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In The Slow Professor, Maggie Berg and Barbara K. Seeber discuss how adopting the principles of the Slow movement in academic life can counter the erosion of humanistic education.
"If there is one sector of society that should be cultivating deep thought in itself and others, it is academia. Yet the corporatisation of the contemporary university has sped up the clock, demanding increased speed and efficiency from faculty regardless of the consequences for education and scholarship. In The Slow Professor, Maggie Berg and Barbara K. Seeber discuss how adopting the principles of the Slow movement in academic life can counter this erosion of humanistic education. Focusing on the individual faculty member and his or her own professional practice, Berg and Seeber present both an analysis of the culture of speed in the academy and ways of alleviating stress while improving teaching, research, and collegiality. The Slow Professor will be a must-read for anyone in academia concerned about the frantic pace of contemporary university life."--
Instead of following the Magna Charta Universitatum, the declaration of the principles of knowledge signed in 1988 in Bologna, the academic approach pursued in Europe and the other continents over the past 30 years has strictly employed a utilitarian model of higher education. This jeopardizes academic freedom, shared governance and tenure, the three pillars of the long-established model of universities. Scientific conformism and fragmentation, educational bias and authoritarianism are the major drawbacks, together with a poor readiness to meet the emerging challenges in the labor market and technology. In this book, Renzo Rosso presents a new model for countering these developments, e.g. by establishing novel democratic rules for university governance. The Slow University paradigm positions culture and education as essential tools for the long-term survival of humankind.
This book aims at answering pressing issues such as the neo-liberalization of the university, strategical solutions to the contemporary crisis, its multiple definitions and different pedagogical manifestations across disciplines and levels of education. Inspired by bell hooks' "transgressive school" and Haraway's "responsibility", it is an attempt at creating new forms of organizational practices that consequently promote a politics of care for each other. It addresses the challenges and possibilities of teaching students about women and gender by discussing the pedagogical, theoretical and political dimensions of learning and teaching with a three-dimensional perspective. First, it revisits how we can reconfigure a feminist politics of responsibility "able to respond" or engage with contemporary crises. Secondly, it conceptualizes crisis and explains how it is transforming contemporary societies and affecting individual vulnerabilities and institutional structures. And, thirdly, it offers practical cases from different European locations (Spain, Portugal, Austria, United Kingdom and Poland, as well as the complete journey of the Feminist Caravan) in which crisis and responsibility have served to reformulate contemporary feminist pedagogies, altering curriculums, reframing institutions, and affecting the process of teaching and learning
A collection of essays written by arts and humanities scholars across disciplines, this book argues that higher education has been compromised by its uncritical acceptance of our culture’s standards of productivity, busyness, and speed. Inspired by the Slow Movement, contributors explain how and why university culture has come to value productivity over contemplation and rapidity over slowness. Chapter authors argue that the arts and humanities offer a cogent critique of fast culture in higher education, and reframe the discussion of the value of their fields by emphasizing the dialectic between speed and slowness.
