New Books in Higher Education

In April 2006, The Institute held a two day symposium about copyright and intellectual property, titled Comedies of Fair Use. In this session, Lewis Hyde talks about owning art and ideas.Hyde is a cultural critic and scholar, whose work focuses on the nature of imagination, creativity, and property. He is best known for his books, The Gift: Imagination and the Erotic Life of Property, and Trickster Makes This World: Mischief, Myth and Art. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Inspired by Bradley Sommer’s tweet this past summer about the ongoing challenges of the Humanities job market in the U.S., this four part podcast (produced by Erica Bennett, an M.A. student in the Department of Religious Studies at the University of Alabama) talks with an early career scholar now looking for work in academia, a senior scholar with a view from the inside, and those who either earned their doctorate and established a career outside the university or those who decided early on that graduate work was not their preferred career path.In the fourth and final episode of the series, Erica and Jacob Barrett (himself just starting his Ph.D. at UNC Chapel Hill) explore careers well outside of the typical tenure-track by speaking with Shannon Trosper Schorey, who holds her Ph.D. in Religious Studies but who has established a successful career in the tech sector.Shannon Trosper Schorey (Ph.D., UNC Chapel Hill) is a Principal Communications Specialist in the tech industry. She co-wrote and co-produced Day 88, a forthcoming audio play about technology, burnout, and the sonic fever dreams of religious perfection.About the Study Religion Podcast: this series was first posted in the summer of 2022 on the University of Alabama’s Department of Religious Studies Podcast, which contains a variety of other episodes, all on the wider relevance of scholarship on religion—learn more, or subscribe, here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Inspired by Bradley Sommer’s tweet this past summer about the ongoing challenges of the Humanities job market in the U.S., this four part podcast (produced by Erica Bennett, an M.A. student in the Department of Religious Studies at the University of Alabama) talks with an early career scholar now looking for work in academia, a senior scholar with a view from the inside, and those who either earned their doctorate and established a career outside the university or those who decided early on that graduate work was not their preferred career path.In the third episode, Erica and Jacob Barrett (himself just starting his Ph.D. at UNC Chapel Hill) talk with Jared Powell, formerly a doctoral student in English at UNC, about the reasons why he recently left academia, midway through his Ph.D. program, and decided to investigate careers outside the university.About the guest: Jared Powell earned a B.A. in English and Religious Studies and then an M.A. in English at the University of Alabama, going on to a Ph.D. in English at UNC Chapel Hill, specializing on the poetry of William Blake. After much deliberation, he recently decided to leave his doctoral program to pivot to a career outside of the academy. He now works as a trainer for a software company, putting his teaching and curriculum design experience to good use.About the Study Religion Podcast: this series was first posted in the summer of 2022 on the University of Alabama’s Department of Religious Studies Podcast, which contains a variety of other episodes, all on the wider relevance of scholarship on religion—learn more, or subscribe, here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The marginalisation of Black voices from the academy is a problem in the Western world. But Black Studies, where it exists, is a powerful, boundary-pushing discipline, grown out of struggle and community action. In The Future of Black Studies (Pluto Press, 2022), Abdul Alkalimat, one of the founders of Black Studies in the US, presents a reimagining of the future trends in the study of the Black experience.Taking Marxism and Black Experientialism, Afro-Futurist and Diaspora frameworks, he projects a radical future for the discipline at this time of social crisis. Choosing cornerstones of culture, such as the music of Sun Ra, the movie Black Panther and the writer Octavia Butler, he looks at the trajectory of Black liberation thought since slavery, including new research on the rise in the comparative study of Black people all over the world.Turning to look at how digital tools enhance the study of the discipline, this book is a powerful read that will inform and inspire students and activists.Amanda Joyce Hall is a postdoctoral fellow at Northwestern University in the Department of African American Studies. She's on Twitter @amandajoycehall. