Widening Scripts: Cultivating Feminist Care in Academic Labor
Mariana Prandini Assis, Michelle Forrest, Angela Henderson, Lindsey MacCallum, Ian Reilly, Ellen Shaffner, Scott Stoneman
Published on October 19, 2023 by punctum books
- Pages
- 148 pages
- Languages
- English
- Dimensions
- 5⤫8 in.
- ISBN (Paperback)
- ISBN: 978-1-68571-106-1 (Paperback)
- ISBN (PDF)
- ISBN: 978-1-68571-107-8 (PDF)
- LCCN
- LCCN: 2023947414
- BISAC subject codes
- BISAC: EDU040000, SOC010000
- Thema subject codes
- THEMA: JBSF11, JNA
Widening Scripts: Cultivating Feminist Care in Academic Labor is addressed to scholars, educators, and students devoted to the struggle against precarity, atomization, and the commodification of knowledge. Through shared reading, discussion, and reflection, and gathered around a shared interest in feminist theory and politics, the authors discovered a model of care within academia that helped them to sustain their opposition to dominant academic practices that are diminishing, competitive, and exploitative.
In this book, the authors narrate that discovery and the realization of a desire to share in the assembling of a collective feminist survival kit. In Living a Feminist Life, Sara Ahmed offers a wide-ranging killjoy survival kit that includes books, things, tools, time, life, permission notes, other killjoys, humor, feelings, and bodies. As a response to the stress, strain, and profound grief produced by the COVID-19 pandemic, with its viral acceleration of crises already endemic to neoliberal capitalism, the authors mined an evolving cluster of decolonial feminist texts in an attempt to find meaning, encounter moving premonitions, and engage with radical instigations to thought. By co-creating a survival kit through sustained collaboration during the pandemic, they develop a sense of the value of experimentation and risk-taking and learn how to cultivate an inclusive space that allows them to express their views, reclaim accountability, and learn confidently from each other.
Widening Scripts combines collaborative feminist theory, acts of care, and critical dialogue in an effort to open up decelerated, altruistic, and connected ways of doing academic work together.
Biographies
Mariana Prandini Assis is an Assistant Professor of Political Science at the Federal University of Goiás, Brazil; Michelle Forrest is Professor of Education at Mount Saint Vincent University in Nova Scotia; Angela Henderson is a visual artist and faculty member at the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design in Nova Scotia; Lindsey MacCallum is the Scholarly Publishing Librarian at Mount Saint Vincent University in Nova Scotia; Ian Reilly is an Associate Professor in Communication Studies at Mount Saint Vincent University in Nova Scotia; Ellen Shaffner is an Assistant Professor in Communication Studies at Mount Saint Vincent University in Nova Scotia; S****cott Stoneman is a podcaster and part-time faculty member who teaches Communication Studies at Mount Saint Vincent University in Novia Scotia.
Michelle Forrest (she/her/hers) is Professor of Education at Mount Saint Vincent University, Halifax, Nova Scotia.
Angela Henderson (she/her/hers) is a visual artist and faculty member at the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design in Halifax, Nova Scotia
Lindsey MacCallum (she/her) is the Scholarly Publishing Librarian at Mount Saint Vincent University in Halifax, Nova Sco
Ian Reilly (he/him) is an Associate Professor in Communication Studies at Mount Saint Vincent University in Halifax, Nova Scotia
Ellen Shaffner (she/her) is an Assistant Professor in Communication Studies at Mount Saint Vincent University in Halifax, Nova Scotia;
Scott Stoneman (he/him) is a podcaster and part-time faculty member who teaches Communication Studies at Mount Saint Vincent Universit
Endorsements
Sara Ahmed
author of Living a Feminist Life, Complaint!, and The Feminist Killjoy Handbook
What a killjoy joy it has been to take this book in! It teaches that care, that painstaking labour, is how we craft connections that help us to survive the harshest of worlds. Poetic, collaborative, and generous, Widening Scripts shares with its readers what can happen when we read together, creating room for each other, turning feminist texts into lively conversations. It brings home why care full practices matter all the more when we have to transform institutions to survive them and, in pandemic times, when it is hard to share the same air. I was reminded of what a gift it has been to be part of a feminist community and that however hard it is to keep fighting against injustices, it is how we find our people.
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Funding
- Mount Saint Vincent University(opens in new tab)
Program: Aid to Scholarly Publications and Communications Grant
- The Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada(opens in new tab)
Program: Explore Grant (2020–21)
Genres
- Cultural Studies+Critical Theory
- Humanities+University
Keywords
- academic labor
- artistic research
- care networks
- collective reading
- critical dialogue
- ecology
- epistemology
- experimental
- feminist survival
- feminist theory