IHI – Pathways Through The Professoriate – Domino Perez
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[00:00:00] Dr. Rachel Gonzalez Martin: Welcome to the Intersectional Humanities Initiative’s Researchers, Artists, and Educators interview series. This series for 2025 is titled Pathways Through the Professoriate, brought to you by the Humanities Institute in the College of Liberal Arts here at UT. I’m your host, Dr. Rachel Gonzales Martin, and I’m also the Director of the Intersectional Humanities Initiative, as well as an associate professor of Latino Studies here at UT.

[00:00:33] Dr. Rachel Gonzalez Martin: Our guest today is Professor Domino Perez, a professor, full professor in the Department of English, and she’s also my friend and mentor. And I’m really excited to have our first Pathways discussion with her. Domino, welcome so much, and thank you for agreeing to participate.

[00:00:52] Domino Perez: Thank you so much for having me.

[00:00:54] Domino Perez: I’m looking forward to our conversation.

[00:00:56] Dr. Rachel Gonzalez Martin: Me too. So let me offer our listeners a little bit of context. So the Pathways discussions are part of a program that we’re organizing this year through the Humanities Institute called the Mid Career Scholars Program. And what is that? The Mid Career Scholars Program is meant to pair up mentors and mentees, but not in the traditional sense where folks are just getting to the university, but we’re thinking about folks who have tenure at the University of Texas already, and we’re trying to figure out how to help people get to that next and ever important step of becoming a full professor.

[00:01:33] Dr. Rachel Gonzalez Martin: And so part of this is helping develop a mentoring relationship with a senior. senior faculty member and really get people poised, maybe not to breeze through promotion, but definitely to get past what I like to call the whisper networks of promotion, which is what does it mean to actually go through the processes of promotion?

[00:01:52] Dr. Rachel Gonzalez Martin: And what is that like for different scholars with different backgrounds and in different communities? So Domino, I’m so excited to have you here and to have you talking about your experience because I’ve been at Texas for about 10 years, but I’m here Because you saw something in me as a junior scholar, and so we’ve been friends and mentor, and you’ve been my mentor for this whole time.

[00:02:13] Dr. Rachel Gonzalez Martin: So , it’s fun, but it’s also exciting for me because you’ve recently been promoted a full professor. And I think it’s really important for people, our listeners, our future project participants, our graduate students, just to hear about these perspectives from people who’ve been through it, not necessarily from a handout.

[00:02:33] Dr. Rachel Gonzalez Martin: So, I’d love to begin. Just by thinking about, one, how would you describe what you do here at UT, and how long have you been on this campus?

[00:02:42] Domino Perez: I’ve been on UT’s campus as a faculty member for 22 years. And I came as a junior professor, and so I went through the whole process of tenure and promotion, was in rank as an associate professor for a considerable period of time before getting promoted to full professor only a few years ago.

[00:03:09] Domino Perez: What do I do at UT? Oof, that’s a question and I think the question is also tied to my trajectory through the ranks. So I was in rank as this, as an associate for a considerable period of time, more than 10 years. And a lot of that had to do with the fact that as soon as I was promoted, I was asked to join or to take on an administrative position as an associate.

[00:03:39] Domino Perez: And, you know, I have very mixed feelings about that. On the one hand, you know, looking back, I think there should have been someone there to tell me, you know, maybe this is something that you don’t want to take on until you’re a full professor, because it definitely taking on an administrative position that early does kind of slow your momentum a little bit.

[00:04:00] Dr. Rachel Gonzalez Martin: Absolutely.

[00:04:01] Domino Perez: On the other hand, I was doing work that I really, really believed in. And so I don’t know that I necessarily agree that, you know, someone should have stopped me or someone would have said, you know, this isn’t a good idea, but I would have appreciated having the conversation. I don’t know that it would have,

[00:04:20] Dr. Rachel Gonzalez Martin: Mhm.,

[00:04:21] Domino Perez: Changed my decision in a way.

