Overview

Graduate Students at Work highlights the expertise and experiences of graduate students to demonstrate what graduate study entails, what it makes possible, and what it constrains in the context of corporatizing higher education. This collection of full-length research articles and short personal essays illustrates graduate students’ experiences, organizing tactics, and strategies for staying in or moving out of the academy.Speaking 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 for the decade or so it takes to move through a master’s and doctoral program into the promised land of a tenure-track job. While these students are the leaders of the academic labor movement, they have yet to receive as much attention as adjunct instructors and other laborers in the university system. Though they experience harassment, discrimination, and exploitation, graduate students rarely have access to labor protections because they are often misclassified as students, not employees—a key rhetorical strategy universities use to fight graduate student organizing. These essays and articles also draw insightful connections between the labor conditions of graduate student workers and other workers navigating poverty wages, labor migration, limited benefits, and harassment and discrimination around lines of race, gender, ability, and citizenship—the most important connection perhaps being the possibility for organization and unionization to fight for better working conditions for all.

Full Product Details

Author:   Tessa Brown
Publisher:   University Press of Kansas
Imprint:   University Press of Kansas
Dimensions:   Width: 15.20cm , Height: 1.80cm , Length: 22.80cm
Weight:   0.272kg
ISBN:  

9780700634071

ISBN 10:   070063407
Pages:   320
Publication Date:   31 March 2023
Audience:   Professional and scholarly ,  Professional & Vocational
Format:   Paperback
Publisher's Status:   Active
Availability:   Manufactured on demand  
We will order this item for you from a manufactured on demand supplier.

Table of Contents

Introduction: 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

Reviews

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

"""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"

Author Information

Tessa Brown is an entrepreneur and was previously a lecturer in the Program on Writing and Rhetoric at Stanford University.

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