Description
Book Synopsis As neoliberalism has expanded from corporations to higher education, the notion of “diversity” is increasingly seen as the contribution of individuals to an organization. By focusing on one liberal arts college, author Bonnie Urciuoli shows how schools market themselves as “diverse” communities to which all members contribute. She explores how students of color are recruited, how their lives are institutionally organized, and how they provide the faces, numbers, and stories that represent schools as diverse. In doing so, she finds that unlike students’ routine experiences of racism or other social differences, neoliberal diversity is mainly about improving schools’ images.
Trade Review “Urciuoli, a leading scholar in linguistic anthropology, quite brilliantly deploys linguistic anthropological theory to reveal how “diversity” is produced in college branding processes. The analysis brings to light quite vividly and powerfully exactly what this branding effectively masks, namely the deep disjuncture between the “diversity” imagined in promotional images of campus life and the everyday lived experiences of racialization among black and brown students and faculty in these institutions.” • Kathleen Hall, University of Pennsylvania
Table of Contents Preface
Acknowledgments
Introduction: Diversity, Markedness, and the Liberal Arts College
Chapter 1. What is Liberal Arts Education ‘For’?
Chapter 2. Marketing and Admissions: Regimenting the Imagery of Markedness
Chapter 3. The Administrative Structures of Student Life
Chapter 4. Turning Markedness into Culture
Chapter 5. Students Just Wanna Have Fun
Chapter 6. Where is the Faculty in All This?
Conclusion
References
Index
