Becoming Invisible to/and Still Not Belong: Rethinking the Dwelling of BIPOC Scholars at the Physical and Disciplinary Margins of Communication Studies in Canada

Abstract

Background: People cannot be an idea without also occupying a body and being the embodiment of competing expectations. For a person of colour (POC), contortions of self-erasure accompany these expectations, more so in semi- and non-urban academic and social spaces. Analysis: Using a social construct of invisibility, marginality as a minority communication scholar is discussed as magnified by geography, class, reproduce-ability (training graduate students who potentially join the field versus primarily undergraduate or career-minded students), among other precarities. Conclusion and Implications: Living at the geographic margins as a minority Canadian communication studies scholar requires constantly navigating present absences.