The OG academic aunties are back! On the season 5 premiere, we have Dr. Nisha Nath and Dr. Mariam Georgis, who appeared on the very first episode of the pod, to talk about what how the world of academic assholes have changed since we started Academic Aunties. We talk new types of assholes we've discovered, including the "stealth asshole", whether we're in a position yet to say no, and how time is collective.

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 at @AcademicAunties, on Twitter at @AcademicAuntie or by e-mail at [email protected].

This is normally a time when we’re readying ourselves for the term, often with optimism, energy, and hope for what the new year will bring. But I know I speak for many when I say that this year feels different.

This Fall marks almost a year of relentless conflict in Gaza. And rather than a restful summer, students and community members have been actively organizing in solidarity with Palestinians, setting up encampments on university campuses.

These encampments have faced harsh crackdowns from university administrations and police. Many have been dismantled. But as we enter the Fall, with a new academic year ahead of us, an American electoral season that is rapidly evolving how people talk about the rights of Palestinians and our own personal stresses and pressures, it’s easy to lose sight of the purpose of these encampments and why the attacks on them were so abhorrent.

On this special bonus episode of Academic Aunties, we bring you a conversation we head earlier this summer with to talk about the student encampments and protests in support of Palestine at the University Alberta, and hopefully make sense of all of this.

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

On the Season 4 finale, we revisit Sara Ahmed's new book, The Feminist Killjoy Handbook: The Radical Potential of Getting in the Way, with our very own feminist killjoy book club!

We're joined by Rita Dhamoon, Tka Pinnock, and our very own producer, Nisha Nath. We talk about why the book resonates so much in this present moment, and why being a feminist killjoy is more important than ever.

And remember to check out our interview with Sara Ahmed (Episode 40)!

Related Links

• The Feminist Killjoy Handbook: The Radical Potential of Getting in the Way

We've talked a lot this season about the accelerating attacks on academic freedom, including the campaigns of repression against expressions of Palestine solidarity. Student groups, faculty and staff are increasingly surveilled, policed and targeted with spurious charges of antisemitism if they dare to voice support for Palestine.

We often focus on faculty and students, but it's easy to forget how vulnerable staff are with few protections. This was the case at the University of Alberta, where after a post was shared by staff and volunteers at the U of A Sexual Assault Centre about a student-organized Palestine solidarity event, they were subjected to harrasment online, in person and via phone calls. And on January 23, they were fired from their jobs.

On this episode, we talk to three core staff members of the Centre about the conflicting messages they received from university administration leading up to their firing, the harrasment they faced, and the toll all of this has taken.

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

A few days ago, we recognized International Women’s Day. Every year we shine a spotlight on the continuing realities of gender-based discrimination and gender-based violence worldwide. So on this episode, we are so glad to have Dr. Mandi Gray. She has just released a new book “Suing for Silence: Sexual Violence and Defamation Law,” which unpacks the ways that systems of power - specifically the criminal legal system that is “composed of patriarchal and colonial laws” – protect the privileged. In our conversation, we explore the ways that abusive men and abusive institutions punish women for speaking up about their experiences of abuse, and how they they also punish women for providing support to women who have experienced sexual abuse. This includes campus sexual violence, and the repercussions faced by students and faculty members who break the silence. 

Win a free copy of Suing for Silence!

If you want a chance to win a free copy of “Suing for Silence,” retweet or repost this episode using hashtag #SuingforSilence, and tag Mandi at @gotmysassypants and Acadmic Aunties at @AcademicAuntie on Twitter or @AcademicAunties on Bluesky and Instagram

Related Links

• Suing for Silence: Sexual Violence and Defamation Law by Mandi Gray, UBC Press
• Mandi Gray's Website
• Can't Buy My Silence

Without community, a I wouldn’t have lasted through grad school and the years since. 

For me, in grad school, a special community that I was with were the group of critical Filipinx scholars who I’ve since grown with over the years. We called ourselves the “Kritikal Kolektibo,” and we were grad students and junior faculty at the University of Toronto who met regularly, to hang out of course, but also to share our work, and dream about what Filipinx Studies in Canada could look like.

We shared stories of what was going on with our lives. We talked about the gendered and racial microaggressions - and outright aggressions - that we experienced, our strategies for subversion, and our moments of triumph. 

One member of this group, and our guest this week is Dr. John Paul Catungal. 

JP and I started our PhDs at the same time, in different departments with very different research projects. And yet, we were oftentimes pitted against each other. We knew this too: we knew, for example, that if one of us got shortlisted for a position, the other cannot be, because there can be “only one of us,” – there can only be one Filipino, no matter the differences in our research and our approaches. This is how the neoliberal academy operated, and how it still operates. 

On today's episode, we talk about friendship, our parallel paths through academia and our attempts to do and be otherwise.

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

We’re in conversation with Dr. Gulzar Charania about her incredible new book “Fighting Feelings: Lessons in Gendered Racism and Queer Life.” Fighting Feelings is about Black and racialized women, answering the question: “how and in what directions do we learn to think, act, and live in relation to racism”? 

The book touches on so many things that we talk regularly about on Academic Aunties. How women of colour navigate intensely white spaces, how perceptions of our ‘excellence’ can only really be understood in relation to who doesn’t get to be excellent, and how, as Gulzar writes, we constantly ‘fight feelings, and other times use feelings to fight’.

It’s a book that I really think all of you will love and I am so happy that we had a chance to talk to Gulzar about her journey in writing it.

Related Links:

• Fighting Feelings: Lessons in Gendered Racism and Queer Life, by Gulzar R. Charania

For many in academia, there is always a certain ambivalence about being here. And historically, institutions have been pretty ambivalent about our presence here too. Academia has traditionally never been a place for those who are Black, Indigenous, women of colour. For many scholars, a pragmatic approach is to have one foot in, and one foot out, of the academy.

In today’s episode, we talk to Dr. Chavon Niles and Dr. Nicole Bernhardt. Both Chavon and Nicole had found themselves having one foot in, and one foot out, of the academy while they pursued their PhDs. They both worked outside of academia throughout. Yet the academy called them back. We talk about why they came back and what they’re doing to stay true to the values that made them keep one foot out of the academy in the first place.

Related Links

• The Leak in the Academic Pipeline: on Black Women Sociologists
• The leaky pipeline of diverse race and ethnicity representation in academic science and technology training in the United States, 2003–2019
• Scientists from historically excluded groups face a hostile obstacle course (PDF)

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

We're just a couple of weeks into 2024 and we are tired. After a restful break, we are back to the intense pressures of teaching, advising, and dealing with administrative tasks, plus all of the care and domestic responsibilities that many women have to also take on. Host, Ethel Tungohan, wanted strategies to manage, so she decided to talk to good friends, Dr. Tobin LeBlanc Haley and Dr. Laura Pin to get their advice.

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

As the year comes to a close, many of us are feeling unsettled. After the rush of marking, teaching, and activism, are we allowed to rest during this holiday season? In this episode, Dr. Ethel Tungohan and Dr. Nisha Nath close out 2023 talking about why rest is political, and how community care is even more essential these days.  

Related Links

• "In Hajar's footsteps : a de-colonial and islamic ethic of care" by Sarah Munawar
• Black Liturgies by Cole Arthur Riley