Looking Up: Imagining Tangible Futures and Active Academia

Looking up is often a difficult task, particularly in graduate school. While the inevitable questions at holiday parties of “What do you want to do when you’re done?” impart their reliable dose of existential dread, taking classes and writing a dissertation make it easy to keep your head down.

Nursing Home Residents, Transfer Trauma or Relocation Stress Syndrome

We know that moving, even if it is a positive choice, can be a cause of stress and even depression and grief for any person. When symptoms like these exist, it may be referred to as transfer trauma or relocation stress syndrome (RSS).

Honoring Judy Heumann, Disability Rights Activist (1947-2023)

It is with heavy hearts that we learn of the passing of Judith "Judy" Heumann -- widely regarded as "the mother" of the disability rights movement. 

Emancipatory Sciences Lab Supports UC Academic Workers Negotiations

We are writing as scholars who have made the University of California a home, and as people with a vested interest in its future and mission to educate and train tomorrow’s leaders. Cutting edge research, insightful teaching, and career development is and always should be the primary focus of the...

Confronting Canon and Empire

In reflecting on the American literary canon, Toni Morrison asserts: “Canon building is empire building. Canon defense is national defense. Canon debate, whatever the terrain, nature, and range… is the clash of cultures. And all of the interests are vested.” 

What Does the Writer Owe the Reader?

Up until my third year of doctoral studies, I’ve mostly considered how to read. But as we progress through our studies and head out into the wild, academic world, the task we’ll all increasingly confront is how to write. What do we want to say, and how do we want to say it?

Embodied Experiences Navigating Harmful Literature

Potential sensitive/heavy topics: discussion of mental health, quotation regarding people experiencing mental health conditions.

Institutions of Higher Learning Must Do More

The first time I quoted Karl Marx was when I was in my Principles of Sociology class at Fresno City College. I was writing a paper on my experience with alienation in the many parts of my life.

Whose Class is it, Anyways?

“Decolonize the canon.” Sounds innovative, creative, and timely and has so much potential to ignite social change in ways academia has never imagined. As a student who’s traveled through “colonized” academia, decolonization is music to my ears. But as a first-generation Eritrean American, graduate...

ASA Presidential Address

Soft music piped through speakers in the ballroom as I entered, trying to find an available seat. Three screens featured ASA’s “Bureaucracies of Displacement” image, the theme of the conference. This image featured a gradient, moving from pink in the lower left corner to a slight purple in the...