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Higher Education Administration

Academic Labor: Research and Artistry

Journal

2022

Articles 1 - 1 of 1

Full-Text Articles in Education

From “Spring Break” To “Reading Days”: Contingency, Relations Of Power, And Positionalities In Experiences Of Overwork During Academic Breaks, Kelli R. Lycke Martin, Ann Shivers-Mcnair Mar 2022

From “Spring Break” To “Reading Days”: Contingency, Relations Of Power, And Positionalities In Experiences Of Overwork During Academic Breaks, Kelli R. Lycke Martin, Ann Shivers-Mcnair

Academic Labor: Research and Artistry

In this article, the authors analyze the impacts of their university eliminating Spring Break and replacing it with intermittent Reading Days during the Covid-19 pandemic. With particular attention to contingency, relations of power, and positionalities, they offer narratives of their lived experiences with Reading Days as a graduate student (Author 1) and as a pre-tenure faculty member (Author 2). They also offer analysis of the public conversations surrounding the institutional decision. The article addresses how the particularities of the narratives are symptomatic of a culture of overwork that predates and continues beyond the moment in time and place of the …