Description
Book SynopsisSpeaking from personal experience as well as reporting research findings, the contributors of
Graduate Students at Work illustrate the significant expertise that graduate students are asked to enact in their time-intensive jobs as teachers, researchers, and administrators, even as they are kept in poverty wages.
Trade Review"Brown’s collection captures the long road of labor exploitation that got us here as well as the unique challenges and opportunities graduate students face in the present moment. The authors explore the emotional, material, and intellectual consequences of capitalism for higher education, creating a vital resource for current and potential graduate students, for the labor organizers who support them, and for the teachers and administrators ready to be allies. This is both a scholarly and a narrative text, accessible and thought-provoking."—Amy Lynch-Biniek, professor of English, Kutztown University
"The contributions Tessa Brown’s Graduate Students at Work: Exploited Scholars of Neoliberal Academia makes to the field are significant. The book centers on the original research of current and recent graduate students rather than presenting them as other people’s participants, giving it an authority and an ethical gravitas I can’t applaud loudly enough. The primary research covers a huge range of territory where all too often demands for ‘data’ stall advocacy efforts. I am profoundly grateful that this book exists."—Seth Kahn, professor of English, West Chester University
"Recent world events have irreparably influenced how labor dynamics operate within different industries. Tessa Brown has pulled together a brilliant slate of contributors to collectively author a definitive exploratory text that (re)contextualizes graduate students as ‘entry-level academic laborers’ within contemporary higher education. Each original contribution to the book studies this overarching framing of work and labor, whether through empirical study, reflective essay, or commentary. Moreover, the authors present exhaustive rebuttals and thoughtful analyses that dismantle many academic leaders’ and policymakers’ understanding of graduate students as ‘only’ students. This volume is important reading for any person considering, guiding, or participating in higher education and hoping to transform the field in ways that better recognize, compensate, and value the individuals that are doing the essential work that perpetuates the best version of what higher education can be in a society."—Demetri L. Morgan, associate professor of higher education, Loyola University Chicago
Table of ContentsIntroduction: Graduate Students are Hyper-Exploited,
Tessa Brown Part I: Labor at the Margins
Interlude 1. Levels to This Sh*t: Layers of Graduate Student Labor, Khadeidra Billingsley
1. “I Have to Go Wherever There’s an Opportunity”: Graduate Students’ Experiences of Placelessness and Writing, Charlotte Kupsh and Zoe McDonald
Interlude 2. Invisible Marginalization in Academia, Samah Elbelazi
Interlude 3. Invisible Labors and Entangled Emergence, Andrew Hollinger
2.“Like I’m ‘The Man’”: Graduate Student Administrators’ Experiences, Talinn Phillips, Paul Shovlin, and Megan Titus
Interlude 4. The Ethics of Progressive Internships, Meagan Gacke-Reed
3. “It’s Dangerous to Go Alone”: Explorations of Unbalanced Labor and Mentorship in a Blended Learning Doctoral Program, April Cobos and Megan Mize
Part II: The Labor of Teaching and Research
4. Will This Take Me Anywhere? Investing Time in Graduate Student Teaching, Elliot Shapiro
Interlude 5. Establishing Ethos for a Translingual GTA—The Unwritten Labor, Anis Rahman
5. Learning to Teach, Teaching to Learn, Sara Austin and Kelly Moreland
Interlude 6. Mothering and Laboring as a Graduate Student and Teacher, Alma Villanueva
Interlude 7. Parenting while Researching? It Takes Support, Kid-Friendly Systems, and a Lot of Luck, Jacqueline M. Kory-Westlund
Part III: The Labor of “Professionalization”
Interlude 8. The Professoriate Is a Job, Sarah Welsh
6. Scholar-Selves in the Managerial University: The Hidden Labor of Disciplinary Identity Formation in the Doctoral Journey, Adam Haley
Interlude 9. Ethically Honoring Graduate Student Expertise through Joy Projects Conclusion: The Future of the Neo-Confederate Museum, Jaclyn Fiscus-Cannaday and Allison Hutchison
7. Chinese Doctoral Students’ Perceptions of Employability in the United States: cultivating Preparedness for a Challenging World, Xueshuang Wang, Weiyan Xiong, and Huiyuan Ye
Part IV: Organizing Labor
Interlude 10. Paying to Teach: A Profile of California State University System English Department Graduate Teaching Associate Programs, Martha Althea Webber
8. “Fees Are Wage Theft”: Graduate Labor Unions Confronting the Neoliberal University, Jonathan Isaac
Interlude 11. A How-To guide for Combating the Invisibility of Graduate Student Parents, Alex Hanson
9. “We’ll Be Taking This with Us”: Relationality and Idealism in Three Graduate Student Locals, Anicca Cox
Afterword: Striking for a Safer Campus Community, Kalena Thomhave and Matt Sehrsweeney
About the Contributors
Index
