Academic Life and Labour in the New University

Hope and Other Choices
1. Auflage 2013
ISBN: 978-1-4094-3621-8
Verlag: Routledge

Buch, Englisch, 258 Seiten, Format (B × H): 161 mm x 240 mm, Gewicht: 564 g

What does it mean to be an academic today? What kinds of experiences do students have, and how are they affected by what they learn? Why do so many students and their teachers feel like frauds? Can we learn to teach and research in ways that foster hope and deflate pretension? Academic Life and Labour in the New University: Hope and Other Choices addresses these big questions, discussing the challenges of teaching and researching in the contemporary university, the purpose of research and its fundamental value, and the role of the academy against the background of major changes to nature of the university itself. Drawing on a range of international media sources, political discourse and many years’ professional experience, this volume explores approaches to teaching and research, with special emphasis on the importance of collegiality, intellectual honesty and courage. With attention to the intersection of large-scale institutional changes and intellectual shifts such as the rise of transdisciplinarity and the development of a pluralist curriculum, this book proposes the pursuit of more ethical, compassionate and critical forms of teaching and research. As such, it will be of interest not only to scholars of cultural studies and education, but to all those who care about the fate of the university as an institution, including young scholars seeking to join the academy.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Barcan, Ruth

Fachgebiete

• Wirtschaftswissenschaften Volkswirtschaftslehre Volkswirtschaftslehre Allgemein Arbeitsmarkt
• Sozialwissenschaften Soziologie | Soziale Arbeit Soziologie Allgemein

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Contents: Introduction: private feelings, public contexts; The big shifts: massification, marketization and their consequences; The wellbeing of academics in the palimpsestic university; Pluralism and its discontents: teaching critical theory and the politics of hope; The idleness of academics: hopeful reflections on the usefulness of cultural studies; Feeling like a fraud: or, the upside of knowing you can never be good enough; Conclusion; Bibliography; Appendix; Index.

Über Autor(innen)

Ruth Barcan is a senior lecturer in the Department of Gender and Cultural Studies at the University of Sydney, Australia. She is the author of Complementary and Alternative Medicine: Bodies, Therapies, Senses (2011), and Nudity: A Cultural Anatomy (2004). She is also co-editor of Imagining Australian Space: Cultural Studies and Spatial Inquiry (1999), and Planet Diana: Cultural Studies and Global Mourning (1997).