Reading and discussion group: “The Embodied and Affective Experience of Academic Labour”

Date: 04 May 2012, 14:00
Location: Beech Grove House

This roundtable brings together feminist scholars from different disciplines and career stages to discuss the embodied and affective experience of academic labour at a time of intense (re)configurations of academic cultures and working practices. We are particularly interested in analysing the “toxic” (Gill, 2010) and “careless” (Lynch, 2010) aspects of those cultures and working practices, and their impact on our experiences of research and teaching, on individual and collective subjectivities, on our bodies and on practices of care (of/for ourselves, others and the community).

Speakers:

• Prof. Mary Evans (LSE)
• Dr. Sarah Amsler (University of Lincoln)
• Dr. Maria Puig de la Bellacasa (University of Leicester)

Chair:

• Dr. Maria do Mar Pereira (University of Leeds)

The texts we will be discussing are:

• Amsler, Sarah, “For feminist consciousness in the academy”, forthcoming in Politics and Culture.
• Amsler, Sarah, “Learning at the edge: Troublesome knowledge, public pedagogies and critical research”, work in progress (based on a paper given in March 2012 at the University of Lincoln).
• Evans, Mary (2010), “The Universities and the Challenge of Realism”, Arts and Humanities in Higher Education, 9 (1), 13 – 21.
• Puig de la Bellacasa, Maria (2002), “Flexible Girls: a Position Paper on Academic Genderational Politics”, in Luisa Passerini, Dawn Lyon, and Liana Borghi (eds.), Gender studies in Europe/Studi di genere in Europa, European University Institute/Universita di Firenze, in association with ATHENA.

In the discussion, we will also engage with the two texts below, which we encourage you to read as well if you are able and interested.

• Gill, Rosalind (2010). “Breaking the Silence: the Hidden Injuries of the Neoliberal University” in R. Ryan-Flood and R. Gill (eds.), Secrecy and Silence in the Research Process: Feminist Reflections. Abingdon: Routledge.
• Lynch, Kathleen (2010). “Carelessness: a Hidden Doxa of Higher Education”. Arts and Humanities in Higher Education, 9 (1), 54 -67.

This initiative is co-hosted by the Centre for Interdisciplinary Gender Studies (University of Leeds) and the European Network GenderAct (http://www.gender.hu-berlin.de/internationales/projekte/generationaltransmission).

If you would like to attend this event, you will need to register by emailing Maria do Mar Pereira

We hope you can join us for what promises to be a lively and thought-provoking discussion!