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Inspired by Bradley Sommer’s tweet this past summer about the ongoing challenges of the Humanities job market in the U.S., this four part podcast (produced by Erica Bennett, an M.A. student in the Department of Religious Studies at the University of Alabama) talks with an early career scholar now looking for work in academia, a senior scholar with a view from the inside, and those who either earned their doctorate and established a career outside the university or those who decided early on that graduate work was not their preferred career path.In the second episode of the series, Erica and Jacob Barrett (himself just starting his Ph.D. at UNC Chapel Hill) learn of some of the historical but also contemporary factors impacting the academic job market, as well as efforts by faculty to intervene in it, by talking with Pamela Gilbert, an English Professor at the University of Florida.About the guest: Pamela K. Gilbert was a John Simon Guggenheim Fellow (2016) and Society for the Humanities Fellow at Cornell (2016-17) and, most recently, is the author of Victorian Skin: Surface, Self, History. She is on the executive committee for the North American Victorian Studies Association and is the series editor for the SUNY Press book series Studies in the Long Nineteenth Century. She regularly teaches courses in Victorian Literature, Literature and Medicine, and topics in Victorian Gender and Class.About the Study Religion Podcast: this series was first posted in the summer of 2022 on the University of Alabama’s Department of Religious Studies Podcast, which contains a variety of other episodes, all on the wider relevance of scholarship on religion—learn more, or subscribe, here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Inspired by Bradley Sommer’s tweet this past summer about the ongoing challenges of the Humanities job market in the U.S., this four part podcast (produced by Erica Bennett, an M.A. student in the Department of Religious Studies at the University of Alabama) talks with an early career scholar now looking for work in academia, a senior scholar with a view from the inside, and those who either earned their doctorate and established a career outside the university or those who decided early on that graduate work was not their preferred career path.In the first episode of the series, Erica and Jacob Barrett (himself just starting his Ph.D. at UNC Chapel Hill) discuss the challenges of starting a PhD program in the humanities at this particular point in time, gaining some perspective from Bradley Sommer, a recent Ph.D. graduate in History.About the guest: Bradley J. Sommer earned his Ph.D. in American History from Carnegie Mellon University and is a historian at the U.S. Army Center of Military History in Washington, D.C. He is also an online adjunct professor at Miami University in Ohio. Currently, he is working on a book about Toledo, OH, in the latter half of the 20th century, entitled Tomorrow Never Came: The Making of a Postindustrial City.About the Study Religion Podcast: this series was first posted in the summer of 2022 on the University of Alabama’s Department of Religious Studies Podcast, which contains a variety of other episodes, all on the wider relevance of scholarship on religion—learn more, or subscribe, here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Green Academia: Towards Eco-Friendly Education Systems (Routledge, 2022) can be read as a systemic long-term counter-intervention strategy against any form of impending pandemics in the post-COVID era and beyond. It argues that anti-nature and capitalistic knowledge systems have contributed to the evolution and growth of COVID-19 across the globe and emphasises the merits of reinstating nature-based and environment-friendly pedagogical and curricular infrastructures in mainstream educational institutions. The volume also explores possible ways of weaving ecology and the environment as a habitual practice of teaching and learning in an intersectional manner with Science and Technology Studies. With detailed case studies of the green schools in Bhutan and similar practices in India, Kenya, and New Zealand, the book argues for different forms of eco-friendly education systems and the possibilities of expanding these local practices to a global stage.This book will be an essential read for scholars and researchers of sociology, cultural studies, decolonial studies, education, ecology, public policy social anthropology, sustainable development, sociology of education, and political sociology.Rituparna Patgiri is an Assistant Professor of Sociology at Indraprastha College for Women, University of Delhi. She has a PhD in Sociology from Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU), New Delhi. Her research interests lie in the areas of food, media, gender and public. She is also one of the co-founders of Doing Sociology. Patgiri can be reached at @Rituparna37 on Twitter. