New Books In Education

Jesuit Colleges and Universities in the United States: A History (Catholic University of America Press, 2022) provides a comprehensive history of Jesuit higher education in the United States, weaving together the stories of the fifty-four colleges and universities that the Jesuits have operated (successfully and unsuccessfully) since 1789. It emphasizes the connections among the institutions, exploring how certain Jesuit schools like Georgetown University gave birth to others like Boston College by sharing faculty, financial resources, accreditation, and even presidents throughout their history. The book also explores how the colleges responded to common challenges – including anti-Catholic prejudice in the United States, the push from government authorities to modernize their shared curriculum, and the pull from Roman authorities to remain loyal to Catholic tradition. The story is comprehensive, covering the colonial era to the present, and takes a fresh look at themes like the rise of the research universit

Why do PhD programs assume students will become professors, when most people find careers outside academia? How can we better prepare graduate students for the post-grad career path? This episode explores: What a “Connected PhD” program is, and why it’s necessary. The negative impact on students when they feel "less than" or as if they have failed when they can't land a tenure-track job. How to change the PhD so students graduate with multiple career options. Why faculty need to approach graduate programs differently. How students can build their mentoring and support network outside of their program, and outside of academia The Connected PhD program's impact on the culture of doctoral pedagogy. Our guest is: Dr. Alyssa Stalsberg Canelli, who is the Assistant Dean of Academic Affairs at Brandeis. Our co-guest is: Dr. Jonathan Shapiro Anjaria, who is the Faculty Director of Professional Development at GSAS, and associate professor in the Anthropology department at Brandeis. Our host is: Dr. Christina G

Donna Riley, professor and head of the school of engineering education at Purdue University, talks about her path, her work, and her 2008 book, Engineering and Social Justice, with Peoples & Things host, Lee Vinsel. If technologies and infrastructures embody moral and political values, what should engineering students be taught about their roles in society? Riley and Vinsel also talk about how universities have changed since Riley’s book came out and Riley’s hopes for social justice in engineering education going forward. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/education

These are troubling days for the humanities. In response, a recent proliferation of works defending the humanities has emerged. But, taken together, what are these works really saying, and how persuasive do they prove? The Battle of the Classics: How a Nineteenth-Century Debate Can Save the Humanities Today (Oxford UP, 2020) demonstrates the crucial downsides of contemporary apologetics for the humanities and presents in its place a historically informed case for a different approach to rescuing the humanistic disciplines in higher education. It reopens the passionate debates about the classics that took place in late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century America as a springboard for crafting a novel foundation for the humanistic tradition. Eric Adler demonstrates that current defenses of the humanities rely on the humanistic disciplines as inculcators of certain poorly defined skills such as "critical thinking." It criticizes this conventional approach, contending that humanists cannot hope to save their d

Claudia Garcia crossed the border because her toddler, Natalia, could not hear. Leaving behind everything she knew in Mexico, Claudia recounts the terror of migrating alone with her toddler and the incredible challenges she faced advocating for her daughter's health in the United States. When she arrived in Texas, Claudia discovered that being undocumented would mean more than just an immigration status—it would be a way of living, of mothering, and of being discarded by even those institutions we count on to care. Elizabeth Farfán-Santos spent five years with Claudia. As she listened to Claudia's experiences, she recalled her own mother's story, another life molded by migration, the US-Mexico border, and the quest for a healthy future on either side. Witnessing Claudia's struggles with doctors and teachers, we see how the education and medical systems enforce undocumented status and perpetuate disability. At one point, in the midst of advocating for her daughter, Claudia suddenly finds herself struck by debi

Many histories of science have been written, but A New History of the Humanities (Oxford UP, 2014) offers the first overarching history of the humanities from Antiquity to the present. There are already historical studies of musicology, logic, art history, linguistics, and historiography, but this volume gathers these, and many other humanities disciplines, into a single coherent account. Its central theme is the way in which scholars throughout the ages and in virtually all civilizations have sought to identify patterns in texts, art, music, languages, literature, and the past. What rules can we apply if we wish to determine whether a tale about the past is trustworthy? By what criteria are we to distinguish consonant from dissonant musical intervals? What rules jointly describe all possible grammatical sentences in a language? How can modern digital methods enhance pattern-seeking in the humanities? Rens Bod contends that the hallowed opposition between the sciences (mathematical, experimental, dominated by

Davarian L. Baldwin is a professor of American studies and founding director of the Smart Cities Lab at Trinity College in Hartford, Conn. His latest book, In the Shadow of the Ivory Tower: How Universities Are Plundering Our Cities (Bold Type Books, 2021) is a wake-up call to the reality that higher education is no longer the ubiquitous public good it was once thought to be. But as Baldwin shows, there is an alternative vision for urban life, one that necessitates a more equitable relationship between our cities and our universities. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/education

