{"id":747,"date":"2018-01-29T21:29:05","date_gmt":"2018-01-29T21:29:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/digitalfeministcollective.net\/?p=747"},"modified":"2018-01-29T21:30:50","modified_gmt":"2018-01-29T21:30:50","slug":"this-is-not-just-a-grab-bag-candy-game","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/digitalfeministcollective.net\/index.php\/2018\/01\/29\/this-is-not-just-a-grab-bag-candy-game\/","title":{"rendered":"“This is not just a grab-bag candy game.”"},"content":{"rendered":"

I tell my students, \u2018When you get these jobs that you have been so brilliantly trained for, just remember that your real job is that if you are free, you need to free somebody else.\u00a0<\/span>If you have some power, then your job is to empower somebody else. This is not just a grab-bag candy game.\u2019\u201d\u00a0\u2014Toni Morrison, \u201cThe Truest Eye\u201d1<\/sup><\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Since my recent tenure and promotion to Associate Professor, I have experienced the typical shift from a workload emphasizing research and writing (the necessary labor for achieving tenure) to a workload emphasizing administration and advising (the necessary labor for running the university). This change in my role as a university laborer has evolved in the context of growing public awareness that the university is a site of pervasive sexual harassment and systemic oppression for faculty, students, and staff who self-identify as women, as LGBTQ+, and\/or as POC.2<\/sup><\/span> As a result, I have found that my feminist practice primarily manifests in supporting the voices of marginalized and underrepresented members of our university community as they speak out against the injustices of our university administration and against the silencing and marginalization they experience in \u201csafe\u201d spaces shared with other feminists at the university.3<\/sup><\/span> Much of this support is emotional labor and, as such, goes unrecognized (or is pejoratively recognized) and uncompensated by the institution. The time spent critiquing, strategizing with others, and demanding real change from the institution in terms of equity; the recruitment, hiring, and retention of non-cis-hetero-white-male academics; and in terms of family and kinship support (i.e., paid leave, tenure extensions, etc.) \u2013 this time spent laboring in service to and for the university<\/span> is crucial to the university\u2019s transformation into an actually diverse feminist space of agency, scholarship, and labor. While these minutes, hours, and days do not show up on my curriculum vitae, I\u2019m thrilled to be logging them publicly and in concert with others here!<\/span><\/p>\n

\u2014Jennifer Creech, University of Rochester<\/p>\n

1<\/sup>\u00a0Pam Houston, interview with Toni Morrison, <\/span>O Magazine<\/span><\/i> (Nov. 2003), <\/span>http:\/\/www.oprah.com\/omagazine\/toni-morrison-talks-love\/all#ixzz520t7eq6c<\/span><\/a>.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

2<\/sup>\u00a0At my home institution, this has led to an EEOC filing by current and former faculty members and graduate students against university administration. See Richard Aslin et al. vs. University of Rochester, https:\/\/www.scribd.com\/document\/366696664\/UR-Lawsuit-by-EEOC-Complainants<\/a> as well as the complainants reasons for filing after attempting to work with UR\u2019s administration, http:\/\/www.campustimes.org\/2017\/10\/11\/want-work-ur-case-cant-compromised\/<\/a>. For a more general lay of the land of sexual harassment in academe, see Nell Gluckman, \u201c\u2019A Complete Culture of Sexualization\u2019: 1,600 Stories of Harassment in Higher Ed,\u201d Chronicle of Higher Education<\/i> (12 Dec. 2017) https:\/\/www.chronicle.com\/article\/A-Complete-Culture-of\/242040<\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n

3\u00a0<\/sup>See Jennifer L. Creech, \u201c<\/span>Transparent<\/span><\/i> and the Affective Labor of Being a Feminist Killjoy,\u201d paper presented in the Seminar \u201cFeminist Scholar-Activism and the Politics of Affect,\u201d <\/span>German Studies Association<\/span><\/i> annual conference (5-8 Oct. 2017).<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n ","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I tell my students, \u2018When you get these jobs that you have been so brilliantly trained for, just remember that your real job is that if you are free, you need to free somebody else.\u00a0If you have some power, then your job is to empower somebody else. This is not just a grab-bag candy game.\u2019\u201d\u00a0\u2014Toni … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[23,59,45,60],"class_list":["post-747","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-feminist-practices","tag-administration","tag-emotional-labor","tag-feminist-killjoy","tag-sexual-harassment"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/digitalfeministcollective.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/747","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/digitalfeministcollective.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/digitalfeministcollective.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/digitalfeministcollective.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/digitalfeministcollective.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=747"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/digitalfeministcollective.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/747\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":750,"href":"https:\/\/digitalfeministcollective.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/747\/revisions\/750"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/digitalfeministcollective.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=747"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/digitalfeministcollective.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=747"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/digitalfeministcollective.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=747"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}