The problem with work (I)

Feminist calls for better work for women, as important as they have been, have on the whole resulted in more work for women. Beyond the intensification of many forms of waged work… the burdens of unwaged domestic and caring work have also increased, both because of the pressures of neoliberal restructuring along with the double [...]

At Sydney Uni this week

Starting with an assembly in Eastern Avenue – one of the many campus locations to have been “enhanced” in recent years at major expense – Wednesday’s No Job Cuts rally moved to the iconic sandstone quadrangle, to the office of the absent Vice Chancellor, Michael Spence. A section of the protest group then stormed the [...]

Notes on Jason Read’s ‘Starting from Year Zero: Occupy Wall Street and the Transformations of the Socio-Political’

NB: These are highlights created by instapaper on my kindle. Read the full essay here. I am experimenting with this and other ways of taking notes “in the cloud”… Follow @melgregg on Twitter if this is your kind of thing. As students take on more and more loans to fund their education, their education changes [...]

‘The horrors’

When I finished writing my book manuscript in early 2010, I included an epigraph from the late George Orwell: Even the middle classes, for the first time in their history, are feeling the pinch. They have not known actual hunger yet, but more and more of them find themselves floundering in a sort of deadly [...]

A special moment

Thanks to everyone who came out to welcome Lauren Berlant on her visit to Sydney last weekend. It was an incredible paper, and we are all in the department basking in the afterglow of a fantastically inspiring visit. I also wanted to say sorry to those who couldn’t make it in to Saturday’s lecture – [...]

Happily ever before and after

Yesterday we met our wedding celebrant for the first time. We were a bit nervous beforehand. So far the celebrant plans have fallen through twice. My sister in law’s mother was first to be asked, but unfortunately illness means she can’t risk traveling to the wedding. Then after a trip home to Tassie last year [...]

#IPF09 debrief

Now one cannot demonstrate scientifically what the duty of an academic teacher is. One can only demand of the teacher that he have the intellectual integrity to see that it is one thing to state facts, to determine mathematical or logical relations or the internal structure of cultural values, while it is another thing to [...]

Remembering Eve Sedgwick

This is something I’ve been working on for the past few weeks. Hope some of you might like to come! We are also looking in to the logistics of recording it – so it would be good to hear if people would find this useful. Remembering Eve Sedgwick: The beginnings, present and future of queer [...]

Overload

Think your job is bad? Read this. Overload reports on “the role of work-volume escalation and micro-management of academic work patterns in loss of morale and collegiality at UWS.” Apart from highlighting the inadequacies of workload formulae across every level of academic life, it’s also one of the best reports I’ve read showing the impact [...]

Progress

Thanks to everyone who sent messages of support in response to the rejections. What a weird week. After going public with all the feedback, a friend suggested I should write an opinion piece about it for the Higher Ed. I’ve sent it off and I think it might be getting published — although of course [...]

keep looking »