Author L. M. Sacasas talks about the life, thought, and legacy of the Catholic priest, philosopher, and social critic Ivan Illich with Peoples & Things host Lee Vinsel. Sacasas and Vinsel discuss Illich’s critiques of bureaucracy, technology, scale, and expertise and how these critiques apply to medicine, education, our credential society, and life with media technologies. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/education

After the turn of the twentieth century, schools played a pivotal role in the construction of French West Africa. But as this dynamic, deeply researched study reveals, the expanding school system also became the site of escalating conflicts. As French authorities worked to develop truncated schools for colonial "subjects," many African students and young elites framed educational projects of their own. Weaving together a complex narrative and rich variety of voices, Harry Gamble explores the high stakes of colonial education. With the disruptions of World War II, contests soon took on new configurations. Seeking to forestall postwar challenges to colonial rule, French authorities showed a new willingness to envision broad reforms, in education as in other areas. Exploiting the new context of the Fourth Republic and the extension of citizenship, African politicians demanded an end to separate and inferior schools.  Harry Gamble's book Contesting French West Africa: Battles Over Schools and the Colonial Order,

This episode is a roundtable discussion on the influence of the neoliberal project on higher education. Our guests are Professor Emeritus Frank Fear from Michigan State University, Professor Claire Polster from the University of Regina, and Professor Ruben Martinez from Michigan State University. The conversation is wide-ranging across topics such as the quantification of higher education and the concept of students as customers. John Kaag is Professor and Chair of Philosophy at UMass Lowell and External Professor at the Santa Fe Institute. John W. Traphagan, Ph.D. is Professor and Mitsubishi Heavy Industries Fellow in the Department of Religious Studies at the University of Texas at Austin, where he is also a professor in the Program in Human Dimensions of Organizations. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/education

Roosevelt Montás is Senior Lecturer in American Studies and English at Columbia University. A specialist in Antebellum American literature and culture and in American citizenship, he focuses mainly on the history, meaning, and future of liberal education. This question motivates his book Rescuing Socrates: How the Great Books Changed My Life and Why They Matter for a New Generation (Princeton University Press, 2021). “Great Books” dominate “the Core” at Columbia University, where undergraduates must complete two years of non-departmental humanities courses. Montás teaches in the Core and was for ten years the director of the Center for the Core Curriculum. From this vantage point, he considers the function of “great books” today, particularly for members of historically marginalized communities like himself. In Rescuing Socrates, he recounts how a liberal education transformed his life as a Dominican-born American immigrant. As many academics deem the Western canon to be inherently chauvinistic and the genera

Today I talked to Ellen Cassedy about her new book  Working 9 to 5: A Women's Movement, a Labor Union, and the Iconic Movie (Chicago Review Press, 2022). Many people may identify 9 to 5 with the comic film starring Jane Fonda, Dolly Parton and Lily Tomlin or perhaps only know Parton’s hit song that served as its theme. But 9 to 5 wasn't just a comic film—it was a movement built by Ellen Cassedy and her friends. Ten office workers in Boston started out sitting in a circle and sharing the problems they encountered on the job. In a few short years, they had built a nationwide movement that united people of diverse races, classes, and ages. They took on the corporate titans. They leafleted and filed lawsuits and started a woman-led union. They won millions of dollars in back pay and helped make sexual harassment and pregnancy discrimination illegal. The women office workers who rose up to win rights and respect on the job transformed workplaces throughout America. And along the way came Dolly Parton's toe-tapping

Why did thousands of workers at prestigious universities in the United States go on strike in 2022? How did we get to this historic moment, and is it really over? This episode explores: The myriad ways universities can wield power over workers and even their families. Why university workers are divided into different unions—and why some have no union representation at all. How inflation, student debt, housing shortages, health insurance access, and the constriction of the tenure-track put unbearable pressure graduate students, adjuncts, and instructors. The limitations of sympathy strikes. How higher education became a gig economy. Why this generation of students and their parents have more power to change academic inequality than they may realize. Our guest is: Trevor Griffey is a Lecturer in U.S. History at UC Irvine and in Labor Studies at UCLA. He is co-founder of the Seattle Civil Rights and Labor History Project, and co-editor of the book Black Power at Work: Community Control, Affirmative Actit

Joseph Nagel and Heather Skinner are principal and vice-principal of the School of the Madeleine in Berkeley, California; Mrs. Skinner was also once Joseph’s teacher and mine (your host, Chris Odyniec) and has been at the school for 45 years. Over this time, the school population and broader community has changed significantly. Mrs. Skinner and Mr. Nagel reflect on their experience teaching and working at a beloved and successful Catholic school in a progressive town like Berkeley, California; they discuss the School of the Madeleine, its mission, politics, and role in forming the whole child with the love of God. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/education

