New Books in Education

You’re going to an academic conference—and maybe even presenting a project! Whether you are going virtually or in person, for the first time or the tenth, presenting or just attending, you want to feel prepared. Are you? This podcast episode explores: Why we need to go to academic conferences. Why it can be difficult to navigate them. How can you get the most of out of it. Our guest is: Dr. Thomas J. Tobin, who is a founding member of the Center for Teaching, Learning, and Mentoring at the University of Wisconsin at Madison. He is an internationally recognized speaker and author on quality in technology-enhanced education. His latest book is Going Alt-Ac: A Guide to Alternative Academic Careers, written with Katie Linder and Kevin Kelly, from Stylus Publishing. You can find him on Twitter @ThomasJTobin and at his website, Thomasjtobin.com.Our host is: Dr. Christina Gessler, a historian of women and gender and an introvert, who has presented in dozens of academic conference, and like many of our listeners, she is still learning how to make the most of an academic conference.Listeners to this episode may also be interested in: The Chronicle of Higher Ed article “How to Make the Most Out of An Academic Conference” The Chronicle of Higher Ed article “How to Make the Most of a Virtual Conference” The Chronicle of Higher Ed article “How To Cope With Presentation Anxiety” This article on The Introverts’ Guide to Speaking Up Quiet: The Power of Introverts, by Susan Cain The Craft of Research, by Wayne Booth et al The Research Companion, by Petra Boynton The Art of Creative Research, by Philip Gerald Welcome to The Academic Life! We reach across our mentor network to bring you podcasts on everything from how to finish a project to how to take care of your beautiful mind. On the Academic Life channel we embrace a broad definition of what it means to lead an academic life. We view education as a transformative human endeavor and are inspired by today’s knowledge-producers working inside and outside the academy. DMs us on Twitter: @AcademicLifeNBN. 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 Richard Reeves about his important new book Of Boys and Men: Why the Modern Male Is Struggling, Why It Matters, and What to Do about It (Brookings Institution, 2022).The statistics are stunning. Men have a 9% lower graduation rate from college. One in three men without a completed high school education are now out of the workforce. About 40% of births take place outside of marriage (up from 11% in 1970). And men are 50% more likely to die from Covid-19 than women after contracting the virus. The long and short of it, while also advocating for full, real opportunities for women, short shrift is often being given to the problems men face. Neither ignoring the problem (the liberal choice, often) or suggesting we turn-back-the-clock to the 1950s (the conservative choice, often) will suffice. In this episode, Richard Reeves dares to propose some real solutions regarding education reforms, workplace opportunities, and pro-childrearing roles for all dads, married or otherwise.Richard Reeves is a senior fellow in economic studies at the Brookings Institution. He’s the author of the 2017 book Dream Hoarders and is also a regular contributor to The New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, and The Atlantic.Dan Hill, PhD, is the author of ten books and leads Sensory Logic, Inc. (https://www.sensorylogic.com). His newest book is Emotionomics 2.0: The Emotional Dynamics Underlying Key Business Goals. To check out his related “Dan Hill’s EQ Spotlight” blog, visit https://emotionswizard.com. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/education

