Academic Aunties
By Ethel Tungohan
Academic AuntiesMar 31, 2021
After Hours
On this extended year-end episode, Dr. Rita Dhamoon, Assistant Professor of Political Science at the University of Victoria, and Dr. Nisha Nath (@nnath), Assistant Professor in the Centre for Interdisciplinary Studies at Athabasca University grab a few drinks with Dr. Ethel Tungohan to talk about remembering who you are outside of the academy, rebuilding your strength, and how maybe it's the institution that has to get it's shit together.
Get in touch with Academic Aunties on Twitter at @AcademicAuntie or by e-mail at podcast@academicaunties.com. Need some auntie wisdom? Send an #AskAnAcademicAuntie question to academicaunties.com/ask.
Anatomy of Academic Advice
Oh advice. It seems like you can’t turn a corner without someone telling you how you’re professor-ing or grad schooling wrong. Sometimes it’s a colleague. Sometimes it’s a random person on social media. Sometimes it’s sought for, but usually it’s unsolicited.
On this episode, we’re breaking down academic advice. What makes for good advice? And why is bad advice...so bad? And why is it that so much academic advice assumes that we’re all cis, het, white guys? Joining us to talk about good academic advice, bad academic advice, shadow advising, and the expectations of "academic mommy" and "academic daddy" are Dr. Shanti Fernando (@ShantiFernando), Associate Professor of Political Science at Ontario Tech University, and Dr. Sule Tomkinson (@sule_tomkinson), Associate Professor at the Department of Political Science at Université Laval and Director of Le Centre d’analyse des politiques publiques.
Get in touch with Academic Aunties on Twitter at @AcademicAuntie or by e-mail at podcast@academicaunties.com. Need some auntie wisdom? Send an #AskAnAcademicAuntie question to academicaunties.com/ask.
Related Links
Promoting the value of unofficial academic mentorship
(https://www.natureindex.com/news-blog/promoting-the-value-of-unofficial-shadow-academic-mentorship)
Common pieces of academic advice from listeners
(https://twitter.com/AcademicAuntie/status/1461027530819911680)
#AskAnAcademicAuntie - Now Problems, Later Problems
This is #AskAnAcademicAuntie, our bonus mini-episodes where we take your questions and try to impart a little auntie wisdom. Have a question? Send a voice message to #AskAnAcademicAuntie at academicaunties.com/ask, tweet us at @AcademicAuntie, or send us an e-mail at podcast@academicaunties.com.
On this episode, a listener asks "how do you maintain a sense of peace in the face of such enormous stress?" Joining us to answer this question is Jennifer Chouinard (@JenniferChouina), a PhD student in Public Policy at the University of Regina.
Hierarchies of S**t
We talk a lot about toxic work environments and strategies of survival. But there are moments when you just have to leave. And that is what today’s episode is about.
It is sometimes hard to figure out when to stay or when to go. A lot of us are trapped. A lot of us are in situations where we know that we’re being bullied, that we’re being set up to fail, that we’re not valued. But even as we know this viscerally, we second guess ourselves. “If it’s bad here, how can I guarantee that it won’t be worse somewhere else?” we ask. We end up gaslighting ourselves.
On this episode, Dr. Jo Davis-McElligatt (@jcdmce), Assistant Professor of Black Literary & Cultural Studies at the University of North Texas, and Dr. Rita Shah (@TheRitaPhD), Associate Professor of Criminology at Eastern Michigan University, talk about wading through the hierarchies of s**t in academia, and tell us how and why they made the decision to leave, the importance of ultimately prioritizing and loving ourselves.
Get in touch with Academic Aunties on Twitter at @AcademicAuntie or by e-mail at podcast@academicaunties.com. Need some auntie wisdom? Send an #AskAnAcademicAuntie question to academicaunties.com/ask.
Related Links
Warning Signs That You and Your Campus Are a Bad Fit
By Manya Whitaker
https://www.chronicle.com/article/warning-signs-that-you-and-your-campus-are-a-bad-fit/
Academic Jobs
In this episode, we are talking about the academic job market! We challenge the notion that academia is meritocratic. We highlight how fraught applying for academics job can be for many marginalized folks, especially those who are first-gen, working-class, racialized, and queer. We wonder whether typical job market advice, such as moving anywhere there is a job and prioritizing top schools (R1 schools for Americans) over other schools makes sense. And we also address ways to try to take back agency in a fundamentally messed up and inequitable structure.
Joining us today is Dr. Mary Anne S. Mendoza (@MaryAnneSMM), Assistant Professor of Political Science at CalState Pomona, and Dr. Robert Diaz, Associate Professor in the Women & Gender Studies Institute at the University of Toronto.