[00:04:23] Domino Perez: I think you’re you are proof of the rightness of that decision to build something to invest in something to create something that I believed in, but that a whole community believed in and to invest my time and energy in that way. Certainly when I was doing it seemed incredibly purposeful.

[00:04:42] Dr. Rachel Gonzalez Martin: Just to interject here, you were one of the founding members of the Department of Mexican American and Latino and Latina Studies in your administrator role, in your faculty role, and that is the reason that I am employed here at the University of Texas, was to join that department, and so I think what you’re saying is really powerful, but it also speaks to sort of this idea of how people have to be balance or at least learn to balance for themselves like the work that’s expected but also the work you want to do And how it’s like you said you would have liked the option to talk about it To have a relationship with someone who could say you don’t have to do this to move forward But if it’s fulfilling how do we support that?

[00:05:26] Domino Perez: That would have been a lovely conversation

[00:05:30] Dr. Rachel Gonzalez Martin: But imagine like having this conversation you and I together even remotely We also, people, we also have a lot of conversations one on one, just to put it out there.

[00:05:39] Dr. Rachel Gonzalez Martin: The idea that I am now, as someone who’s, I’m not junior faculty anymore, I’ve been tenured for, for almost four years, and so the idea of saying, Watching your process, being able to talk through the experiences of going through different rungs on the ladder, right, sort of simultaneously, has helped me think about how do I think about becoming promoted?

[00:06:03] Dr. Rachel Gonzalez Martin: How do I think about that being a possibility as someone with a family, as someone who does have these desires to be tied to what is Institution building or community building or student support, right, that gets sort of clouded when you realize that how do we get through the ranks is really through publication, right, and sort of certain kinds of recognition.

[00:06:23] Dr. Rachel Gonzalez Martin: I do think if you, if you really think

[00:06:25] Domino Perez: about it, it’s. It’s kind of absurd what we do and how we do it. We really have, if you do it correctly, and I do think there is a right way to do it, if you do all parts of your job correctly, you have three full time jobs, and that’s teaching, service, and research. And there is not enough time to do all three.

[00:06:48] Domino Perez: That is the reality. I think that You know, I am to toot my own horn here. I’m an award winning teacher I’m a member of the academy. I’m a regent You know teaching fellow and You know as uncomfortable as I am to actually talk about those accolades That was a lot of hard work

[00:07:10] Dr. Rachel Gonzalez Martin: Absolutely,

[00:07:11] Domino Perez: you know if you’re gonna really devote yourself to like why we are here.

[00:07:16] Domino Perez: We, we are here to educate students. That’s what allows us to do the other things that we do, at least in my opinion, right? Teaching is, is, is what we have to do to do the other thing. And, you know, I know that that’s not always a priority for, for people for different reasons. And I understand that disciplines are different, but you know, Devoting myself to, to my teaching and never.

[00:07:43] Domino Perez: Even really thinking about dialing back my teaching when I was carrying an incredibly heavy administrative load and incredibly heavy service load, you know, as as one of the. Only, well, the only Latina full professor in the 140 year history of the English department, I’m called upon quite regularly to do all kinds of service.

[00:08:10] Domino Perez: So when you asked earlier, what do I do at the university, I was very hard to suppress a laugh because my service, you know, if you look at my CV, my service statement is, or the service portion of my CV is just, it sort of goes on for. For pages, because I’m asked to do service at the university level, at the college level, at the department level, at the level of the center at, you know, so my service is quite substantial.

[00:08:39] Domino Perez: And, you know, I think again, going back, maybe I wouldn’t have taken on so much service, but again, at the time, you know, I, that I was carrying those three, Heavy loads and that’s not even including like elder care and family situation because that’s those are those are real life Those are two other full time jobs.

[00:09:03] Domino Perez: So carrying five full time jobs, you know while in rank I think you know Was You know, I was trying to do things that mattered to me and that weren’t meaningful to me. And honestly, I, I wasn’t always kind to myself. I didn’t let myself say no out of fear that If I didn’t do it, who else would do it? And I don’t necessarily have that.