In April 2006, The Institute held a two day symposium about copyright and intellectual property, titled Comedies of Fair Use. In this session, Lewis Hyde talks about owning art and ideas. Hyde is a cultural critic and scholar, whose work focuses on the nature of imagination, creativity, and property. He is best known for his books, The Gift: Imagination and the Erotic Life of Property, and Trickster Makes This World: Mischief, Myth and Art. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/education

Inspired by Bradley Sommer’s tweet this past summer about the ongoing challenges of the Humanities job market in the U.S., this four part podcast (produced by Erica Bennett, an M.A. student in the Department of Religious Studies at the University of Alabama) talks with an early career scholar now looking for work in academia, a senior scholar with a view from the inside, and those who either earned their doctorate and established a career outside the university or those who decided early on that graduate work was not their preferred career path. In the fourth and final episode of the series, Erica and Jacob Barrett (himself just starting his Ph.D. at UNC Chapel Hill) explore careers well outside of the typical tenure-track by speaking with Shannon Trosper Schorey, who holds her Ph.D. in Religious Studies but who has established a successful career in the tech sector. Shannon Trosper Schorey (Ph.D., UNC Chapel Hill) is a Principal Communications Specialist in the tech industry. She co-wrote and co-produced Day

Inspired by Bradley Sommer’s tweet this past summer about the ongoing challenges of the Humanities job market in the U.S., this four part podcast (produced by Erica Bennett, an M.A. student in the Department of Religious Studies at the University of Alabama) talks with an early career scholar now looking for work in academia, a senior scholar with a view from the inside, and those who either earned their doctorate and established a career outside the university or those who decided early on that graduate work was not their preferred career path. In the third episode, Erica and Jacob Barrett (himself just starting his Ph.D. at UNC Chapel Hill) talk with Jared Powell, formerly a doctoral student in English at UNC, about the reasons why he recently left academia, midway through his Ph.D. program, and decided to investigate careers outside the university. About the guest: Jared Powell earned a B.A. in English and Religious Studies and then an M.A. in English at the University of Alabama, going on to a Ph.D. in En

The marginalisation of Black voices from the academy is a problem in the Western world. But Black Studies, where it exists, is a powerful, boundary-pushing discipline, grown out of struggle and community action. In The Future of Black Studies (Pluto Press, 2022), Abdul Alkalimat, one of the founders of Black Studies in the US, presents a reimagining of the future trends in the study of the Black experience. Taking Marxism and Black Experientialism, Afro-Futurist and Diaspora frameworks, he projects a radical future for the discipline at this time of social crisis. Choosing cornerstones of culture, such as the music of Sun Ra, the movie Black Panther and the writer Octavia Butler, he looks at the trajectory of Black liberation thought since slavery, including new research on the rise in the comparative study of Black people all over the world. Turning to look at how digital tools enhance the study of the discipline, this book is a powerful read that will inform and inspire students and activists. Amanda Joyce

Inspired by Bradley Sommer’s tweet this past summer about the ongoing challenges of the Humanities job market in the U.S., this four part podcast (produced by Erica Bennett, an M.A. student in the Department of Religious Studies at the University of Alabama) talks with an early career scholar now looking for work in academia, a senior scholar with a view from the inside, and those who either earned their doctorate and established a career outside the university or those who decided early on that graduate work was not their preferred career path. In the second episode of the series, Erica and Jacob Barrett (himself just starting his Ph.D. at UNC Chapel Hill) learn of some of the historical but also contemporary factors impacting the academic job market, as well as efforts by faculty to intervene in it, by talking with Pamela Gilbert, an English Professor at the University of Florida. About the guest: Pamela K. Gilbert was a John Simon Guggenheim Fellow (2016) and Society for the Humanities Fellow at Cornell (2

Inspired by Bradley Sommer’s tweet this past summer about the ongoing challenges of the Humanities job market in the U.S., this four part podcast (produced by Erica Bennett, an M.A. student in the Department of Religious Studies at the University of Alabama) talks with an early career scholar now looking for work in academia, a senior scholar with a view from the inside, and those who either earned their doctorate and established a career outside the university or those who decided early on that graduate work was not their preferred career path. In the first episode of the series, Erica and Jacob Barrett (himself just starting his Ph.D. at UNC Chapel Hill) discuss the challenges of starting a PhD program in the humanities at this particular point in time, gaining some perspective from Bradley Sommer, a recent Ph.D. graduate in History. About the guest: Bradley J. Sommer earned his Ph.D. in American History from Carnegie Mellon University and is a historian at the U.S. Army Center of Military History in Washin