The complexity of our tears: Dis/enchantment and (In)difference in the academy

Conducting scholarship and teaching about socially constructed aspects of i dentity (e.g., race; ethnicity sexual orientation, age, and class) often pr esents challenges to communication scholars. Within this article, we discus s some of those challenges by disclosing aspects of our lived experiences a s "outsiders within" the academy. Through analyzing e-mail messages that we exchanged with one another, we explore complexities of our emotions (and e nsuing tears) as we experience both enchantment and disenchantment with how members of the academy deal with difference matters. We rely upon feminist standpoint epistemology as our theoretical framework, and we specify dialo gic theory and ontology as a promising means by which we can transform the academy.