There are few thinkers who engender as much debate about their legacy as Leo Strauss (1899 –1973). His critics and biographers often don’t even agree about what scholarly discipline he practiced. Political theory or philosophy? Was he a proto-neoconservative or a middle-of-the-road Cold War defender of liberal democracy? He is often depicted as a major intellectual influence on sections of the national security state right, especially during the presidency of George W. Bush when he was portrayed as a puppeteer pulling from the grave the strings of such notable hawks as Paul Wolfowitz.But the writings of Strauss often go unexamined. That is partly because they lean towards the abstruse. Strauss was not a general-audience-friendly public intellectual in his day and much of the homage to and attacks on him at this point are to be found in the pages of academic journals and in the halls of think tanks.We are fortunate, therefore, that we can turn to the 2021 book, Leo Strauss on Democracy, Technology, and Liberal Education by Timothy W. Burns for elucidation of Strauss's thinking about how we can preserve liberal democracy in the face of apathy from moderates, classical liberals and traditional conservatives flummoxed by the rise of an aggressive left that questions whether the United States is a democracy at all and an alienated alt-right that regards liberal democracy as now practiced as a character-sapping anachronism leading to civilizational decline.We learn from Burns of Strauss's admiration for Winston Churchill and touting of him as an exemplar of greatness within democracy. In one of the most absorbing sections of the book we learn of a 1941 lecture by Strauss entitled, “German Nihilism” in which he examined the arguments of such groups as rightist German students in the 1920s that liberal democracy fostered moral mediocrity.Burns contrasts in detail the ideas of Strauss and Martin Heidegger and shows that Strauss foresaw that the other man’s emphasis on resoluteness would metastasize into Heidegger’s support for Nazism. Burns tells us that Strauss can speak to us today via his call to defend democratic constitutionalism and its spiritual and religious traditions.That call can lead to charges of elitism against Strauss because it entailed his championing of the idea of an “aristocracy within democracy,” a cadre of cultivated, well-educated leaders who would help maintain the intellectual and cultural moorings of democracies.Let’s hear now from Professor Burns about who Leo Strauss was and what he actually wrote and thought.Hope J. Leman is a grants researcher. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/education

Gurpinder Singh Lalli's book Schools, Space and Culinary Capital (Routledge, 2022) introduces the notion of culinary capital to investigate socialisation and school mealtime experiences in an academy school based in the UK. Drawing on interviews collated from children, teachers and staff within the school, the text sheds light on food insecurity in society and schools as being a major issue in educational policy. The book examines schools as a microcosm for society with school food space being the playground for socialisation. It shows how forms of culinary capital can be extended in the school dining hall where social space is negotiated with notions of inclusion and exclusion during mealtime. The book uses gender, class and race to understand the school dining hall as a space where culinary capital can be exchanged and learnt. Thorough research accompanied by ethnographic visuals, field notes and observations, it also explores the sensory impact of school gardens. As such the book will be of interest to students, teachers, school leaders, educators and policy makers in the fields of Education, Sociology, Social Policy and Food Studies.Rituparna Patgiri, PhD 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/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/education

Listen to this interview of Barbara Sarnecka, Professor of Cognitive Sciences and Associate Dean of Research and Graduate Studies for Social Sciences, University of California, Irvine. We talk about putting your mind in print. She is the author of The Writing Workshop: Write More, Write Better, Be Happier in Academia.Barbara Sarnecka : "The more quantitative a person's field of study is, the more likely they are to say that they just don't think that writing is a big requirement in their field. And they'll say, 'Well, writing isn't very important. I'm a biologist.' They imagine that writing is somehow for people in the humanities, or it's for playwrights or novelists, or something like that. But whenever anyone fails to be productive as a scientist, it's because they're not writing. It's because they're not publishing manuscripts or they're not producing funding proposals that are getting funded. It's not because they don't have enough ideas for experiments, or because they didn't collect enough data, or because they didn't learn to analyze the data properly. Those things are all kind of trivially easy, and that's why we can subcontract them to graduate students or the statistical consulting center or somebody to do them for us. You can't get somebody else to think for you, and you can't get somebody else to write for you." Find about more about Barbara, including why she chose to self-publish, in this interview. Read the research on Barbara's writing-shop intervention here. Read the research on cascading mentorship here and here.  Contact Barbara's editor at michael.dylan.rogers@gmail.com Daniel Shea is committed to helping scientists write at their best. Contact me at daniel.shea@kit.edu Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/education