Dissonant Methods is an innovative collection that probes how, by approaching teaching creatively, postsecondary instructors can resist the constrictions of neoliberalism. Based on the foundations of Scholarship of Teaching and Learning, whereby educators are asked to explore teaching as scholarship, these essays offer concrete and practical meditations on resistant and sustainable teaching. The contributors seek to undermine forms of oppression frequently found in higher education, and instead advance a vision of the university that upholds ideals such as critical thinking, creativity, and inclusivity. Essential reading for faculty and graduate students in the humanities, Dissonant Methods offers urgent, galvanizing ideas for anyone currently teaching in a college or university. Contributors: Kathy Cawsey, Kit Dobson, Ada S. Jaarsma, Rachel Jones, Kyle Kinaschuk, Namrata Mitra, Guy Obrecht, Katja K. Pettinen, Kaitlin Rothberger, Ely Shipley, Martin Shuster
Contemporary arts, both practice and methods, offer medieval scholars innovative ways to examine, explore, and reframe the past. Medievalists offer contemporary studies insights into cultural works of the past that have been made or reworked in the present. Creative-critical writing invites the adaptation of scholarly style using forms such as the dialogue, short essay, and the poem; these are, the authors argue, appropriate ways to explore innovative pathways from the contemporary to the medieval, and vice versa. Speculative and non-traditional, The Contemporary Medieval in Practice adapts the conventional scholarly essay to reflect its cross-disciplinary, creative subject. This book ‘does’ Medieval Studies differently by bringing it into relation with the field of contemporary arts and by making ‘practice’, in the sense used by contemporary arts and by creative-critical writing, central to it. Intersecting with a number of urgent critical discourses and cultural practices, such as the study of the environment and the ethics of understanding bodies, identities, and histories, this short, accessible book offers medievalists a distinctive voice in multi-disciplinary, trans-chronological, collaborative conversations about the Humanities. Its subject is early medieval British culture, often termed Anglo-Saxon Studies (c. 500–1100), and its relation with, use of, and re-working in contemporary visual, poetic, and material culture (after 1950). ‘The Contemporary Medieval in Practice is both wise and unafraid to take risks. Fully embedded in scholarship yet reaching into unmapped territory, the authors move across disciplines and forge surprising links. Thought-provoking and evocative, this is a book that will have an impact that far belies its modest length.’ – Linda Anderson, Newcastle University
What does it mean to be a productive professor in higher education? What would it feel like to have more peace and productivity? To have nothing fall through the cracks? The Productive Online and Offline Professor is written for today’s busy higher education professional. Through an exploration of what it means to make work meaningful, this book offers practical strategies and tips to support higher education professionals in efficiently managing and effectively using a wide range of technologies and productivity tools.Higher education instructors will find this guide helps them to fulfill their teaching roles with excellence and to build engaging relationships with students while also successfully managing other priorities in their professional and personal lives.The Productive Online and Offline Professor assists those who teach online and blended courses with managing their personal productivity. Faculty are often expected to provide support and feedback to learners outside of normal work hours in non traditional classes. Programs that are designed with more asynchronous content may cause faculty to perceive that it is difficult to ever press the “off button” on their teaching. The author offers guidance and suggests software tools for streamlining communication and productivity that enable faculty to better balance their lives while giving rich feedback to students.Part 1 addresses the challenges in defining productivity and presents a working definition for the text.Part 2 describes the ability to communicate using both synchronous and asynchronous methods, along with ways of enriching such communication.Part 3 describes methods for finding, curating, and sharing relevant knowledge both within one’s courses and to a broader personal learning network (PLN).Part 4 examines specific tools for navigating the unique challenges of productivity while teaching online. It includes ways to grade more productively while still providing rich feedback to students.Part 5 shares techniques for keeping one’s course materials current and relevant in the most efficient ways possible.The Productive Online and Offline Professor is a practical guide for how to provide high quality online classes to diverse students. This book shares specific technology and other tools that may be used in charting a course toward greater productivity. It is intended to be a professional resource for fulfilling our roles with excellence and joy, while managing other priorities in our personal and professional lives.
This book fundamentally challenges the way in which PhDs are currently pursued. It applies lean methodologies – which have been embraced by start-ups – to the doctoral research process. It explains how to apply techniques such as the minimal viable product (MVP) approach, rapid prototyping and pivoting to each stage, from choosing a topic to seeking feedback, in order to save time, make the process more efficient and demonstrate impact. Chapters are enriched with insights from PhD researchers, practical guidance on going lean and a wealth of empirical data which supports this new approach to postgraduate research. This inspiring text is a must-read for prospective and current PhD students who wish to accelerate their careers in academia and beyond.
There is a pervasive sense of incessant acceleration in the academic world. This book puts the temporal ordering of academic life under the microscope, and showcases the means of yielding a better understanding of how time and temporality act both as instruments of power and vulnerability within the academic space.
