Feminist Responses to the Neoliberalization of the University

Abby Palko is director of the Maxine Platzer Lynn Women's Center at the University of Virginia.Sonalini Sapra is assistant director of the Center for Principled Problem Solving and Excellence in Teaching at Guilford College and adjunct assistant professor of political science. Jamie Wagman is associate professor and chair of gender and women's studies and history at Saint Mary's College.

This book argues that neoliberal discourses prevalent in higher education seek to undermine, commodify, and co-opt the radical, transformative work that many gender and women's studies departments, programs, and centers are doing. The contributors to the collection discuss their responses to these challenges in and out of the classrooms, from mentorship and activism to active allyship and experimental pedagogies. They aim to inspire a new wave of feminist consciousness raising that will encourage transformative ways of engaging with the university and serve as doorways to new understandings of productivity and creativity.

Chapter One: Lavender Carharts: Queer Work within and outside the AcademyAnne BalayChapter Two: Neoliberalism in Higher Education and its Effects on Marginalized StudentsDejah CarterChapter Three: Promoting Feminist Labor in Academe's Culture of ComplianceApril LidinskyChapter Four: Neutral Student Grievance Processes in White Supremacist Institutions of Higher EducationFarhana LoonatChapter Five: Planting Seeds of Trans Inclusion: A Conversation with Meghan Buell of TREES, Inc.Meghan Buell and Pam ButlerChapter Six: Laboring in Line with Our Values: Lessons Learned in the Struggle to UnionizeSonia De La Cruz, Nini Hayes, and Sonalini SapraChapter Seven: Feminist Future Making and Nomadic Subjectivity in the AcademyLauren J. LaceyChapter Eight: Sovereignty as an Indigenous Feminist InterventionAmanda Griffin LinsenmeyerChapter Nine: There is No Surviving without Thriving Abby PalkoChapter Ten: Compadradzco & the Wild Woman: An Argument for the Creative Collective as Radical Support for Women in the AcademyLeslie Contreras SchwartzChapter Eleven: Fighting Shanda: A Jewish Mother Academic's Positionality and Practice at a Catholic Women's CollegeJamie Wagman