agency

Nursing taught me something about the professoriate and myself

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Today, I was reading about how the covid-19 pandemic has burned out and traumatized hospital nurses. I caught myself unexpectedly nodding along in recognition, though I’m not a nurse. I’m a professor. Nurses have faced more dramatic, more dire conditions than I have. Yet the demands from their employers and their patients were startling familiar. … Read more

Raising money as a form of protest

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I’m cheerleading for the small public library in South Ryegate, Vermont, which needs $5000 to stay open this year, 2023. I stumbled across the library’s plight here. Increasingly, right-wingers, white Christian nationalists, and Republican officeholders are attacking institutions of learning and education, particularly those supported with public funds. This is part of a concerted effort … Read more

Revisiting self-care as a political act

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I hate the term “self-care.” It is always sounds too woo-woo to me. It carries connotations of superficiality, summoning up the image of people relying on scented candles to handle oppression, injustice, subordination. Because the phrase has been hijacked by “influencers” and by marketers, it can seem that self-care is not-politics, that it requires inattention … Read more