New Books in Education

Welcome to The Academic Life. You are smart and capable, but you aren’t an island, and neither are we. So we reached 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. Wish we’d bring in an expert about something? Email us at cgessler@gmail.com or dr.danamalone@gmail.com. Find us on Twitter: The Academic Life @AcademicLifeNBN.In this episode you’ll hear about: the need for diversity and inclusion in campus organizations, what it means to do The Work, and a discussion of the book The Token.Our guest is: Crystal Byrd Farmer, an engineer turned educator. She is the author of The Token: Common Sense Ideas for Increasing Diversity in Your Organization.Your host is: Dr. Christina Gessler, a historian of women, gender, and sexuality. She reinterprets the historical narrative in both traditional and creative forms.Listeners to this episode might be interested in: The Color of Law: A Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America by Richard Rothstein Me and White Supremacy: Combat Racism, Change the World, and Become a Good Ancestor by Layla Saad Why Are All the Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria? And Other Conversations About Race by Beverly Tatum College Presidents and the Struggle for Black Liberation by Eddie Cole. Seeing White podcast series from Scene on Radio  AWARE-LA. White Anti-Racist Culture Building Toolkit Dismantling Racism Workbook Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/education

In the wake of 2020’s movements for Black Lives and exposed racial disparities in working-class deaths during the COVID-19 pandemic, educational institutions are grappling on a massive level with their role in either reproducing or disrupting entrenched systems of exploitative power. While individual agency in enacting inclusive practices can be limited by these massive, intersecting forces, educators also wield tremendous influence over the forces within the learning environments they create for all students—particularly those who have been historically marginalized in society and schools alike.In Antiracism and Universal Design for Learning: Building Expressways to Learning Success (CAST Professional Publishing, 2020), Andratesha Fritzgerald pairs Universal Design for Learning (UDL)—a framework for embedding options in the methods, materials, assessments and instructional goals that anticipate inevitable learner variability in the classroom—with antiracism, to support educators in effectively honoring the brilliance of Black and Brown children. Drawing vivid portraits of classroom instruction, Fritzgerald shows how teachers committed to antiracist environments can open new roads of communication, engagement, and skill-building so that students feel honored and loved.Andratesha Fritzgerald, EdS, brings nearly two decades of experience as a teacher, curriculum specialist, administrator and director in urban schools to synthesize these two schools of thought/action through this book. She has been published in What Really Works with Universal Design for Learning (Corwin Press), and on Think Inclusive’s blog. Currently, Fritzgerald serves as Director of Teaching, Learning and Innovation for the East Cleveland, Ohio City School Districts, and is the founder of Building Blocks of Brilliance.Christina Anderson Bosch is a doctoral student in the College of Education at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. She reads widely in inclusive education scholarship, comparative special education research, and Universal Design for Learning practices to advance intellectual clarity and abolitionist imaginings about the school-prison nexus. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/education

This is part of our Special Series on Malcolm X and Black Nationalism. In this series, we delve into the background of Malcolm X's action and thought in the context of Black Nationalism, correcting the fundamentally mistaken notion that Malcolm X was a civil rights leader. He certainly did not see himself in that way, and explicitly argued otherwise. This helps us place the Afro-American struggle in its dimensions beyond the current American nation-state, including the Black Atlantic, and beyond.Today, our guest is Cedric Burrows, author of The Construction of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and Malcolm X in Composition Textbooks: Rereading Readers, which was his Ph.D. Dissertation at the University of Kansas, available online.While scholars have written about the use of textbooks in writing courses, little attention is paid to how textbooks anthologize writers, especially women and people of color. This study examines the portrayal of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and Malcolm X in composition textbook anthologies known as Readers, and sheds light on the ways Readers incorporate writers from African-American backgrounds.Through qualitative methods, Burrows analyzes how King and Malcolm X are anthologized in five popular Readers: The Bedford Reader, Rereading America, Patterns for College Writing, The Conscious Reader, and A World of Ideas.By intertwining the historical-critical method and narratives from my own experiences teaching Malcolm X and King from a Reader, Burrows analyzes the embedded cultural meanings in the biographical headnotes, the selection, and the discussion questions in the Readers.The results show that Readers tend to: (1) narrate King's and Malcolm X's biographies according to popular narratives in society; (2) provide little or inaccurate historical context to ground the selections; (3) alter the original sources of King and Malcolm X's text; and (4) format King and Malcolm X's rhetoric according to the Western rhetorical tradition while ignoring the African-American dimensions in their rhetoric.Burrows concludes by discussing how Readers are part of a larger issue within the educational system.Kirk Meighoo is Public Relations Officer for the United National Congress, the Official Opposition in Trinidad and Tobago. His career has spanned media, academia, and politics for three decades. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/education