The Resistance, Persistence and Resilience of Black Families Raising Children with Autism (Peter Lang, 2020) presents nuanced perspectives in the form of counternarratives of what Black families who have children with autism experience at the intersection of race, class, disability and gender. It intentionally centers the expertise of Black parents, challenging what is considered knowledge, whose knowledge counts, and how knowledge can be co-generated for learning, sharing and advocacy. The book speaks directly to Black parents on the autism journey. To right systemic racial inequities and to cultivate culturally responsive practices, it is critical for practitioners and professionals to understand what is known about Black families' experiences with autism in general and how these experiences differ because of our intersecting identities. University faculty and students in programs involving medicine, speech and language pathology, occupational therapy, nursing, political science, school psychology, teaching, special education and leadership can benefit from the wisdom offered by these parents. This text is perfect for several courses, including those in departments of anthropology, women and gender studies, health sciences, psychology, special education, teacher education and administrative leadership. In addition, given the uniquely Black perspective presented in the text, this text is relevant to other fields, including ethnic studies, cultural studies, urban studies and African American studies. It is relevant to individuals who wish to better understand how issues of race and intra-racial differences shape lived experiences with disability in American society. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/education

Ever felt uncertain about how to manage the academic mid-career stage? This episode explores: Why the mid-career stage is so important to mid-career faculty. Strategies for taking control of your mid-career advancement plans. Equity issues surrounding women, academic mothers, and faculty of color. The importance of the department chair for mid-career faculty. Being strategic about your mentoring needs in mid-career. Two critical considerations for mid-career faculty developing programs. Our guest is: Dr. Vicki L Baker, author of Managing Your Academic Career: A Guide to Re-Envision Mid-Career (Routledge). Vicki is the E. Maynard Aris Endowed Professor in Economics and Management at Albion College and serves as the Faculty Director of the Albion College Community Collaborative (AC3), Co-Chair of the Economics & Management Department, and instructor for Penn State University’s World Campus. Prior to joining the academy as a faculty member, Vicki worked at Harvard Business School (Executive Education) and AK Steel Corporation. Vicki is the author of 90 peer-reviewed articles, chapters, invited works, and several books. Recognized as a “Top 100 Visionary” in Education by the Global Forum for Education and Learning (20-21), Vicki is at the forefront of innovation and strategy in faculty and leadership development; her goal is to help faculty members and colleges and universities thrive. She earned her PhD (Higher Education) and MS (Management & Organization) from Penn State University, MBA from Clarion University and BS from Indiana University of Pennsylvania. Vicki also holds a certificate in Human Resource Management from Villanova University and is a certified professional in HR from the Society for Human Resource Management.Our host is: Dr. Dana M. Malone, co-producer and co-host of The Academic Life channel. Dana is energized by facilitating meaningful conversations and educational experiences for folks across the academy and beyond. Dana is the author of From Single to Serious: Relationships, Gender, and Sexuality on American Evangelical Campuses, (Rutgers UP).Listeners to this episode may also be interested in: New Directions in Higher Education volume, Bridging the Research-Practice Nexus: Resources, Tools, and Strategies to Navigate Mid-Career in the Academy. Edited by Vick L. Baker and Aimee LaPointe Terosky. The Evolving Faculty Affairs Landscape - a compilation of publications from Inside HigherEd focused on faculty (several focused at mid-career). This Academic Life channel conversation with Vicki Baker on navigating mid-career choices as a faculty member. This Academic Life channel conversation with Laura Gail Lunsford on how to create a mentor network. How to Chair a Department by Kevin Dettmar (Johns Hopkins). Unraveling Faculty Burnout: Pathways to Reckoning and Renewal by Rebecca Pope-Ruark (Johns Hopkins). Welcome to The Academic Life! You are smart and capable, but you aren’t an island, and neither are we. We reach across our mentor network to bring you podcasts on everything from how to finish that project to how to take care of your beautiful mind. Here on the Academic Life channel, we embrace a broad definition of what it means to be an academic and to lead an academic life. We view education as a transformative human endeavor and are inspired by today’s knowledge-producers working inside and outside the academy. Wish we’d bring on an expert about something? DMs us on Twitter: @AcademicLifeNBN. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/education

