the group for a final time. CB is not focused on individual biographies, rather the activities of remembering, talking, writing, and re-writing are meant to reveal the ways in which subjects are discursively constituted through processes that are collective: Through the processes of talking and listening, of writing and rewriting, the edges that mark off the texts of ourselves, one from the other, are blurred. The frames and borderlines through which we made (and make) our individual identities knowable and recognisable to ourselves and others are no longer sealed off from each other—they flow into one another, making visible the fictional referential frames through which the possibilities of being are drawn. (Davies et al., 2001, p. 169)
The process may be repeated with a new prompt in relation to a new article. While all of the participants may engage in writing scholarly work as a result of the CB workshops, often one or two of the group members write an article for publication based on the memory stories written during the workshop (Davies & Gannon, 2006; Gonick & Gannon, 2014).
For this project with participants who were not academics, the author-facilitator of the workshops chose to select pre-reading material consisting of autobiographical writing 5 by working-class women who attended university instead of research articles. These guided the discussion and writing prompts for the workshops. This modification to the CB process is a good example of the malleability of the method.
In our analysis of the stories, we acknowledge that working-class women are not a homogeneous group. Feminist theories of intersectionality (Crenshaw, 1989; Davis, 2008; McCall, 2005) encourage a robust examination of the “interaction between gender, race, and other categories of difference in individual lives, social practices, institutional arrangements, and cultural ideologies and the outcomes of these interactions in terms of power” (Davis, 2008, p. 68). In addition, geographical and regional differences are an important consideration in the shaping of working-class identities. Connotations exists around rurality which label those who live in rural areas as hicks, rednecks, hillbillies, primitive, and anti-intellectual (Corbett, 2006; Isenberg, 2016; Keys & Pini, 2014). Competing discourses tend to portray rural working-class people as White and masculine. They are seen as either a part of the “rural idyll,” which imagines European settlers peacefully living and working on the land and serve to erase Canada’s violent history of colonialism, or as intolerant and backwards; an obstacle to Canada’s “progressiveness” (Cairns, 2013). Cities are places that rural working-class kids are told they should want to migrate to get out of their communities (Corbett, 2006). However, perceived undesirable inner-city areas are associated with the working and poverty classes. Interestingly, in the context of research on higher education, the relationship that urban working-class students may have to universities is different from rural working-class students since universities are commonly situated in urban areas. Canadian students are less likely to attend a university if they do not live near one than those who do. It is more likely that urban working-class youth pass universities when going about their daily activities and possibly have even attended community or school events on university campuses (Frenette, 2004).
The working-class women who participated in the workshops which generated the stories analyzed in this article ranged in age from 30 to 62 years and thus life-stage was another difference between them. All except one of the group members is White. One is African-Nova Scotian with some Indigenous ancestry.
Working-Class Women and Smartness
“Smartness” is central to the identity of the University and to those who inhabit its offices, classrooms, and facilities. However, as Sternberg (2007) notes, concepts of intelligence differ across cultures and backgrounds with the University mainly relying on quite a narrow version of what counts as valuable knowledge. When women from working-class backgrounds attend university, they may find themselves negotiating between what the academy views as intelligence and their own communities which may value “common sense,” and “street smarts” over “book smarts.” The memory stories presented here were written in response to the prompts recall a time when your working-class knowledge came into conflict or assisted you with the knowledge privileged in university and recall a time when you became conscious of language as a class marker in your university experience. “Smartness” and its convergence with gender and race emerged as a central theme.
Lots of Jazz
In the following memory story, Julia, a mature student, describes an experience in her first university course when she questions her sense of belonging due to knowledge she feels she does not have.