[00:09:28] Domino Perez: I mean, I don’t have that same kind of guilt anymore. If, if I don’t do it and it doesn’t get done, then maybe, maybe it doesn’t need to

[00:09:38] Dr. Rachel Gonzalez Martin: get done. Right. I was going to say, you know, and this is because of the long standing relationship we have, but Spence, I’ve been lucky enough to meet multiple students of yours, graduate students who are now friends and colleagues of ours who are getting tenured at universities across the country.

[00:09:57] Dr. Rachel Gonzalez Martin: And so even thinking, you know, about this idea of worth and value in the time and who do you say yes to, I have this conversation a lot with the graduate students that I now mentor and saying, you know, I’ve seen this work. I’ve seen this be productive, supportive relationship that is mutual in the way, in the ways that it can be with an understanding of what can be mutual about it.

[00:10:19] Dr. Rachel Gonzalez Martin: But also I’ve seen the success of, of having these wonderful students who are going to go, who are going off to these wonderful places, getting tenure and being the mentor that I know I got here but then I would have wanted when I was in graduate school. Right? And so in so many ways kind of getting to chip away at these monolithic walls that we don’t even realize have been put up around our success.

[00:10:46] Dr. Rachel Gonzalez Martin: Right? And I think that’s really important, right? To have like, it’s. You know, Domino’s also a film scholar. So even thinking a little bit about Andy Dufresne and his rock hammer and thinking about the idea of that small chipping away and what does that mean? And all of a sudden, you know, you’ve made it through, you’re a full professor, you’re at the highest ranks of an elite university, and now you have a little team of people with rock hammers behind you also trying to do the same work or around you or near you.

[00:11:15] Dr. Rachel Gonzalez Martin: I think that’s what. we should all hope for, right? To expand these potential networks.

[00:11:21] Domino Perez: And you and I have talked about this before, you know, that is one of the things that I think about when I’m thinking about mentoring. What did I, what did I need but didn’t have? And how can I create that for someone else?

[00:11:34] Domino Perez: And, and if you look at my record across teaching service, That’s, that’s the sort of thread that runs through all three. How can I create something that I needed that other, you know, that I might not actually even benefit from, but how can I create that for someone else? And, you know, I think that in asking the question in that way, I have, I have seen some surprising, unexpected, lovely benefits that I never expected, and I think you alluded to those, you know, the relationship that I have with students who are now associate professors or, you know, getting ready to be promoted to full professor, which is so strange but wonderful.

[00:12:23] Domino Perez: And, you know, to have them be supportive of. Of me and have them be supportive of my work, you know, I never I mean, I certainly didn’t expect it It was it’s it’s not transactional, right? Or in the, in the best cases, it shouldn’t be, but to see them, you know, try to give back to me in ways that, you know, they’ve told me that I’ve given to them.

[00:12:46] Domino Perez: It’s just really very moving, but those relationships take work. They take time. They take energy. There’s sweat equity there. That is invisible and you know because you’re not just investing in the person’s idea You’re investing in the person and you know I think if you look at a lot of the relationships that I’ve had with my with my graduate students They don’t end once they graduate

[00:13:12] Dr. Rachel Gonzalez Martin: right, you know, no,

[00:13:13] Domino Perez: They don’t I have you know, I I wrote a letter for a student who, a former student, who is now full professor who’s now an associate professor, but is also the head of a, a writing center because the way that their tenure and promotion system works, they have to have all of these external letters, but then they also have to have some, a letter from someone who knew their work really, really well.

[00:13:38] Domino Perez: And so, you know, the fact that I’m, we can still help. And, you know, I, I’d celebrate, you know, life events. In fact, in a couple of weeks, I’m going to a wedding of one of my former students and

[00:13:51] Dr. Rachel Gonzalez Martin: yeah.

