life

Nursing taught me something about the professoriate and myself

by

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

Revisiting self-care as a political act

by

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