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This book argues that neoliberal discourses prevalent in higher education seek to undermine, commodify, and co-opt the radical, transformative work that many gender and women's studies departments, programs, and centers are doing. The contributors to the collection discuss their responses to these challenges in and out of the classrooms, from mentorship and activism to active allyship and experimental pedagogies. They aim to inspire a new wave of feminist consciousness raising that will encourage transformative ways of engaging with the university and serve as doorways to new understandings of productivity and creativity.
List of contents
Chapter One: Lavender Carharts: Queer Work within and outside the Academy
Anne Balay
Chapter Two: Neoliberalism in Higher Education and its Effects on Marginalized Students
Dejah Carter
Chapter Three: Promoting Feminist Labor in Academe's Culture of Compliance
April Lidinsky
Chapter Four: Neutral Student Grievance Processes in White Supremacist Institutions of Higher Education
Farhana Loonat
Chapter Five: Planting Seeds of Trans Inclusion: A Conversation with Meghan Buell of TREES, Inc.
Meghan Buell and Pam Butler
Chapter Six: Laboring in Line with Our Values: Lessons Learned in the Struggle to Unionize
Sonia De La Cruz, Nini Hayes, and Sonalini Sapra
Chapter Seven: Feminist Future Making and Nomadic Subjectivity in the Academy
Lauren J. Lacey
Chapter Eight: Sovereignty as an Indigenous Feminist Intervention
Amanda Griffin Linsenmeyer
Chapter Nine: There is No Surviving without Thriving
Abby Palko
Chapter Ten: Compadradzco & the Wild Woman: An Argument for the Creative Collective as Radical Support for Women in the Academy
Leslie Contreras Schwartz
Chapter Eleven: Fighting Shanda: A Jewish Mother Academic's Positionality and Practice at a Catholic Women's College
Jamie Wagman
About the author
Edited by Abby Palko; Sonalini Sapra and Jamie Wagman - Contributions by Anne Balay; Meghan Buell; Pam Butler; Dejah Carter; Leslie Contreras Schwartz; Sonia De La Cruz; Nini Hayes; Lauren J. Lacey; April Lidinsky; Amanda Griffin Linsenmeyer; Farhana Loon
Summary
This anthology shares creative ways feminists in higher education respond to the challenges of budget cuts, staffing shortages, and restructuring that are hallmarks of neoliberal universities. Contributors argue that neoliberal discourses undermine, commodify, and co-opt radical, transformative feminist work.
Additional text
With intersectional feminist ferocity, this powerful, impassioned collection asks what a university would look like if it actually cared about the marginalized, while it unsparingly displays higher education's race to the bottom by a thousand neoliberal cuts. Foregrounding WOC, LGBTQ+, first-generation, working-class, Jewish, and indigenous voices and experiences, the chapters unflinchingly confront what it means to attempt social justice research and pedagogy amidst literally ceaseless budget "crises". Seamlessly weaving the sublimity of our longings for a more just world with a clear-eyed stare at the ridiculous corporate logic that has swamped university functions, this collection is essential reading for students, faculty, administrators, and anybody who cares about higher education.
