Changing myself and my classroom might help me renew my one-year contract, but it cannot prepare me to demand an alternative.
Tag: Academia
Queer Leadership, Stronger Universities
It is powerful and affirming to consider the unique qualities that queerness brings to leadership.
Public Thinker: Ruha Benjamin on Uprooting Oppression and Seeding Justice
“Keep your cosmetic change, if you’re making no attempt to deal with the underlying practices that perpetuate harm.”
Shoptalk: Overheard at ASA and ASTR 2022
In this special mega edition of Shoptalk, guess which performative utterance was said at which conference.
Reading after the University
If you want to support readers, the best hope will always be helping do away with economic compulsion and the division of labor.
The Dawn of Scientific Racism
In the 1740s, Bordeaux developed some of the first modern theories of racial difference, even as the city profited from the slave trade.
“At the End of Everything”: Talking with Shannon Mattern
"My first book was used by actual librarians, planners, architects. I realized, wow I can do work that matters beyond the academy."
“Our Lives Are at Stake”: Elaine Hsieh Chou on the Necessity of Asian American Writers
“Somehow, we are so present, and yet not even there. That surreal juxtaposition really pissed me off and fascinated me.”
Public Thinker: Lara Putnam Wants You to Knock on Your Neighbor’s Door
“Campaigns matter in part because of who meets whom, about the social networks that are shaped by that campaign as well as shaping it.”
“Just Use the Telephone, Please”: Hannah Zeavin on the Power of Teletherapy
“You can have really intense intimacy over distance, sometimes only because distance is there.”
Mission Impossible
The university has been changing, to be sure. But has the proportion of students who want to devote themselves to acts of humanistic creativity?
Imagination or Regulation? Challenging the Incorporation of Antiracism as a Response to Crisis
The way we talk about racial justice matters. In fact, corporation’s embrace of antiracist slogans can actually advance racism.
To Teach Shakespeare for Survival: Talking with David Sterling Brown and Arthur L. Little Jr.
“Nostalgia is not what Shakespeare represents for me; I don’t want to make Shakespeare great again. He doesn’t need that, and neither do we.”
Rereading the Revolt
In May 1381, rebels burned documents at Cambridge, then scattered the ashes to the wind. But why were universities targeted by the rebels?
Humanities: Let the Hypothesis Testing Begin
The humanities have a replication crisis of monumental proportions: so many theories have never been adequately tested or validated.
“There’s No There There”: Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor on the Future of the Left
“We don't have a party. That doesn't mean we need one big organization. We may need a few big organizations. But we need organizations!”
How College Teaching Can Have a Future
Do we want a university built around managers and cops, or around students and their teachers?
Art and Culture in Schorske’s Century
With decades of creativity—that ended with World War I—Vienna jolted Western art and culture forward into high modernity. But how?
The Netanya-who?s: Gossip and Other Kinds of History
Benzion Netanyahu—father of the former prime minister—is not the protagonist; rather, it is his scholarship and the practice of history itself.
Public Thinker: Ainissa Ramirez on Putting the Story Back in Science
“We teach science as separate from the rest of the world. I want people who live in the world to see how they’re actually doing science.”