Nannie Helen Burroughs (1879-1961) is just one of the many African American intellectuals whose work has long been excluded from the literary canon. In her time, Burroughs was a celebrated African American (or, in her era, a race woman) female activist, educator, and intellectual. Nannie Helen Burroughs: A Documentary Portrait of an Early Civil Rights Pioneer, 1900-1959 (U Notre Dame Press, 2019) represents a landmark contribution to the African American intellectual historical project by allowing readers to experience Burroughs in her own words. This anthology of her works written between 1900 and 1959 encapsulates Burroughs's work as a theologian, philosopher, activist, educator, intellectual, and evangelist, as well as the myriad of ways that her career resisted definition. Burroughs rubbed elbows with such African American historical icons as W. E. B. DuBois, Booker T. Washington, Anna Julia Cooper, Mary Church Terrell, and Mary McLeod Bethune, and these interactions represent much of the existing, easily available literature on Burroughs's life. This book aims to spark a conversation surrounding Burroughs's life and work by making available her own tracts on God, sin, the intersections of church and society, black womanhood, education, and social justice. Moreover, the volume is an important piece of the growing movement toward excavating African American intellectual and philosophical thought and reformulating the literary canon to bring a diverse array of voices to the table. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/education

A sweeping history of the federal legislation that prohibits sex discrimination in education, published on the fiftieth anniversary of Title IX.“No person in the United States shall, on the basis of sex, be excluded from participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any education program or activity receiving federal financial assistance.” —Title IX’s first thirty-seven wordsBy prohibiting sex discrimination in federally funded education, the 1972 legislation popularly known as Title IX profoundly changed the lives of women and girls in the United States, accelerating a movement for equal education in classrooms, on sports fields, and in all of campus life.Sherry Boschert's book 37 Words: Title IX and Fifty Years of Fighting Sex Discrimination (New Press, 2022) is the story of Title IX. Filled with rich characters—from Bernice Resnick Sandler, an early organizer for the law, to her trans grandchild—the story of Title IX is a legislative and legal drama with conflicts over regulations and challenges to the law. It’s also a human story about women denied opportunities, students struggling for an education free from sexual harassment, and activists defying sexist discrimination. These intersecting narratives of women seeking an education, playing sports, and wanting protection from sexual harassment and assault map gains and setbacks for feminism in the last fifty years and show how some women benefit more than others. Award-winning journalist Sherry Boschert beautifully explores the gripping history of Title IX through the gutsy people behind it.In the tradition of the acclaimed documentary She’s Beautiful When She’s Angry, 37 Words offers a crucial playbook for anyone who wants to understand how we got here and who is horrified by current attacks on women’s rights.Jane Scimeca is Professor of History at Brookdale Community College. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/education

The American Dream is built on the idea that Americans end up roughly where we deserve to be in our working lives based on our efforts and abilities; in other words, the United States is supposed to be a meritocracy. When Americans think and talk about our lives, we grapple with this idea, asking how a person got to where he or she is and whether he or she earned it. In What We Mean by the American Dream: Stories We Tell about Meritocracy (Cornell UP, 2021), Taussig tries to find out how we answer those questions.Weaving together interviews with Americans from many walks of life--as well as stories told in the US media about prominent figures from politics, sports, and business--What We Mean by the American Dream investigates how we think about whether an individual deserves an opportunity, job, termination, paycheck, or fortune. Taussig looks into the fabric of American life to explore how various people, including dairy farmers, police officers, dancers, teachers, computer technicians, students, store clerks, the unemployed, homemakers, and even drug dealers got to where they are today and whether they earned it or not.Taussig's frank assessment of the state of the US workforce and its dreams allows him to truly and meaningfully ask the question that underpins so many of our political debates and personal frustrations: Did you earn it? By doing so, he sheds new light on what we mean by--and how we can deliver on--the American Dream of today.Doron Taussig is Visiting Assistant Professor of Media and Communication Studies at Ursinus College, and a fellow with the Tow Center for Digital Journalism at Columbia University. Prior to becoming a Professor he was a journalist for ten years.Tom Discenna is Professor of Communication at Oakland University whose work examines issues of academic labor and communicative labor more broadly. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/education