I wish I had seen Laura Hilton and Avinoam Patt's Understanding and Teaching the Holocaust (University of Wisconsin Press, 2020) six months ago. I taught a course in the fall titled "The Holocaust and its Legacies." It's a course I've taught several times. It's a good course, co-taught with Professor of Theology. But it's a course that would have been better if I had read this book the summer before I taught it.Laura HIlton and Avinoam Patt have collected a series of essays designed specifically for high school and university level instructors who teach the Holocaust. Some of them aim to bring teachers up to speed on the most recent research about specific areas of the subject. Others look at specific kinds of sources and offer advice on how teachers might use them in the classroom. Some of them offer new interpretations, others cover well-established material concisely and effectively. Depending on their own backgrounds and interests, teachers will find some of these essays more valuable than others.  But every teacher will emerge from this book having learned something new and having new ideas about how to communicate their subject and their passions to their students.Kelly McFall is Professor of History and Director of the Honors Program at Newman University. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/education

Teaching in Times of Crisis: Applying Comparative Literature in the Classroom (Routledge, 2021) explores how comparative methods, which are instrumental in reading and teaching works of literature from around the world, also provide us with tools to dissect and engage the moments of crises that permeate our contemporary political realities.The book is written in the form of a series of classroom reflections—or memos—capturing the political environment preceding and proceeding the 2016 US presidential election. It examines the ways in which the ethics involved in reading comparatively can be employed by teachers and students alike to map and foster "lifelines for cultural sustainability" (to borrow the term from Djelal Kadir’s Memos from the Besieged City) that are essential for creating and maintaining a healthy multicultural society.Nyawalo achieves this through comparative readings of postcolonial films, LGBTQ texts, French slam poetry, as well as episodes from Star Trek: The Next Generation, among other materials. The classroom reflections captured in each memo are shaped by the Appalachian setting in which the discussions and lessons took place. Inspired by this setting, the author develops pedagogic ethics of comparison—a method of reading comparatively—which privileges the local educational spaces in which students find themselves by mapping the contested cultural politics of Appalachian realities onto a world literature curriculum.Mich Yonah Nyawalo is an Associate Professor of Critical Ethnic, Black/Race Studies at Xavier University, Cincinnati, Ohio. His areas of specialization are globalization studies, postcolonial criticism, African literatures (including audio and visual cultures from the continent), media studies, critical pedagogy, and service learning. The years he has spent living and studying in Kenya, Uganda, France, Sweden, and the United States have highly defined his academic projects, which appropriate a mixture of critical tools and scholarly texts derived from the fields of African, African diaspora, and African-American studies. Some of the classes he teaches include World Literature, Black Transnationalism, Comparative Feminist Literature, Comparative Queer Theory and Literature, Introduction to Media and Culture, Graphic Novels and Animation, as well as Video Games and Virtual Worlds.Victoria Oana Lupașcu is an Assistant Professor of Comparative Literature and Asian Studies at University of Montréal. Her areas of interest include medical humanities, visual art, 20th and 21st Chinese literature and Global South studies. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/education