I don’t know what I don’t know. So, I sit near the back of my first class in university. I am taking just this one class and it is English because I think I can do it. The room is just an ordinary classroom—much like high school. I have taken a desk at the back of the room so I can have an adequate vantage point to observe the other students. I am just one of about two dozen students sitting facing the front of the class. Because I am at the back, I can see the backs of everyone’s head, and I feel like I am hiding behind the weight of the desks and all the other students. We are to study the play “The Importance of Being Ernest.” A play will be fun to read. I know it will take me a while to get through it with all the characters’ voices playing out in a real-time cadence in my head. I like to savour their voices or my creation of them. We have to talk about the play in class. I’m terrified that the desks and students in front of me won’t be enough of a barrier between me and a professor who enjoys spewing questions and who expects intelligent answers. I have strong grammar; I have a strong vocabulary; I don’t have experience—others seem to be able to glibly respond. They seem to have a point of reference or ideas born out of previous knowledge. I am struggling with my place in the world; it is so small. The other students talk about characters in the play using language that speaks of their familiarity with the nuances of the human condition. They seem to see and understand the cultured gaps from a point of knowledge, and they do not identify with the characters in the way that I do. Then, one of the other students—an older fellow sitting in the very front and centre says “There’s a lot of jazz going on . . .” I look at the back of his balding, befreckled scalp and think “what the hell is he talking about?” I am feeling out of place; I don't understand. I don’t know what is meant. He continues, “I won't say what I mean by ‘jazz’—this isn’t appropriate language for this classroom.” The professor nods at him—he gets it. No other student asks any questions. At least I don’t think they do. I am too busy thinking—off on a tangent—about what I could say. I know I have a good grasp of language and understanding; I can speak well, however, my words are impoverished from a lack of personal experience. I have a narrow world view; a myopic history. Coming from a small town, a working-class life where there was never any money to travel or participate in activities is like understanding a beautiful place only from a picture. My understanding is flat with no tactile nuances of smell and feel. I’m untextured. As I stare at the back of the bald head in front of me, I realize that this journey into a deeper education might be harder and more expansive than I first imagined. I hope I can find the words and strength to become a part of it and eventually have experiences to enrich my understanding of what it means to live in the world.
Julia is both nervous and excited about being in this English course. She chooses to sit at the back of the classroom as a strategy to cope with her fear of being called upon by the professor, whom she believes has high expectations for “intelligent” discussion in his class. She does not believe she can engage in the types of discussions desired by the professor. The desks and the other students serve as a barrier between herself and her fear of not living up to her professor’s expectations. However, Julia does not fear the texts she is reading, she is excited about the new play and imagines giving creative voices to the characters. She is confident in her strong grammar and vocabulary but is aware that the way she relates to the characters seems different than her classmates’ approaches. This she attributes to the more expansive experiences of the world she imagines them having. For a mature student like Julia, the feeling of lack may be exacerbated because she did not pursue higher education at the expected time in her life trajectory, and she discounts the experiences she has had between secondary and postsecondary education as not valued in a formal learning context.
This anxiety comes to a head when a fellow student makes an opaque reference in his reply to the professor, “There’s a lot of jazz going on . . .” on in the play, he says. The professor and the student seem to share a moment of mutual understanding; however, the comment leaves Julia confused and uneasy. When he says “I won’t say what I mean by “jazz”—this isn’t appropriate language for this classroom,” Julia feels as though there is some level of meaning she has missed and that she is somehow outside the circle of knowledge that includes others in the class. There are references perhaps to sexuality that cannot be spoken about in the classroom, or more literally to musical knowledge of jazz, a sophisticated and urban genre of which Julia knows little—all adding up to feelings of deficiency, self-doubt, exclusion, and unworthiness.
Julia links her exclusion to her working-class culture: Coming from a small town, a working-class life where there was never any money to travel or participate in activities is like understanding a beautiful place only from a picture. My understanding is flat with no tactile nuances of smell and feel. I’m untextured.
Here Julia sees only lack in her working-class background—her small town has led to small and narrow experiences of the world. However, this experience does not defeat Julia; instead, it opens her to all the possibilities of the world, she has yet to encounter. She aims to “find the words and strength to become a part of it.” She will find her way into the circle.
Who Do I Think I Am?
