Journal of Transnational American Studies

This is a pair of excerpts from the anthology Bridging Cultures: International Women Faculty Transforming the US Academy. The book is composed of a series of memoirs by foreign-born women scholars working in various disciplines, in which they reflect on their personal experiences as foreigners in US academia. The introduction by Federica Santini, Sabine H. Smith, and Sarah R. Robbins underlines the crucially feminist nature of “standpoint epistemology”—that is, the identifying and critiquing of one’s own particular viewpoint and “positioning.” Sabine Smith’s contribution proceeds to recount her own experience as a foreign-born woman scholar, and how she both contributes to the education of her students through her understanding of her native German language and culture and is herself shaped by her position as an outsider in the United States—Smith glories in the sense of liberation her status offers her.