Welcome to The Academic Life. You are smart and capable, but you aren’t an island, and neither are we. So we reached 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. Wish we’d bring in an expert about something? Email us at cgessler@gmail.com or dr.danamalone@gmail.com. Find us on Twitter: The Academic Life @AcademicLifeNBN.In this episode you’ll hear about: why there aren’t enough jobs in academia for the number of PhDs who want them, what a “tenure-trap” is, why you might be happier in a job outside academia, and discussion of the book Leaving Academia: A Practical Guide.Our guest is: Dr. Christopher Caterine. He is a communications strategist, writer, and career coach. Since leaving academia, he has helped many graduate students and scholars find satisfying work in new arenas.Your host is: Dr. Christina Gessler, a historian of women, gender, and sexuality. She reinterprets the historical narrative in both traditional and creative forms. She supports her work-life balance with long walks and her love of photography, which you can find here.Listeners to this episode might be interested in: Leaving Academia: A Practical Guide by Christopher Caterine Succeeding Outside the Academy by Kelly Baker So What Are You Going to Do with That? by Susan Basalla and Maggie Debelius The Graduate School Mess by Lenny Cassuto Going Alt-Ac: A Guide to Alternative Academic Careers Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/education

In this episode, I speak with Dr. Barbara Dennis of Indiana University on her new ethnography, Walking with Strangers: Critical Ethnography and Educational Promise, published in 2020 by Peter Lang Press.Walking with Strangers: Critical Ethnography and Educational Promise features the IU-Unityville Outreach Project and tells the story of a 4-year-long participatory, critical ethnography in a local United States school district. The book speaks into the contemporary conversations around immigration, Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA), and the experiences of Dreamers. The project involved a multilingual team of graduate students, educators, community members, and students who together aimed to transform school practices in order to bring about more success with transnational students who were enrolling in the district at an increasing rate. Over the span of several years, what began with a simple request for help, morphed into a rich ethnographic understanding of the complex tensions produced by monocultural and assimilationist ideals when juxtaposed with strangers. A unique and innovative feature about the book lies in that it seamlessly weaves together substantive discussions, methodological practices, and ethical challenges revolving around a transformative, social justice project.Walking with Strangers has made significant and much-needed contributions to the field of critical and social justice oriented educational research. In particular, it zooms into the complex and localized dynamics among immigrant families and students, predominantly white communities, public schools structured by white culture, and teachers unprepared for educating transnational children. The book not only sheds light on the innovative approaches through which educational researchers and educators could bring positive changes to the school life of marginalized and disadvantaged students, but also candidly reflects on the places where such efforts failed when confronting white privilege and gender oppression.Barbara Dennis is a peace and social justice activist, and critical educational ethnographer. She is a professor of qualitative inquiry in the Inquiry Methodology program at Indiana University’s, School of Education. She regularly publishes on feminist ethnography, critical participatory ethics, and methodological theory.Pengfei Zhao is a critical researcher and qualitative research methodologist based at the University of Florida. She is currently working on a book manuscript studying the coming of age experience of rural Chinese youth during and right after the Cultural Revolution. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/education

