Empowered: A Woman Faculty of Color’s Guide to Teaching and Thriving by Chavella T. Pittman
The University of Oklahoma Press, September 2025
Experience and research show that women faculty of color are among the most overworked, unfairly criticized, and least rewarded individuals in higher education, often thwarted in achieving the fundamental goals of an academic career despite consistently delivering on the field’s highest promise — preparing students to contribute meaningfully to the world. In Empowered, Chavella T. Pittman offers these highly effective yet underappreciated scholars expert guidance, encouragement, and practical strategies drawn from decades of experience, showing them how to be unapologetically authentic in their teaching, advocate for their classroom excellence, practice self-compassion, and reclaim joy in their work. Through research-based tools for navigating intersectional race and gender tensions, exercises to withstand toxic dynamics, and methods to resist silencing and amplify their voices, Pittman equips women faculty of color to meet the outsized challenges they face in academia and to fully realize the careers, contributions, and lives they have long deserved.