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Can the study of religion be justified? Scholarship in religion, especially work in "theory and method," is preoccupied with matters of research procedure and thus inarticulate about the goals that motivate scholarship in the field. For that reason, the field suffers from a crisis of rationale. Richard B. Miller identifies six prevailing methodologies in the field, and then offers an alternative framework for thinking about the purposes of the discipline. Shadowing these various methodologies, he notes, is a Weberian scientific ideal for studying religion, one that aspires to value-neutrality. This ideal fortifies a "regime of truth" that undercuts efforts to think normatively and teleologically about the field's purpose and value. Miller's alternative framework, Critical Humanism, theorizes about the ends rather than the means of humanistic scholarship.Why Study Religion? (Oxford UP, 2021) offers an account of humanistic inquiry that is held together by four values: Post-critical Reasoning, Social Criticism, Cross-cultural Fluency, and Environmental Responsibility. Ordered to such purposes, Miller argues, scholars of religion can relax their commitment to matters of methodological procedure and advocate for the value of studying religion. The future of religious studies will depend on how well it can articulate its goals as a basis for motivating scholarship in the field.David Gottlieb is the Director of Jewish Studies at the Spertus Institute for Jewish Learning and Leadership in Chicago. He is the author of Second Slayings: The Binding of Isaac and the Formation of Jewish Memory (Gorgias Press, 2019). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

How far did post-UNTAC Cambodia exemplified an expanded Habermasian public sphere? What happened when a range of aid agencies, private donors, activists and academics showed up with all sorts of competing agendas for educational and cultural projects? In conversation with Duncan McCargo, former Center for Khmer Studies director Philippe Peycam discusses his book reflecting on Cambodia's first decade following the new millennium, and explains (inter alia) why he has so much admiration for librarians and publishers.  Cultural Renewal in Cambodia: Academic Activism in the Neoliberal Era (Brill and ISEAS, 2020) narrates the establishment of a cultural project in post-war Cambodia. It depicts a country at the crossroads of conflicting imaginaries, and shows through the story of the first decade of the Center for Khmer Studies how the neoliberal agenda of ‘northern’ academic institutions effectively constrained alternative ‘southern’ visions of development.Philippe Peycam is the director of the International Institute for Asian Studies in Leiden. He served as director of the Center for Khmer Studies from 1999 to 2009; https://www.iias.asia/profile/...Duncan McCargo is director of the Nordic Institute of Asian Studies, and a professor of political science at the University of Copenhagen. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

When a professor is not who they say they are, what does it take to get them to resign? This episode explores: How an anonymous twitter account and a media investigation helped Ms. Cyca reveal the truth about a professor misrepresenting their identity. Why professors can fail to fully acknowledge all the harm done to the students, staff, and community even after they are exposed. A discussion of the article The Curious Case of Gina Adams: A “Pretendian” Investigation. Our guest is: Michelle Cyca, a former employee at Emily Carr University of Art and Design, who currently works as a freelance writer, editor, and content strategist. For over 15 years she has written for numerous print magazines, digital publications, brands and creators. She is the author of The Curious Case of Gina Adams, and many other articles.Our host is: Dr. Christina Gessler, a historian of women and gender.Listeners to this episode may also be interested in these other articles by Michelle Cyca: Resilience & Reconnection: Stories of Indigenous Parenting, Romper Orange Shirt Day Is Not About Buying Orange Shirts, IndigiNews Learning Cree with My Daughter, Romper Monuments to What? The Tyee Tanya Talaga Is Telling the Stories Canada Needs to Hear, Maclean’s To Honour Lee Maracle’s Life, Read Indigenous Women, The Tyee Resistance 150: Indigenous Artists Challenge Canadians to Reckon with Our History, Chatelaine Welcome to The Academic Life! On the Academic Life channel we embrace a broad definition of what it means to lead an academic life. We are inspired by knowledge-producers working inside and outside the academy. Find us on Twitter: @AcademicLifeNBN. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices