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The Academy and Latina Faculty In the Academy, faculty and institutional leaders traditionally have been White, male, and heterosexual (Aisenberg & Harrington, 1988; Blackburn & Lawrence, 1995; Finkelstein, Seal, & Schuster, 1998; Garcia, 2001; Valian, 1999). Of the 173,395 Full Professors identified in the Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System (IPEDS) of the U.S. Department of Education in 2007, women represented almost 46,000, and Latinas held only 1,254 of those positions (U.S. Department of Education, 2010). A few years earlier in 2004, non-Hispanic White females earned 617 of the doctorates awarded, whereas only 41 Latinas earned doctorates in the same year across a range of disciplines (Hoffer, Welch, Webber, Williams, Liesk, Hess, Loew, & Guzman-Barron, 2006). Those scarce Latinas on the faculty also cluster at lower ranks (Aguirre, 2000; Contreras, 1995; Padilla, 2003). In 2009, of 28,040 male and female Latina/o faculty members, the majority were categorized as assistant professors (6,789) and instructors (6,577). As a subgroup of these, the majority of Latina (female) faculty members served in the lower ranks as assistant professors (3,367) and instructors (3,499) (U.S. Department of Education, 2010). Slow improvements (Valian, 1999) in institutions' structural diversity vis-a-vis Latina faculty means that they find themselves in alien territory, i.e., in contexts that do not readily understand or accept their difference, such that Latinas find it challenging to become incorporated into and legitimated within academe. Latinos of both genders in the faculty ranks experience subtle racism and hostility from students and peers (Solorzano, 1998) while Latina faculty members report feeling that their credibility as scholars or faculty members is challenged (Delgado-Romero, Flores, Gloria, Arredondo, & Castellanos, 2003), and that White colleagues underestimate their abilities and discount the value they place on community advocacy (Reyes & Rios, 2005). In response to experiences like these, researchers in a range of disciplines have focused on the need to be more welcoming and culturally responsive to communities of difference (Cipollone, Grady, & Simmons, 1996; Garcia & Smith, 1996; Hurtado & Cade, 2001; Larson & Ovando, 2001; Marshall & Oliva, 2006a; Rendon & Hope, 1996). Whether the focus is categorical difference associated with race and gender, or identity, scholars and practitioners have come to accept that traditional practices and conceptualizations in education tend to marginalize diverse or non-normative individuals and group members. Rethinking Diversity as Deficit As Valian (1999) aptly notes, majority group participants in systems like the Academy rarely question the appropriateness of existing practices and norms, for an existing state of affairs defines a norm, and norms tend to be invisible (1999, p. 253; see also Hurtado, Milem, Clayton-Pederson, & Allen, 1998). Latinas are subject to professional and disciplinary expectations normed primarily on men and to a smaller extent on White women. Diversification efforts and multicultural training does occur within higher education, yet efforts tend not to critically examine the social regularities (Scheurich, 1997) that construct Latina faculty and their way of thinking and operating as other within this field. (1) Furthermore, educators rarely have opportunities to listen in on the critical conversations and reflections of Latina faculty members themselves as they grapple with such contexts and/or work to transform the multilayered othering practices to which they are subject as women and as Latinas (Stanley & Lincoln, 2006; Turner, 2002; Turner & Myers, 2000). Such conversations and analyses come closest to unpacking how Latinas experience the tensions between subordination, self-determination, and identity that can get in the way of their achieving authenticity within academe. …