New Book Release: Queer, Women of Color, and Critical Approaches to Feminist Mentorship and Pedagogy
Associate Professor Leandra Hernández is celebrating the forthcoming release of a co-edited volume that promises to reshape how we think about mentorship in higher education. Queer, Women of Color, and Critical Approaches to Feminist Mentorship and Pedagogy, published by the University of Illinois Press and available September 9, 2025, highlights the transformative power of relationships, community, and care in academic spaces.
The project began when Dr. Hernández, along with co-editors Stevie M. Munz and Jessica Pauly, first connected at Utah Valley University. United by shared personal and professional experiences, they put out a call for essays on feminist mentorship and received such an overwhelming response that it became two separate volumes. The first, Feminist Mentoring in Academia, was released in 2023. Their new book continues this conversation, but with an even broader and more critical lens.
At its heart, the book responds to a pressing gap: while mentorship is often talked about in academia, feminist mentorship remains in short supply within communication studies and feminist and gender studies. The editors and contributors—ranging from undergraduate students to senior scholars—bring Black feminist, Chicana
feminist, and queer perspectives to the table, illustrating how mentorship can be more reciprocal, multi-directional, and deeply human. Many of the essays reflect on lived experiences of mentorship that go beyond professional guidance, often resembling family-like bonds. Others push readers to reimagine what mentorship could look like if we stepped away from rigid hierarchies and embraced more free-flowing, multi-modal forms of connection.
For Dr. Hernández, this work is about more than just documenting stories—it’s about disrupting silos that too often isolate researchers, faculty, and students from one another. She hopes readers come away with a deeper understanding of the possibilities of mentorship when it is practiced equitably and inclusively, whether through traditional faculty-student relationships, lateral mentorship among peers, or collaborative partnerships across roles. She also emphasizes the urgency of amplifying voices that are already stretched thin by advocacy and institutional demands, particularly those who are most marginalized, navigating times of social and political pressure.
One of the most powerful aspects of the project was how mentorship unfolded within the process of making the book itself. The author of the book's forward, AnaLouise Keating, was a close mentor to and friend of Gloria Anzaldúa, a scholar who has been largely influential for Hernández and several of her colleagues. In turn, using Keating and Anzaldúa's relationship and writing mentorship as a guiding light, Hernández and her co-editors mentored contributors in similar ways throughout the book's publication and editing journey. These layered, intergenerational relationships reflect the book’s central message: mentorship is not simply top-down guidance but an evolving practice rooted in reciprocity, care, and community.
Dr. Hernández sees this volume as both a reflection and an invitation. It is a reflection of what happens when mentorship is approached with imagination and care, and an invitation for students, faculty, administrators, and staff to be mindful and reimagine how mentorship can shape their own communities. Special thanks go to Stevie Munz, Jessica Pauly, Jordan Allen, Maria Blevins, and Dominique Moore, acquisitions editor at University of Illinois Press, for their essential roles in bringing the book to life.
Queer, Women of Color, and Critical Approaches to Feminist Mentorship and Pedagogy will be released on September 9, 2025.