Education Commons^™

Unjust Universities: Part Ii, Zachary S. Ritter, Reshmi Dutt-Ballerstadt

Faculty Publications

Dr. Zachary S. Ritter and Dr. Reshmi Dutt-Ballerstadt explore the challenges that faculty diversity workers face in institutions that are suffering from toxic whiteness.

This essay originally appeared as part of Conditionally Accepted, a career advice blog for Inside Higher Ed providing news, information, personal stories, and resources for scholars who are, at best, conditionally accepted in academe. Conditionally Accepted is an anti-racist, pro-feminist, pro-queer, anti-transphobic, anti-fatphobic, anti-ableist, anti-ageist, anti-classist, and anti-xenophobic online community.

Unjust Universities, Zachary S. Ritter, Reshmi Dutt-Ballerstadt

Faculty Publications

Dr. Zachary S. Ritter and Dr. Reshmi Dutt-Ballerstadt highlight some red flags related to people's experiences working in institutions that are suffering from toxic whiteness.

This essay originally appeared as part of Conditionally Accepted, a career advice blog for Inside Higher Ed providing news, information, personal stories, and resources for scholars who are, at best, conditionally accepted in academe. Conditionally Accepted is an anti-racist, pro-feminist, pro-queer, anti-transphobic, anti-fatphobic, anti-ableist, anti-ageist, anti-classist, and anti-xenophobic online community.

Implicit Bias Training For Woke Faculty, Reshmi Dutt-Ballerstadt

Faculty Publications

Dr. Reshmi Dutt-Ballerstadt pens a satirical memo from higher education administrators to faculty regarding implicit bias training.

This essay originally appeared as part of Conditionally Accepted, a career advice blog for Inside Higher Ed providing news, information, personal stories, and resources for scholars who are, at best, conditionally accepted in academe. Conditionally Accepted is an anti-racist, pro-feminist, pro-queer, anti-transphobic, anti-fatphobic, anti-ableist, anti-ageist, anti-classist, and anti-xenophobic online community.

In Our Own Words: Institutional Betrayals, Reshmi Dutt-Ballerstadt

Faculty Publications

When Dr. Reshmi Dutt-Ballerstadt, professor of English at Linfield College, asked a large group of underrepresented faculty members why they left their higher education institutions, they told her the real reasons for their departures — those that climate surveys don't capture.

This essay originally appeared as part of Conditionally Accepted, a career advice blog for Inside Higher Ed providing news, information, personal stories, and resources for scholars who are, at best, conditionally accepted in academe. Conditionally Accepted is an anti-racist, pro-feminist, pro-queer, anti-transphobic, anti-fatphobic, anti-ableist, anti-ageist, anti-classist, and anti-xenophobic online community.

Academic Prioritization Or Killing The Liberal Arts?, Reshmi Dutt-Ballerstadt

Faculty Publications

Dr. Reshmi Dutt-Ballerstadt, professor of English at Linfield College, laments the downsizing of liberal arts and humanities programs and departments by college administrators bent on promoting more "job-oriented" disciplines.

This essay originally appeared as part of Conditionally Accepted, a career advice blog for Inside Higher Ed providing news, information, personal stories, and resources for scholars who are, at best, conditionally accepted in academe. Conditionally Accepted is an anti-racist, pro-feminist, pro-queer, anti-transphobic, anti-fatphobic, anti-ableist, anti-ageist, anti-classist, and anti-xenophobic online community.

In The Name Of Merit: Racial Violence In The Academy, Reshmi Dutt-Ballerstadt

Faculty Publications

Racial violence in the academy is enacted upon faculty of color, particularly women, in multiple disciplines. This essay attempts to both expose and suggest that everyday systemic racism has become a pervasive and normalizing feature within disciplines that continue to privilege white and Eurocentric forms of knowledge-making while devaluing others. Furthermore, attempts to challenge such supremacies are immediately countered by calls and charges of incivility. This is an essay about the costs of unmasking norms of civility as it bears upon constructions of both whiteness and meritocracy.

Challenging Calls For Civility, Reshmi Dutt-Ballerstadt

Faculty Publications

In conjunction with her article "When Free Speech Disrupts Diversity Initiatives: What We Value and What We Do Not," Reshmi Dutt-Ballerstadt writes about civility codes and free speech for Academe Blog.

Are You Supporting White Supremacy?, Reshmi Dutt-Ballerstadt

Faculty Publications

Dr. Reshmi Dutt-Ballerstadt, professor of English at Linfield College, provides an opinion piece in the form of a checklist of 15 “troubles” she has identified to help others in academe recognize (un)conscious contributions to white supremacy.

This essay originally appeared as part of Conditionally Accepted, a career advice blog for Inside Higher Ed providing news, information, personal stories, and resources for scholars who are, at best, conditionally accepted in academe. Conditionally Accepted is an anti-racist, pro-feminist, pro-queer, anti-transphobic, anti-fatphobic, anti-ableist, anti-ageist, anti-classist, and anti-xenophobic online community.