[00:13:52] Domino Perez: And just, you know, that just because they graduate doesn’t mean that that’s where things end and you know, they.

[00:13:58] Domino Perez: They’ve been wonderfully supported, supportive, and I’m grateful for that.

[00:14:03] Dr. Rachel Gonzalez Martin: Well, I think that’s a really important point to bring up at universities across the board, but particularly thinking about being female faculty members and thinking about how gender plays into the expectations that students have of us, but also the idea of what is a healthy relationship with our students.

[00:14:20] Dr. Rachel Gonzalez Martin: And I think sometimes people over correct and. Don’t want to know about their students as human beings. And I think that’s something that you showed me is possible, right? To be able to engage with our students as people, some not always as peers necessarily, but as human beings who deserve compassion on who deserve our time.

[00:14:40] Dr. Rachel Gonzalez Martin: And I think that’s one of the biggest assets when we think about. When mentoring isn’t going well, oftentimes the people who agree to be mentors think they can do it in 15 minute chunks once a month. And that’s not your style. I know that for a fact. And I think even as we think about your most recent book, right, thinking about fatherhood and the borderlands and this idea of the slow approach to research, right, I think there’s something much more of a holistic approach to the work you do and this idea of quality in the university that is really changes the experience for our students and for, for those who interact with us, right?

[00:15:18] Dr. Rachel Gonzalez Martin: What does it mean to say, I will give you time? Yeah. And, and I think that that, that has a lot to do with

[00:15:25] Domino Perez: the idea of, you know, what did I need most, but didn’t have and trying to create that for someone, but also one of the guiding ideas or sort of organizing principles of how I understand. a slow approach is to think about, like, what am I trying to do?

[00:15:43] Domino Perez: Where is this coming from? Is this sustainable? You know, is it, what, what is the cost, right, to me? Like, you have to, I think, to your point about the, the holistic approach, I think that we often think about taking on these kinds of responsibilities as kind of yes, no questions. Whether it’s our teaching or research or service, but I, I don’t often think that we ask enough questions of ourselves and of what we’re agreeing to do.

[00:16:12] Domino Perez: Mm hmm. There’s always this kind of sense of urgency. Oh, you know, I need you to reply to this email very, very quickly. We only have a couple of days. Mm hmm. And, and I understand that things have to be completed rather quickly, but I, I also don’t think that that’s the case. necessarily conducive to long term kinds of systemic changes, both in ourselves and our how we work and our output and our what we produce and also who we produce it for.

[00:16:41] Dr. Rachel Gonzalez Martin: Mm.

[00:16:42] Domino Perez: Know, am I putting all of this work, like, is it completely this narcissistic endeavor? Am I trying to replicate myself? Or am I trying to mentor and you know, this, this, this, this whole person who is a completely different person from me?

[00:16:59] Dr. Rachel Gonzalez Martin: Mm hmm.

[00:16:59] Domino Perez: With a completely different set of needs. I mean, as much as you and I have been on the same page about so many things, there are very, very distinct differences between us, right?

[00:17:10] Domino Perez: And, you know, and I part of the joy of what I Have in my mentoring relationship with you Well, I don’t think we that’s a whole other podcast. I think we could spend like a whole time. We’ll

[00:17:24] Dr. Rachel Gonzalez Martin: work

[00:17:24] Domino Perez: on that But I am always just so excited by the things that you teach me And, like, I walk away from our conversations and I think, wow, I am smarter than I thought I was.

[00:17:37] Domino Perez: Like, Rachel makes me feel smart, and she makes me, she makes me feel like what I do matters. And, like, it’s, and I hope that, I hope that that’s the case for

[00:17:46] Dr. Rachel Gonzalez Martin: you. Absolutely, no, absolutely, right, as we think about these relationships. But I also think that’s interesting you say that, thinking a little bit about feel, right, because we don’t often talk about this idea of, like, the feelings associated with sort of our rank and what does it mean.

[00:18:01] Dr. Rachel Gonzalez Martin: That’s a

[00:18:01] Domino Perez: fine line.

