From climate disaster to the specter of nuclear annihilation to the rise of fascism and destruction of democracy to the advent of AI and other potentially destructive technologies, a number of material threats are matched by symbolic threats that undermine the capacities of people to respond. The war on public and critical education and the public…

In 2021, the Florida Legislature passed House Bill 233. The bill has three provisions: 1) it mandates an "intellectual viewpoint diversity" survey that asks students, faculty, and other employees at Florida's public colleges and universities to report on their levels of comfort to express their ideological and political opinions; 2) it…

This article argues that it is only possible to teach without dread today if one does not value academic freedom. For these people, it is perfectly acceptable to be told what course they will teach, the content of those courses, and the modality of instruction. If one does not care about such things, then neoliberal academe with regard to teaching…

With the rise of authoritarian politics across the globe, echoes of a fascist past are with us once again signaling a looming and dangerous threat to education and democracy. This essay argues that is it crucial to engage fascism both as a language of white supremacy and a politics of disconnection. If fascism is to be addressed both politically…

In this paper, I explore the challenge and promise of developing an anti-racist and anti-colonial curriculum and pedagogy in a time of racialized dread. Drawing on my experience teaching a 10-week course on racial justice, delivered in the Korean language, to 1st generation Korean American seniors in the Southern United States. I explore how the…

The purpose of this paper is to suggest that the concept of "fugitive pedagogies of dread" contributes to affective, ontological and political reorientations of dread in teaching and learning for/about the future. To do so, the paper puts in conversation the concepts of "fugitivity" (from Black liberatory practices),…

This onto-epistemic experimental essay is a modest attempt to imagine another world yet to come in a time of what David Theo Goldberg calls "dread." To interrogate the unnamable feeling/texture the author's body wants to be free from, memories of the author, an…

Accelerating digitization, algorithmic computation, artificial intelligence, and machine learning, along with the increasing automation of work, communication, and everyday life, are central to critical studies of technology and political economy, as well as to public discourse concerning technology's role in creating futures. Ongoing…

Some Black histories are absolutely dreadful. When we consider enslavement, racial violence, the terrors in the lynching of Emmett Till, the destruction of Tulsa during the Race Massacre, and the intergenerational traumas these events left behind, the residues of dread are made visible. Black histories are in a contentious social-political moment…

Recognizing that the American right, and specifically the Christian right, has achieved disproportionate power over shaping the landscape of education policy and political culture, the following engages in a twofold analysis of schooling in the United States. We consider the structural transformations that are being enacted as a result of the…

The contemporary landscape of dread in living and teaching demands a creative and experimental form of investigation that can trace the affective contours of the present and uncover the obscure openings for an oppositional imagination. In a series of interlinked excurses, this essay articulates a poetic probing of the nexus of slow fascism and…

This article argues that hope is not an adequate affective response to dread. Indeed, hope and dread are more closely aligned than either critical or postcritical forms of educational philosophy would like to admit. The article proposes a shift from hope to joy as an under appreciated educational affect. To make this claim, the author pivots to…

This article provides an account of the undermining of collegial governance at the University of Alberta in relation to the restructuring of the university in 2020 by the senior administration and board on advice provided by the Australian consultancy firm, the Nous Group. The current president of the university has publicly promoted the…

This article introduces the special issue of "REPCS" dedicated to the analysis of the restructuring of higher education in Alberta, Canada. It describes the acceleration of the processes of commodification of education and research and the corporatization of institutional governance under the government that took office in April 2019.…

Universities and management consultants are locked in a "danse macabre." We turn to the vampire genre to elaborate on the relationship of consulting companies to the university sector, focusing on the University of Alberta in Canada and Monash University in Australia. We are academics with long experience of the consequences of change…