Ashanti, an African Nova Scotian woman with Indigenous ancestry, has yet to enter the doors of university, and questions why she is even completing a university application: As I sit filling out applications for university, I hear Kool and the Gang playing in the background. I am sitting at the kitchen table in the 2-bedroom apartment in the COOP where my mother and I live in Halifax’s North End on Charles and Creighton streets. I can smell the apple crisp that I have baking in the oven. Why am I applying to university? I think. I have a few teachers who have encouraged me because they see potential in me to be successful in attaining higher education. I want to continue learning. But who do I know that has attended university? No one in my family. None of my friends, they all have babies. Black students from the North End don’t go to university. Black girls who grow up with no fathers present, raised by their mothers don’t go to university. Universities don’t come looking for us. Who do I think I am? Wait a minute . . . Colleen’s at the University right now. She’s black like me. Her mother raised her by herself. She got a scholarship from church. Maybe I can do this. If Colleen can do this. I can do this too. I can work this summer to pay for tuition. I can apply for grants and scholarships. I can live at home and work part-time. I can work really hard to be successful. I can get a bus pass and map out the bus route to get to the University. I fill out the applications and pray. I know that going to university is an opportunity to learn more than I know now.
Ashanti carefully locates the unfolding of her story in her Halifax neighborhood—an established and well-known community of African-Nova Scotians on Charles and Creighton streets in the North end of the city. The scene is comfortable and cozy with apple crisp baking in the oven and music playing in the background. And yet, the relaxed atmosphere of home is disrupted by the activity of writing an application to university. Despite encouragement from some teachers, the stronger messages of systemic racism signal to Ashanti that Black girls from Halifax’s North End and raised by single mothers do not go to university. “Universities don’t come looking for us.” Here Ashanti references the historical role of universities, and specifically the education system in Nova Scotia, in the exclusion of marginalized communities and the questioning of their suitability for higher education. Throughout the twentieth century, systems of schooling solidified intelligence as a feature of White superiority, and instruments like Intelligence Quotient (IQ) tests served to keep African Americans and women out of public life (Hatt, 2012). In Nova Scotia, The Black Learning Advisory Committee (BLAC, 1994) Report, highlights how over two hundred years of overt and covert, individual and systemic racism, has resulted in unequal educational opportunities for Black students in Nova Scotia, including access to postsecondary education. The report notes that historically between 70% and 85% of Black students were enrolled in “general” courses rather than “academic” courses leading to postsecondary education, showing that Black students were not expected to go on to university (p. 35). Who is labeled intelligent is contingent on an education system that has traditionally privileged Eurocentric and middle-class knowledge. It is within this context that Ashanti finds herself doubting her university application.
Ashanti’s question “Who do I think I am?” may be expressing a concern that her desire to further her education outpaces her capacity—she may be thinking too highly of herself, she will not have the resources and support to be successful in her endeavors. By wanting this, she will be stepping off the familiar path taken by other girls she knows, who are having babies. This may mean rejection by her community, as Hatt and Otto (2011) note “for so long smart has been seen as un-cool, traitorous and used as a taunt aimed at other Brown and Black kids for whom smartness equals acting White” (p. 508). However, before she is able to talk herself out of doing the application she remembers the one Black girl she knows who is currently attending university, and this ignites a sense of possibility that she can do the same. She thinks of her church community as a possible source of support and scholarship money. She starts planning how she can save money by living at home, working part-time, and traveling by bus. She demonstrates a type of working-class practicality and ingenuity for how she can map her route to campus, apply for grants and gain knowledge and resources to achieve her goal. When she says, “I can work really hard to be successful,” Ashanti is resisting the messages she has received about not being smart enough. She resists the dominant narratives about what is expected of “black girls from the North End.”