Get in touch with Academic Aunties on Twitter at @AcademicAuntie or by e-mail at podcast@academicaunties.com. Need some auntie wisdom? Send an #AskAnAcademicAuntie question to academicaunties.com/ask.
Related Links
Have they thought about what they’re asking?: the inequity of job applications
By Alana Cattapan
(https://hookandeye.ca/2017/03/16/guest-post-have-they-thought-about-what-theyre-asking-the-inequity-of-job-applications/)
The academic job market is a nightmare. Here’s one way to fix it
By Colin Dickey
(https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2019/04/15/job-market-academics-is-nightmare-heres-one-way-fix-it/)
Even ‘Valid’ Student Evaluations Are ‘Unfair'
By Colleen Flaherty
(https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2020/02/27/study-student-evaluations-teaching-are-deeply-flawed)
The Hidden Challenges for Successful First-Generation Ph.D.s
By Bailey B. Smolarek
(https://www.insidehighered.com/advice/2019/10/09/first-generation-phd-student-describes-her-struggles-opinion)
Transcript
Transcript will be posted approximately one week after the episode launches at academicaunties.com.
#AskAnAcademicAuntie - Gratitude and Gifts
This is #AskAnAcademicAuntie, our bonus mini-episodes where we take your questions and try to impart a little auntie wisdom. Have a question? Send a voice message to #AskAnAcademicAuntie at academicaunties.com/ask, tweet us at @AcademicAuntie, or send us an e-mail at podcast@academicaunties.com.
On this episode, an anonymous listener asks: “How do I pay my gratitude to my supervisor who has been my constant source of support. She has gone above and beyond to help me survive in graduate school, and continues to support me. Any ideas on how I can appropriately show my gratitude to her? I say and write thank you a lot, but I feel it's not enough. I want to give her a small material gift, but I don't want to make her feel uncomfortable as it can be considered inappropriate to give gifts to our supervisors. Any suggestions of this would be very helpful. Thank you."
Joining us to answer this question is Dr. Tobin LeBlanc Haley (@tobinatrix), an Assistant Professor of Sociology at X University in Toronto.
The Chair
Season 2 premiere! We take a deep dive into The Chair, the new Netflix series starring Sandra Oh about the first woman of colour chair of the English department at the fictional Pembrooke University. Everyone (or at least all academics!) are talking about this new show, created by Amanda Peat and Annie Julia Wyman, and we have lots of thoughts, from the moments that resonated with us to why many are finding the show a bit triggering.
Joining us are Jamie Chai Yun Liew (@thechaiyun), an Associate Professor and Director of the University of Ottawa Institute of Feminist and Gender Studies, and Kimberly McKee (@mckeekee), past Director of the Kutsche Office of Local History and an Associate Professor in the Integrative, Religious, and Intercultural Studies Department at Grand Valley State University.
Get in touch with us at www.academicaunties.com and follow us on Twitter at @AcademicAuntie.
Related Links
- Migrant Conversations Podcast, hosted by Jamie Liew (https://migration-conversations.simplecast.com) Reflections from Dr. McKee on The Chair's depictions of adoptions (https://twitter.com/mckeekee/status/1430337652339978244)
- Disrupting Kinship: Transnational Politics of Korean Adoption in the United States, by Kimberly McKee (https://www.press.uillinois.edu/books/catalog/83ywp5cx9780252042287.html)
- The Chair Netflix Official Site (https://www.netflix.com/ca/title/81206259)
Transcript
Visit academicaunties.com for the transcript.
#AskAnAcademicAuntie - Playing the Game
On this #AskAnAcademicAuntie bonus episode of Academic Aunties, Dr. Shaista Patel joins host Dr. Ethel Tungohan to talk about "playing the game" in academia in order to get out and find a place actually respects us.
Do you have a question? Message us on Twitter at @AcademicAuntie or send us an email to podcast@academicaunties.com. We’d love to hear from you!
#AskAnAcademicAuntie - Finding Your Voice
Do you have a question? Message us on Twitter at @AcademicAuntie or send us an email to podcast@academicaunties.com. We’d love to hear from you!
Mentioned in this Episode:
- Academic Ableism: Disability and Higher Education by Jay Timothy Dolmage (https://www.press.umich.edu/9708722/academic_ableism)
Searching for Joy
(Season finale) This was supposed to be a light episode. It's hot, it's been a long year of COVID and we all need a break. But it seems as though we're never given a chance to just be. From the fatal Islamaphobic attacks against a family in London, Ontario to the discovery of hundreds of unmarked graves of Indigenous children at Canada's residential schools to the anti-Asian shootings in Atlanta to police brutality against the Black community - white supremacy never lets up, does it? How can we keep working as though all is normal when we keep feeling like we're constantly under attack? In this episode, we talk with Dr. Shaista Patel, Assistant Professor of Critical Muslim Studies at UC San Diego, and Krittika Ghosh, Executive Director of the Asian/Pacific Islander (A/PI) Domestic Violence Resource Project about searching for joy amidst trauma, the importance of celebrating friendship and communites of care, and the generative possiblities of #TrashyProfSummer.
