Mentoring of Courage and Love: The Contributions of Dr. Beth Blue Swadener
Abstract
Mentoring is viewed as a minor aspect of academia, where professors and scholars may use their spare time to mentor their students and junior colleagues. But this is not how Professor Beth Blue Swadener [re]imagined and approached her own role in mentoring others. This paper discusses the tremendous and immense effort by Beth in working with and mentoring students and junior colleagues during her entire academic career. I am one of those fortunate doctoral students to be mentored by her. In this paper, I focus on the role Beth played in mentoring me from my fledgling scholarship in graduate school to this day as a professor. My discussion is organized by four interrelated themes. First, I discuss my initial introductions with Beth, when I was intimidated by her insights and scholarship to a point that I was almost afraid of talking with her. Second, I discuss her influences on my scholarship in anti-colonial theories and decolonizing research methodologies. Third, I discuss our mentor-mentee and mentee-mentor relationship, including details of the collaboration on decolonizing research in South Africa and other Global South/North settings. Fourth, I discuss her influence on me to mentor others.
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