Academic Aunties

Going up for Full Professor...it's a daunting task. There's always that inner voice in your head. You have a good CV. You've done service. You've done everything you're supposed to. And you still tell yourself, it's still not enough. It's easy to fall into this, like, paralyzed mode where you just don't know how to think your way out of this predicament. So to talk about putting yourself out there, to talk about the promotions process, I had the great honour of talking to Dr. Tamara Small, Professor of Political Science at the University of Guelph.

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Thanks for listening! Get more information, support the show, and read all the transcripts at academicaunties.com. Get in touch with Academic Aunties on BlueSky, Instagram, or by e-mail at [email protected].

A lot of listeners are like me in that we LOVE reading. I read all the things - not just academic books but sci fi, romantacy, YA coming of age novels, high brow literature, celebrity autobiographies, rom coms, and my absolute favourite, murder mysteries. That’s why we love our Academic Auntie ‘book’ episodes where we interview authors of our favourite books. We did this last year, when we spoke to Uzma Jallaludin, author of the detective aunty novels! And now, we are doing it again for this episode, where we talk to Yosha Gunasekera, author of the BEST murder mystery I read this summer, The Midnight Taxi. In this episode, we dive into the book and also address what motivated Yosha, who is a full-time lawyer, an advocate, and a law professor, to write the book. We also address issues of race and representation, the writing process, and why The Midnight Taxi is a love letter to immigrants - specifically immigrant taxi drivers - in New York City.

Buy The Midnight Taxi

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Thanks for listening! Get more information, support the show, and read all the transcripts at academicaunties.com. Get in touch with Academic Aunties on Instagram, or by e-mail at [email protected].

Despite the excitement of a new school year, academia is facing a lot of challenges. AI, techno facism, emboldening of white supremacists, and the targeting of radicalized professors. And institutions themselves are cracking down on those who call out the atrocities in Palestine, while cutting back resources in the name of efficiencies. So it's natural to ask: do our jobs still matter? Does the fight still matter? To discuss, we have OG academic aunties, Dr. Debra Thompson and Dr. Yolande Bouka.

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Thanks for listening! Get more information, support the show, and read all the transcripts at academicaunties.com. Get in touch with Academic Aunties on BlueSky, Instagram, or by e-mail at [email protected].

For the final episode of season 6, we turn the mic over to newly minted Ph.D., Dr. Dani Magsumbol and fellow grad student and friend, Tka Pinnock! We're calling this, Academic Ate, where "ate" means "big sister" in Tagalog. They talk about the journey it took to get to the Ph.D. defence, the deep value of community, and what it means to have good mentorship.

Enjoy this final episode and see you back in the Fall!

Thanks for listening! Get more information, support the show, and read all the transcripts at academicaunties.com. Get in touch with Academic Aunties on BlueSky, Instagram, or by e-mail at [email protected].

The disjuncture between the stated goals of equity, diversity, and inclusion policies and their application has long been a theme we've covered on the pod. This week, we continue this conversation with Dr. Sabreena Ghaffar-Siddiqui, co-author of the book, DEI Undone: The Rise, Fall and Rebirth of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion alongside Dr. Ardavan Eizadirad. Sabreena is an anti-imperialist, decolonial scholar, sociologist, and public intellectual who has worked at the centre of Canada's DEI industry and was forced out from her institution after speaking up for Palestine. In our conversation today, we talk about the death of DEI, building community and how doing otherwise is always possible.

Get DEI Undone today!

Thanks for listening! Get more information, support the show, and read all the transcripts at academicaunties.com. Get in touch with Academic Aunties on BlueSky, Instagram, or by e-mail at [email protected].

Higher education is under attack. Programs shut down in response to fascist attacks, faculty being fired for taking political stances, and being forced to do more and more for less and less. These are just a few reminders that academia is not a calling. We are, in fact, academic labourers. And at the forefront of the battles we are increasingly asked to fight are academic labour unions.

