New Books in Education

This episode is a roundtable discussion on the influence of the neoliberal project on higher education. Our guests are Professor Emeritus Frank Fear from Michigan State University, Professor Claire Polster from the University of Regina, and Professor Ruben Martinez from Michigan State University. The conversation is wide-ranging across topics such as the quantification of higher education and the concept of students as customers.John Kaag is Professor and Chair of Philosophy at UMass Lowell and External Professor at the Santa Fe Institute. John W. Traphagan, Ph.D. is Professor and Mitsubishi Heavy Industries Fellow in the Department of Religious Studies at the University of Texas at Austin, where he is also a professor in the Program in Human Dimensions of Organizations. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/education

Roosevelt Montás is Senior Lecturer in American Studies and English at Columbia University. A specialist in Antebellum American literature and culture and in American citizenship, he focuses mainly on the history, meaning, and future of liberal education. This question motivates his book Rescuing Socrates: How the Great Books Changed My Life and Why They Matter for a New Generation (Princeton University Press, 2021).“Great Books” dominate “the Core” at Columbia University, where undergraduates must complete two years of non-departmental humanities courses. Montás teaches in the Core and was for ten years the director of the Center for the Core Curriculum. From this vantage point, he considers the function of “great books” today, particularly for members of historically marginalized communities like himself.In Rescuing Socrates, he recounts how a liberal education transformed his life as a Dominican-born American immigrant. As many academics deem the Western canon to be inherently chauvinistic and the general public increasingly questions the very value of the humanities, Montás takes a different approach. He argues: “The practice of liberal education, especially in the context of a research university, is pointedly countercultural.” The New York Times praised the book for its compelling argument “for the value of a Great Books education as the foundation for receiving the benefits of everything else a school has to offer.”I spoke with Montás about the complicated value of “great books,” the potential of a humanities education, and his conviction that a teacher in the humanities can trigger for students the beginning of a lifelong investigation of the self. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/education

Today I talked to Ellen Cassedy about her new book  Working 9 to 5: A Women's Movement, a Labor Union, and the Iconic Movie (Chicago Review Press, 2022).Many people may identify 9 to 5 with the comic film starring Jane Fonda, Dolly Parton and Lily Tomlin or perhaps only know Parton’s hit song that served as its theme. But 9 to 5 wasn't just a comic film—it was a movement built by Ellen Cassedy and her friends. Ten office workers in Boston started out sitting in a circle and sharing the problems they encountered on the job. In a few short years, they had built a nationwide movement that united people of diverse races, classes, and ages. They took on the corporate titans. They leafleted and filed lawsuits and started a woman-led union. They won millions of dollars in back pay and helped make sexual harassment and pregnancy discrimination illegal. The women office workers who rose up to win rights and respect on the job transformed workplaces throughout America. And along the way came Dolly Parton's toe-tapping song and a hit movie inspired by their work. Working 9 to 5 is a lively, informative, firsthand account packed with practical organizing lore that will embolden anyone striving for fair treatment.Ellen Cassedy was a founder of the 9 to 5 organization in 1973. She is the coauthor with Karen Nussbaum of 9 to 5: The Working Woman's Guide to Office Survival and with Ellen Bravo of The 9 to 5 Guide to Combating Sexual Harassment. Ellen Cassedy is a former columnist for the Philadelphia Daily News, was a speechwriter in the Clinton administration, and has contributed to Huffington Post, Redbook, Woman's Day, Hadassah, Philadelphia Inquirer, and other publications. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/education

Joseph Nagel and Heather Skinner are principal and vice-principal of the School of the Madeleine in Berkeley, California; Mrs. Skinner was also once Joseph’s teacher and mine (your host, Chris Odyniec) and has been at the school for 45 years. Over this time, the school population and broader community has changed significantly. Mrs. Skinner and Mr. Nagel reflect on their experience teaching and working at a beloved and successful Catholic school in a progressive town like Berkeley, California; they discuss the School of the Madeleine, its mission, politics, and role in forming the whole child with the love of God. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/education

Why did thousands of workers at prestigious universities in the United States go on strike in 2022? How did we get to this historic moment, and is it really over? This episode explores: The myriad ways universities can wield power over workers and even their families. Why university workers are divided into different unions—and why some have no union representation at all. How inflation, student debt, housing shortages, health insurance access, and the constriction of the tenure-track put unbearable pressure graduate students, adjuncts, and instructors. The limitations of sympathy strikes. How higher education became a gig economy. Why this generation of students and their parents have more power to change academic inequality than they may realize. Our guest is: Trevor Griffey is a Lecturer in U.S. History at UC Irvine and in Labor Studies at UCLA. He is co-founder of the Seattle Civil Rights and Labor History Project, and co-editor of the book Black Power at Work: Community Control, Affirmative Actiton and the Construction Industry (Cornell University Press, 2010). He currently serves as the Vice President of Legislation for the University Council-American Federation of Teachers (UC-AFT), which represents non-Senate faculty and librarians in the University of California system.Our host is: Dr. Christina Gessler, a historian of women and gender.Listeners to this episode may also be interested in: This podcast on dealing with structural inequalities in the tenure pipeline This podcast with the AAUP on how the demise of the tenure system is hurting students, professors, and academic freedom The podcast on one professor's long road to the dream job in academia The Gig Academy: Mapping Labor in the Neoliberal University by Adrianna Kezar, Tom DePaola, And Daniel T. Scott State of the Union: A Century of American Labor - Revised and Expanded Edition, by Nelson Lichtenstein Nelson Lichtenstein's piece about the UC Strike in Dissent Magazine This LA Times article, which is one of many pieces in recent years about how graduate students and adjuncts cannot afford housing The Guardian's article on firings of graduate student strikers in 2020 For teaching US labor and social history, this resource which is free and available online (free registration): https://wba.ashpcml.org/ Welcome to the Academic Life! On the Academic Life channel we are inspired and informed by today’s knowledge-producers, working inside and outside the academy. Missed any of our episodes? You’ll find over 130 of the Academic Life podcast episodes archived and freely available to you on the New Books Network website. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/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/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/education

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/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/education

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/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/education

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/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/education

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/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/education