Culture is not a predetermined, static, bounded unit. Both its boundaries and what is considered cultural difference are constructed through social processes. Ray McDermott and Herve Varenne (1995) argue that only certain differences are noticed, usually according to what is regarded as meaningful difference in one's own society. For example,…

In a previous article discussing the politics of language in Australian Indigenous Studies teaching and learning contexts, the author and her colleague stated their objective in writing that article was to ''instill'' a sense of the importance of the political nature of language to their student body (McGloin and Carlson 2013).…

In the winter of 2010, as the professor of an introductory Gender Studies course in a Canadian university, author Ilya Parkins was involved in a community service learning project centered on the memorialization of women murdered in her university's local community. In this article, Parkins considers what limited this project, which was so…

According to the authors, in 2008 and 2009 a coalition of faculty, anchored by Women's Studies, challenged a proposal to bring United States Army Reserve Officers Training Corps (ROTC) courses onto their urban public university campus. This proposal, initially approved by the faculty governance advisory committee on academic affairs, was…

Much has been written recently on the increased pace of scholarly life and its ill effects. More generally, work intensification has been identified as a widespread malaise in contemporary workplaces, and academia is no exception. In this article the authors make the argument that the kind of higher order thinking that is a critical part of the…

As the attention to multiraciality has grown among Millennial college students, an emerging body of literature on multiraciality has developed in the area of student affairs education; it is this literature that is the focus of this analysis. The author's choice to concentrate on student affairs education discourse is two-fold. First, critical…

The politics of body size has been the topic of intriguing feminist work. Although in the author's view this issue is still undertheorized, the author has long sought for a way to bring what "does" exist in the literature into her academic activities. The opportunity arose when, as a graduate student at the University of Michigan in 2001, she…

In this article, the author focuses specifically on her teacher-body and its place in various dynamics of projection in the classroom in order to discuss how drawing on queer performativity can be a critical resource in teaching about normativity and otherness. Queer theory has challenged individuals to think more critically about their reliance…

In 1996, Stuart Hall gave a famous lecture entitled "Race: The Floating Signifier." In that lecture, Hall argued against an ontology of race that linked racial identification to any other human characteristic. Undertaking a broad survey of the history of the concept of race, Hall highlighted how the meaning of the signifiers of racial identity…

Corporatization refers not only to the subordination of academic programs to outside business interest, but also to the more troubling intrusion of corporate forms of governance and market criteria of performance into the institution as a whole. In this paper, the author wants to show how this corporatization affects the substance, structure and…

A thesis concocted by right-wing ideological watchdogs and advanced with elevated urgency in the wake September 11, 2001, claims that America's college and university students are hostage to a leftist, "moral-relativist" and multiculturalist professoriat. To restore right-thinking to college campuses, the argument continues, academic authority…

Discusses the reaction of feminist students at Vanderbilt University (Tennessee) to a photograph, "Heaven and Hell" (A. Serrano), on the cover of the book "Arresting Images: Impolitic Art and Uncivil Actions" (S. Dubin). Their position that the photograph promotes violence toward women is one interpretation; another is that it is a powerful…

Discusses "Strengthening Collegiate Education in Community Colleges" (J. S. Eaton) and "The Contradictory College" (K. J. Dougherty), two conflicting perspectives on community colleges' roles. Argues that both fail to consider the changing needs of today's diverse students. Multiculturalism and commitment to education as democratic practice…