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Sex, Stigma, and Labor Organizing: Stories from the Field
University of Washington Tacoma 11/02/2022
 

Disciplines in the academy and the obsession that civil society has with family make us think these are separate entities. In lived experience, though, they overlap. To demonstrate this point, I give examples that include steelworkers, truckers, and adjunct professors. I then talk about the implications for labor organizing and, consequently, for widespread change and revolution.

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Feminist Research Methods
Women’s and Gender Studies 4010-01
Saint Louis University Fall 2019
 
Research is the foundation of academic knowledge and of much knowledge produced outside of the academy in think tanks, non-profit organizations, social service agencies, labor unions. corporations, and many other venues of economic and social activity. Informed by theory, and shaped by specific methods, research frames problems, contributes to policymaking, and evaluates the effectiveness of policies and programs.  This course examines the different ways in which research is conducted both inside and outside the academy, and examines the reasons for these differences and the ways in which they contribute to or hamper feminist goals.
"Gen/Sex Class Investigates Precarity in Professors’ Jobs”
By Paloma Paez-Coombe and Theodora Rodine
Across the country, job stability for professors has become increasingly hard to find. Tenured positions, which arose in the late 1800s as a way to protect faculty’s freedom of speech, are costly to institutions because they provide long-term stability and higher salaries, and so are quickly disappearing. They are being replaced by adjunct or contingent positions, in which faculty are hired and paid either by the course, or just for a year or two at a time. Contingent faculty, which now represent a large majority, often have to travel between multiple institutions for work and are paid much less than their tenured peers. As this national problem increases, understanding the way race, gender, and sexuality impact this increasingly unstable and underpaid workforce is an important way of framing this issue.
COOL CLASSES: “Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Gender”
by Rebecca Raber
This class aims to give Bi-Co students a chance to explore the intersection of gender, sexuality, race, class, religion, and embodiment in our time. Our focus is principally on the USA, though we make some forays into international conversations. Readings are drawn from a smattering of the most recent developments in academic research and theory, as well as from science fiction, popular culture, and new media. We work to bring the personal into the classroom, and to take what we learn out into the world. For example, we travelled to Bethlehem, Pa., to tour a steel mill museum under the guidance of a retired steelworker...
COOL CLASSES: “Oral History and Activism”
by Rebecca Raber
This course weaves together methodological and ethical conversations about oral history, guest speakers, and activist fieldwork. After doing short personal oral histories, the class moved onto a collaborative final project. Since oral history can bring unheard voices and perspectives into the archive, we decided to work as locally as possible, learning about invisible workers that make our own college experience possible. We tossed around various plans about how to accomplish this goal, but since students attended all three Colleges in the Tri-Co, we floundered. Then...
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