On this episode, we talk with Dr. Anna Meier, a full-time labour organizer who works with higher education unions in the Boston area. We talk about why unions are important, her journey pivoting away from an academic job to being an organizer, common misconceptions about unions, and why even within our unions, there are battles to be fought.

Related Links

1. Anna Meier on Blue Sky

Thanks for listening! Get more information, support the show, and read all the transcripts at academicaunties.com. Get in touch with Academic Aunties on BlueSky, Instagram, or by e-mail at [email protected].

This week we talk to Academic Aunties producer extraordinaire, Dr. Nisha Nath and her co-authors, Dr. Rita Kaur Dhamoon, Dr. Anita Girvan and Dr. Davina Bhandar about their new book, The Letters: Institutional Lives and EDI. It's an amazing work, going deep on a lot of the themes that you hear about a lot on this podcast.

Here's what I said about the book when I was given the honour of providing a review:

“Breathtaking, brilliant, creative, enraging, heartfelt, joyful, powerful, and wise, The Letters is testament to the importance of ‘writing our lives’ and ‘right-ing our lives’ within and against the neoliberal, EDI’ university. The authors unflinchingly demonstrate the corrosive damages that universities inflict while also capturing the subversive power of collective witnessing, dissident friendships, and doing otherwise in these spaces. It is a work of profound theoretical heft that I also see as a love letter to its readers: not only does it give us a way to process, metabolize and understand painful encounters in our academic lives that have harmed us, it is also a reminder that amid the many instances of institutional cruelty that we might have witnessed and lived through, other worlds remain possible.”

Listeners - go buy this book today!

Thanks for listening! Get more information, support the show, and read all the transcripts at academicaunties.com. Get in touch with Academic Aunties on BlueSky, Instagram, or by e-mail at [email protected].

For this episode of the podcast, we tackle writing, writing retreats, and why writing can be, and probably should be, a community-based practice. Last month I went on a writing intensive workshop and retreat, and I recorded a few voice memos documenting my time. Academic Aunties producer, Dr. Nisha Nath joins us on the podcast and we reflect on the importance of creating space away from everyday life to think, to write, and to reflect.

Thanks for listening! Get more information, support the show, and read all the transcripts at academicaunties.com. Get in touch with Academic Aunties on BlueSky, Instagram, or by e-mail at [email protected].

With how abysmal the world is right now, we have probably all felt frustration that our political leaders are, at best, oblivious to our everyday concerns, and at worse, are actively trying to make our lives worse. But how many of us, when looking at all of the problems our world is facing right now, would choose to throw our hats in the ring and run for office?

This week, we talk about one of those remarkable community and civically-minded leaders who isn't afraid of this challenge. Veronica Javier, who I've known for almost 20 years now, is a community organizer and an adjunct faculty member at York University School of Social Work. Veronica is one of those tireless people who uses her voice to speak truth to power, to advocate for communities, and to strategize on ways to change systems to support underserved folks.

We talk about what made her decide to take the leap and run for office and how she's truly trying to center care and community in in her forays into this world.

Related Links

1. Veronica Javier for Scarborough Southwest

Thanks for listening! Get more information, support the show, and read all the transcripts at academicaunties.com. Get in touch with Academic Aunties on BlueSky, Instagram, or by e-mail at [email protected].

This week, we are SO excited to talk to Uzma Jalaluddin about her new book, Moonlight Murder! This is the latest instalment in her amazing Detective Aunty series. In our conversation we talk about her love for Agatha Christie, writing, why Scarborough is a hotbed of amazing writers and artists and why Kausar Khan is the anti-heroine we have all been waiting for.

After you listen to this episode, make sure you buy Moonlight Murder from a bookstore near you!

Thanks for listening! Get more information, support the show, and read all the transcripts at academicaunties.com. Get in touch with Academic Aunties on BlueSky, Instagram, or by e-mail at [email protected].