When Free Speech Disrupts Diversity Initiatives: What We Value And What We Do Not, Reshmi Dutt-Ballerstadt

Faculty Publications

In this essay, I argue that the debate on free speech as pushed by the conservative right is a strategic apparatus to undermine the various diversity initiatives on college and university campuses. While supporters of the right wing extremists around the globe have pushed for various modes of exclusions (social, racial, ethnic, cultural, religious and sexual), here in the United States, such exclusions are most evident in the collapse of academic freedom and the rise of civility codes as students and educators use the platform of free speech to promote various forms of injustices and exclusions. Our neoliberal college and …

From Big Ag To Campus Cafeterias: Intersections Of Food-Supply Networks As Technical Communication Pedagogy, Jessie Lynn Richards, Joshua Lenart, David Sumner, Douglas Christensen

Faculty Publications

This article presents a pedagogical approach to teaching technical and professional writing with an eye toward cultivating awareness and generating informed research among undergraduate students about food production and its various, intricate networks between Big Ag and campus cafeterias. Our pedagogy, influenced by interdisciplinary content, is designed to teach students to differentiate between food processes—such as production versus distribution and consumption—by viewing these networks as communicative practices rather than as inevitable chains or simple functions of one another. Our approach encourages students to locate and analyze differences between interdependent, but seemingly disparate pathways and to make visible communicative intersections that …

Oregon Reading Instructional Materials And Practices Statewide Survey Executive Summary, Sue Lenski, Dot Mcelhone, Mindy Legard Larson, Maika Yeigh, Carol Lauritzen, Amanda Villagómez, Dennis Davis, Marie Lejeune, Melanie Landon-Hays

Faculty Publications

This study reports the results of a survey of a representative sample of 1,206 K-6 classroom and 7-12 English Language Arts teachers in Oregon to learn 1) what reading instructional materials are currently being used, 2) what reading instructional materials teachers would prefer, 3) what reading instructional materials teachers wanted to have included on the state approved materials list, and 4) what instructional practices teachers use. Results indicated that in grades K-6 basal/core reading programs were the predominant material in use, but that these teachers preferred to use trade books. The majority of grades 7-12 English Language Arts teachers reported …

The Value Of Public Philosophy To Philosophers, Massimo Pigliucci, Leonard Finkelman

Faculty Publications

Philosophy has been a public endeavor since its origins in ancient Greece, India, and China. However, recent years have seen the development of a new type of public philosophy conducted by both academics and nonprofessionals. The new public philosophy manifests itself in a range of modalities, from the publication of magazines and books for the general public to a variety of initiatives that exploit the power and flexibility of social networks and new media. In this paper we examine the phenomenon of public philosophy in its several facets, and investigate whether and in what sense it is itself a mix …

Inward, Outward, Onward: Autoethnography Of A Dissertation In (Qualitative) Transitional Space, Genevieve Harris

Faculty Publications

This article presents the connection of a personal dissertation process to the wider world of qualitative research. Using the concept of transitional space as a metaphor, the author chronicles her theoretical transition from critical race theory to poststructural theory to emerging questions about material feminism. This transition is mapped to three major qualitative research moments within the field: modernist, crisis of representation, and the future. Autoethnography and found text are used to present the micro and macro telling of the dissertation process. White racial identity development among Christian teacher educators at a religious university was the original dissertation focus. Ethical …

Trying On—Being In—Becoming: Four Women’S Journey(S) In Feminist Poststructural Theory, Donna Kalmbach Phillips, Gennie Harris, Mindy Legard Larson, Karen Higgins

Faculty Publications

This is the narrative of four women in academia spanning a ten-year relational journey. As a performance collaborative autoethnography, it explores and presents theories of subjectivity and transitional space. Through journals, emails, and dialogue we are trying on, being in, and becoming feminist poststructural thinkers/inquirers/teacher educators. In our work, we explore: How has theory changed our subjectivity, lived experiences and relationships, and moved us from comfortable spaces of knowing to uncomfortable places of becoming? In a series of poetry and performance narratives, we chart our own linked journey(s) in pursuing these questions. As autoethnographers, we grapple with meanings …

Embodied Discourses Of Literacy In The Lives Of Two Preservice Teachers, Donna Kalmbach Phillips, Mindy Legard Larson

Faculty Publications

This study examines the emerging teacher literacy identities of Ian and A.J., two preservice teachers in a graduate teacher education program in the United States. Using a poststructural feminisms theoretical framework, the study illustrates the embodiment of literacy pedagogy discourses in relation to the literacy courses’ discourse of comprehensive literacy and the literacy biographical discourses of Ian and A.J. The results of this study indicate the need to deconstruct how the discourse of comprehensive literacy limits how we, as literacy teacher educators, position, hear and respond to our preservice teachers and suggests the need for differentiation in our teacher education …

Preservice Literacy Teachers In Transition: Identity As Subjectivity, Mindy Legard Larson

Faculty Publications

This research addresses the complexities of identity development of elementary and middle school preservice literacy teachers during their teacher education program using a poststructural feminist theoretical lens. This research investigated two questions: 1) How do preservice teachers develop their identity as teachers of literacy in the midst of authoritative discourses? 2) What kinds of strategies and discourses do preservice literacy teachers use to negotiate the competing discourses of literacy during student teaching? The results indicated that the identities of the preservice literacy teachers were in transition during their teacher education program and authoritative discourses were at work constituting their subjectivities …