[00:18:02] Dr. Rachel Gonzalez Martin: I don’t want

[00:18:03] Domino Perez: to be anyone’s mother. I am mother to a 22 year old and that is the.

[00:18:10] Dr. Rachel Gonzalez Martin: That’s a different podcast too, Motherhood and the Pathway.

[00:18:13] Domino Perez: But that’s a different one. Right. That’s a different podcast. But, you know, I think that there is this unstated expectation that women faculty members, or even women presenting faculty members, are supposed to take on these nurturing roles that somehow, you know, we’re supposed to mother or, you know, emotionally nurture.

[00:18:38] Domino Perez: And that’s, you know, Everyone. I’m Everyone. And, you know, I resent the hell out of that. Because that same expectation is not placed on our male colleagues. True. Nobody’s asking them to mother. Nobody’s asking them to father. And we have to take on all of this, you know, emotional labor. And, or expected to take on all of this emotional labor.

[00:19:01] Domino Perez: But I think that one of the, I mean, and I resented the hell out of that. And I still do. I, I do. But one of the things that helped me to distinguish between doing that kind of mothering and the kind of the kind of mentoring that I do, I think about it in the exact way that you said, I think about it holistically, and you have to think about what does the person want?

[00:19:25] Domino Perez: What does the person need? How can I, in my capacity as a mentor, as a full professor at the university, you know, as a former administrator, how can I help this person to achieve what they need and what they want, how they want to do it?

[00:19:46] Dr. Rachel Gonzalez Martin: Absolutely right. This idea of terms becomes such an important piece.

[00:19:51] Dr. Rachel Gonzalez Martin: So I want to ask you kind of one last question. to sort of think about kind of what you were just saying, which is how has being promoted to full changed how you feel or your experience of your time on campus, like when you’re on campus now, or how you approach students or how they approach you but also in your wider career, right?

[00:20:11] Dr. Rachel Gonzalez Martin: As your reputation precedes you off this campus, how has promotion connected or changed your experiences?

[00:20:17] Domino Perez: I’ve thought about this question. I mean, thank you for sending me advanced questions. And I don’t know that I have an answer to this, in large part because so much was put on me as a mid level scholar, as an associate professor, that as of yet, and it’s been a few years now, I’m not exactly sure how things have changed.

[00:20:37] Domino Perez: I don’t see, like, I don’t see the workload changing. I don’t see, like, the teaching, like I don’t see the aspects of those things that are expected of me, having changed at all. You know, I, I’ve tried to sit with, what does it mean to be the first Latina full Professor in the Department of English?

[00:21:02] Domino Perez: One of the foundational departments of this university. And, on the one hand, to me, it means everything. It’s the fulfillment of my professional goals, and, you know, at the department level, it’s kind of barely a blip. So, you know, this has been a way for me to think about, okay, what do I want? What do I really, really want?

[00:21:29] Domino Perez: Because again, I never had anybody sit me down and ask me and ask the question, what do you want? And the answer is, I don’t know. I think that I would like to do something in administration. I, again, maybe, I don’t know, but I think if I had to answer your question directly, what change has being promoted, brought to my life?

[00:21:53] Domino Perez: And I think the answer is, choice. I have choices now. I don’t feel pressured to take on more because, oh, is this going to be considered in my, you know, promotion to full? Or, you know, I can think about myself. And I wish I had done it sooner, but now I feel like I have license to do it. And I think that’s the biggest change.

[00:22:17] Dr. Rachel Gonzalez Martin: Awesome. I think that is the perfect place to stop. Domino, thank you so much for sharing your perspective and your experiences with us and with all our folks listening, thinking about this idea of the pathways through the professoriate and how they look different for all of us. And they can land in very unexpected places, but let them land with choice.

[00:22:37] Dr. Rachel Gonzalez Martin: I think that’s, that’s really hopeful. Thank you so much. so much. We’ll talk to you later. We are done here.