The new essay collection Food Insecurity on College Campuses edited by Katharine M. Broton and Clare L. Cady explores the widespread problem of food insecurity among college students and the overlapping and compounding issues that lead students to choose between getting enough to eat and paying the costs of a college education. As the editors make clear in the introduction to the collection, today’s college student has changed significantly from the expected “young adult, attending college full-time immediately after high school,” and the economic landscape they are dealing with is far different from what many administrators and faculty assume. Students are more likely to delay college or enter as part-time students while taking care of families or working. The essays throughout the collection describe students’ barriers to graduation as interlocking and compounding, and none of them academic. In the example of “Amarillo College: Loving Your Student from Enrollment to Graduation,” the authors concluded the top 10 reasons that students failed to complete their degrees were all financial in nature, not related to academic preparedness or ability to learn. Michael Rosen‘s essay reveals that even very small amounts of money for textbooks, car repairs, security deposits, utilities, and lab fees may derail students. The essays in the collection describe a wide range of solutions that have been tested in a variety of institutions and locations. to food insecurity from food pantries and partnerships with campus dining services to wrap-around services with social workers and emergency financial support. The editors acknowledge that supplying students with food may temporarily provide them with a meal, but these do not solve the ongoing problems of poverty. Throughout the collection, authors point time and again to the need to direct students to multiple services and resources, not just food or a check. Without significant reform in the structural inequities that keep people in poverty, these are all stop-gap measures.Katherine Broton is an assistant professor in the Department of Educational Policy and Leadership Studies and (by courtesy) the Department of Sociology at the University of Iowa.Clare Cady is the cofounder of the College and University Food Bank Alliance and Director of Research and Innovation at Single Stop.Carrie Helms Tippen is Assistant Professor of English at Chatham University in Pittsburgh, PA, where she teaches courses in American Literature. Her 2018 book, Inventing Authenticity: How Cookbook Writers Redefine Southern Identity (University of Arkansas Press), examines the rhetorical strategies that writers use to prove the authenticity of their recipes in the narrative headnotes of contemporary cookbooks. Her academic work has been published in Gastronomica, Food and Foodways, American Studies, Southern Quarterly, and Food, Culture, and Society. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/education

These are dangerous times for democracy. We live in an age of winners and losers, where the odds are stacked in favor of the already fortunate. Stalled social mobility and entrenched inequality give the lie to the American credo that you can make it if you try. The consequence is a brew of anger and frustration that has fueled populist protest and extreme polarization, and led to deep distrust of both government and our fellow citizens--leaving us morally unprepared to face the profound challenges of our time.World-renowned philosopher Michael J. Sandel argues that to overcome the crises that are upending our world, we must rethink the attitudes toward success and failure that have accompanied globalization and rising inequality. Sandel shows the hubris a meritocracy generates among the winners and the harsh judgement it imposes on those left behind, and traces the dire consequences across a wide swath of American life. He offers an alternative way of thinking about success--more attentive to the role of luck in human affairs, more conducive to an ethic of humility and solidarity, and more affirming of the dignity of work. The Tyranny of Merit: What's Become of the Common Good? (FSG, 2020) points us toward a hopeful vision of a new politics of the common good.Renee Garfinkel, Ph.D. is a psychologist, writer, Middle East television commentator and host of The New Books Network’s Van Leer Jerusalem Series on Ideas. Write her at VanLeerIdeas@gmail.com. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/education

Welcome to The Academic Life. You are smart and capable, but you aren’t an island, and neither are we. So we reached 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. Wish we’d bring in an expert about something? Email us at cgessler@gmail.com or dr.danamalone@gmail.com. Find us on Twitter: The Academic Life @AcademicLifeNBN.In this episode you’ll hear about: navigating academia as a STEM student, getting pregnant and parenting while still a student, and difficult decisions about dropping out or staying in academia.Our guest is: Dr. Miriam Martin, an Assistant Professor of Teaching at the University of California, Davis. She teaches high-enrollment lecture and laboratory courses and specializes in learner-focused teaching practices that promote deep learning and an inclusive, equitable learning environment. Prior to teaching at UC Davis, she taught at several community colleges and also brought science experiments into elementary schools as a volunteer. She is the mother of two children and a pun-loving microbe-enthusiast. She invites you to follow up on our conversation through Twitter (@MicrobialGurl) or LinkedIn.Your host is: Dr. Christina Gessler, a historian of women, gender, and sexuality. She is an independent scholar, and the co-creator of the Academic Life channel on New Books Network.Listeners to this episode might be interested in: “What matters in a PhD adviser? Here’s what the research says”  “How to survive grad school with a family” “Lactation Support Program” “A repository of peer-reviewed research and resources discussing the challenges facing white women and men and women of color in science” PhD Balance (Twitter @PhD_Balance) The Versatile PhD (Twitter @VersatilePhD) “Life in extreme heat” (about the heat-loving microbes in Yellowstone National Park)  “Stalking Caulobacter” Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/education