Silly Bus: Outsmarting the System
While working-class women can view their class backgrounds as a detriment to being recognized as intelligent in the university, they can also pit their “common sense” knowledge against “book knowledge” to create a space for themselves and a sense of being valued. Barb, a transfer student from community college, prides herself in her ingenuity in beating the university system: Barb pays the taxi driver, thanking him as she tries to exit the car with as much grace as she can muster. It’s her third trip to the city—ever. With no bearings or confidence, she climbs the stairs to the imposing grey brick building. Her future is inside. Click. Click. Click. She tries to quiet the animal-like trot her fancy boots make on the polished floors. Room 233. The door is open and a young woman greets her as she enters the sunny office. “You must be Barb!” the poised and polished recruiter says as she reaches to shake Barb’s hand. “I took a look at your transcripts to see which courses we could give you credit for—we might have to look at your course syllabus from Abnormal Psychology to confirm another transfer credit.” Barb grows more nervous—what is a syllabus!? A silly bus? Clearly that’s not what she meant. Barb, don’t be stupid. She smiles and nods, hoping the recruiter doesn’t sense her panic and confusion. “Overall, you’re in a good position—we were able to give you 10 full credits.” . . . She begins to explain which courses will be required during the first year, but Barb is not listening. She is back in her Grade 12 Pre-Calculus class. . . A conversation about university. . . “No one in . . . 4 years later, Barb sits in the recruiter’s office listening to this poised and polished woman outline the possibilities that lay ahead. “You have a lot of the pre-requisites already, so take a look at some electives! Is there anything you’re interested in?” Barb smiles to herself—everyone else’s first year was filled with intro courses, writing courses, with little choice available. Here she was, allowed to learn about whatever may tickle her fancy. Her grin grows. And think about the money I saved! College only cost $2600/year for tuition, I lived at home, saving on rent and living costs—but yeah, I’m not book smart. The image of her Pre-Calculus teacher re-appears. She smiles wider. The recruiter asks a question, jolting Barb back to reality. As they say goodbye, Barb leaves with a pep in her step—it’s the first time feeling like she has an advantage. Stupid mucky mucks with more money than brains—never had this silly family saying been more appropriate.
Barb arrives at university for the first time alone, without supportive family or friends which other new students commonly have. She has dressed-up for the occasion in her “fancy boots”; but is still nervous to meet the “poised” and “polished” recruiter. A lot is at stake for her as she believes “her future is inside.” Although the story is not explicit about how Barb feels about the contrast between the recruiter’s look and her own, there is a long history of “proper” femininity not being conferred on working-class women (Lawler, 2005). It is possible that Barb’s attention on what may be interpreted as the recruiter’s middle-class femininity signals a sense that her own may be lacking and adds to her sense of unease. She gets panicked and confused when the recruiter uses a word—a university word—that is not familiar to her. “What is a syllabus!? A silly bus?” She chides herself for her obvious misunderstanding but dares not ask for clarification for what she believes she should already know. This moment of destabilization leads her to reflect on an experience with her pre-calculus teacher who voices some firm beliefs about who should and should not go to university. However, rather than allowing her not-knowing to confirm the teacher’s view, Barb’s attention turns to the pleasure she experiences when the recruiter informs her of the pre-requisites she already has. She has outwitted the system designed to keep her out. Using her common-sense knowledge, she has successfully found a way to save money by transferring credits from the less expensive community college to university while opening more options for things she is interested in studying. Identification with “common sense” is according to Luttrell (1997) a way in which working-class women organize and defend themselves against the awareness that working-class knowledge is devalued in the broader society. Whereas common sense is seen as practical and real, in this reversal book smarts can be looked down upon as a bit frivolous and useless in the real world. “More money than brains,” is a family saying that reflects working-class assertions that class and “smartness” are not identical. On the contrary, it suggests a critique of middle-class pretentiousness (mucky mucks) and a way for the working-class to resist and challenge the moral judgments imposed on them by the middle class (Skeggs, 2004). Since the working-class has been portrayed as intellectually lacking, repositioning common sense knowledge as real intelligence is useful for outsmarting the system and allows Barb to defend her rightful place in the university.
Conclusion
Smartness is a concept laden in relations of power shaped by gender, race, and class that defines the space of the university and who may find a place there. With long histories of exclusion, elitism, and marginalization, universities are often understood by working-class women as places that do not value their intelligence, aspirations, or legitimacy as students. Julia, Ashanti, and Barb’s stories each highlight different strategies that working-class and racialized women may use in their encounter with the university. From Julia’s resolve to not let her lack of cultural capital deter her from achieving her goals, to Ashanti’s drawing on the strength of her community for support and Barb’s use of reversal to value her working-class common sense, the stories reveal the challenges, assertions, compromises, and resistances that Canadian working-class women negotiate in their relationships with the university. Each story involves the necessity of navigating competing notions of smartness that marks one’s belonging within the university, family, and community. The methodology of CB allowed the participants in this project, to use writing, one of the most valued scholarly skills within the university, to re-define their gendered, classed, and raced exclusions from the hallowed halls of the academy. These re-definitions within the memory stories create a sense of new possibility for expanding notions of smartness, belonging, and access to the university.
Footnotes
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
