ABSTRACT
Since I first performed sista docta in 1993 at the National Communication Association conference in New Orleans, I have added several new moments to this seriate collage of my experiences as an African American woman at predominantly White universities. These new moments reflect my evolving understanding of academic life and my developing clarity about my role within that world. As a sista docta – a Black woman with a Ph.D. – my experiences are my own, and they also exist as “collective autobiography,” that particular brand of storytelling that is at once specific and individual as well as representative of group realities (Cudjoe, 1990). I believe these experiences also constitute a kind of collective scholarship that joins the many conversations around race, gender, and politics. This work is not collective in the sense of collaboration, but rather in the sense of comradeship. While I did not create sista docta with E. Patrick Johnson, D. Soyini Madison, Oloye Ajidakin Aina Olomo, Daniel Alexander Jones, Sharon Bridgforth, or Edmund T. Gordon, the performance is intimately linked with conversations, print scholarship, workshops, dinners, meetings, and celebrations I have shared with them. We work together every time we work individually.