Get in touch with us at www.academicaunties.com and follow us on Twitter at @AcademicAuntie.
Related LinksAs A Muslim, I Face Islamophobia. As An Immigrant, I’ve Failed Indigenous People by Fatima Syed
TranscriptA transcript of this episode will be posted approximately one week after release.
Wait, was that racist?
This is probably my most personal podcast of this series. I'm chatting with my good friends, Dr. Jessica Soedirgo, Assistant Professor of Political Science at the University of Amsterdam and Dr. Hae Yeon Choo, Associate Professor of Sociology at the University of Toronto, about our assorted encounters with anti-Asian racism.
From seemingly benign encounters that show how the academy doesn't actually see us as belonging—like mixing up Asian colleagues, or mistaking us for students, or the constant compliments about our English—to actual harmful moments that we still need to heal from, one of the challenges of giving voice to anti-Asian racism is that it oftentimes feels like it barely registers. Yet, Asians in the academy experience racism everyday, while struggling with the acute rise of anti-Asian sentiments, which has been amplified since the start of the pandemic. My hometown of Vancouver was even named by Bloomberg as the 'Asian hate crime capital' of North America. And it has also only been two months since the Atlanta shootings, where a man with a self-proclaimed Asian fetish murdered eight people including six Asian women.
On this episode, we talk about dealing with anti-Asian racism when institutions barely acknowledge its reality and fighting against insidious, everyday forms of microaggression.
If you want to get involved in combatting anti-Asian racism, check out Anti-Asian Racism Undone, presented by Scholar's Strike Canada on May 29 and 30, 2021. Visit www.scholarstrikecanada.ca for more information.
Get in touch with us at www.academicaunties.com and follow us on Twitter at @AcademicAuntie.
Related and Mentioned in this Episode- Addressing Anti-Asian Racism in the University by Hae Yeon Choo and Robert Diaz
- ‘Too Asian?’ On racism, paradox and ethno-nationalism by Roland Coloma
- Racist, Sexist Boy by The Linda Lindas
A transcript of the episode will be posted approximately one week after the episode drops at academicaunties.com.
Subversives in the Academy
For many women of colour, life in academia feels like a constant fight. As Dr. Rita Dhamoon writes, racism is a workload issue. So, when do we sit down and when do we fight back? And how do we keep fighting in the face of such intractible systemic hostility? In this episode of Academic Aunties, we talk to Dr. Debra Thompson (Associate Professor of Political Science and Canada Research Chair in Racial Inequality in Democratic Societies at McGill University) about the necessity of the fight, the value of stealing your time back, how creating subversives can drive change, and the importance of armour to survive the neoliberal academy.
Follow us on Twitter at @AcademicAuntie.
Mentioned in this Episode and Related Resources:- The Abolition of White Democracy by Joel Olson
- The Undercommons: Fugitive Planning & Black Study by Fred Moten and Stefano Harney
- Racism as a Workload and Bargaining Issue by Rita Dhamoon article
- Socioeconomic Roots of Academic Faculty by Allison Morgan, Aaron Clauset, Daniel Larremore, Nicholas LaBerge and Mirta Galesic
- "CPSA" = Canadian Political Science Association Annual Conference
- "REP" = Race, Ethnicity and Politcs
Visit academicaunties.com for more information. A transcript of this episode will be available approximately one week after release.
A-holes in the Academy
Why are there so many in academia? Does the institution attract them or does the institution make them? What is institutional gaslighting? And how do we care for each other in this often toxic space? In this episode, we chat with academic aunties, Dr. Nisha Nath, an Assistant Professor of Equity Studies at Athabasca University, and Dr. Mariam Georgis, a SSHRC Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the University of Manitoba about coping with exclusionary academic norms, the messages that the neoliberal academy sends that breeds toxic behaviour, and the value of checking in.
Mentioned in this Episode:
- "I’m concerned for your academic career if you talk about this publicly" by Erica Violet Lee
- "What researchers think about the culture they work in" by Wellcome Foundation
Introducing Academic Aunties (Trailer)
Academia. A-CAAAHHH---DEEEMM--AIYA! ACA-DEEM-YAAHH. It is a site of exclusion. For those of us who are first-generation, who are racialized, who are women, and who inhabit social locations that are traditionally unrepresented in this space, academia is full of landmines. This is why we need academic aunties. This podcast will talk about how to navigate this treacherous world and maybe even plant seeds for the beginnings of structural transformation. Come listen to Auntie Ethel and her friends. Coming soon to a podcast app near you!